Social science sequestered

Greenhouse gas removal (GGR) raises many cultural, ethical, legal, social, and political issues, yet in the growing area of GGR research, humanities and social sciences (HASS) research is often marginalized, constrained and depoliticised. This global dynamic is illustrated by an analysis of the UK GGR research programme. This dynamic matters for the knowledge produced and for its users. Without HASS contributions, too narrow a range of perspectives, futures and issues will be considered, undermining or overpromising the prospects for the responsible development of GGR (and threatening worse side-effects), and limiting our understanding of why and how policy demands GGR solutions in the first place. In response, we present policy principles for bringing HASS fully into GGR research, organized around three themes: (1) HASS-led GGR research, (2) Opening up GGR futures, and (3) The politics of GGR futures.We acknowledge funding from the UK GGR programme, under several specific grants: NE/P019838/1, NE/P019900/1, NE/P019951/1, NE/P019668/1, and NE/P01982X/1

The co-evolution of technological promises, modelling, policies and climate change targets

The nature and framing of climate targets in international politics has changed substantially since their early expressions in the 1980s. Here, we describe their evolution in five phases-from 'climate stabilization' to specific 'temperature outcomes'-co-evolving with wider climate politics and policy, modelling methods and scenarios, and technological promises (from nuclear power to carbon removal). We argue that this co-evolution has enabled policy prevarication, leaving mitigation poorly delivered, yet the technological promises often remain buried in the models used to inform policy. We conclude with a call to recognise and break this pattern to unleash more effective and just climate policy. This Perspective maps the history of climate targets and shows how the international goal of avoiding dangerous climate change has been reinterpreted in the light of new modelling methods and technological promises, ultimately enabling policy prevarication and limiting mitigation

Key Messages and Briefing Notes on Carbon Capture and Storage

The study investigated stakeholder perceptions of information on CCS - including those of science writers and journalists, policy makers and commercial organisations with an interest in CCS and specialists in science communication. Based upon these findings, a set of 14 Briefing Notes (each 2500 to 4000 words in length) were prepared and appropriate images and photographs selected to help explain the key concepts. The intended audience is science communicators, journalists, writers, students, interested members of the public and policy makers who need to know something about CCS in a relatively short time period

Climate emergencies do not justify engineering the climate

Current climate engineering proposals do not come close to addressing the complex and contested nature of conceivable ‘climate emergencies’ resulting from unabated greenhouse gas emissions

Clash of Geofutures and the Remaking of Planetary Order: Faultlines underlying Conflicts over Geoengineering Governance

Climate engineering (geoengineering) is rising up the global policy agenda, partly because international divisions pose deep challenges to collective climate mitigation. However, geoengineering is similarly subject to clashing interests, knowledge‐traditions and geopolitics. Modelling and technical assessments of geoengineering are facilitated by assumptions of a single global planner (or some as yet unspecified rational governance), but the practicality of international governance remains mostly speculative. Using evidence gathered from state delegates, climate activists and modellers, we reveal three underlying and clashing ‘geofutures’: an idealised understanding of governable geoengineering that abstracts from technical and political realities; a situated understanding of geoengineering emphasising power hierarchies in world order; and a pragmatist precautionary understanding emerging in spaces of negotiation such as UN Environment Assembly (UNEA). Set in the wider historical context of climate politics, the failure to agree even to a study of geoengineering at UNEA indicates underlying obstacles to global rules and institutions for geoengineering posed by divergent interests and underlying epistemic and political differences. Technology assessments should recognise that geoengineering will not be exempt from international fractures; that deployment of geoengineering through imposition is a serious risk; and that contestations over geofutures pertain, not only to climate policy, but also the future of planetary order

Coal and Climate Change

This overview adopts a critical social science perspective to examine the state of play and potential futures for coal in the context of climate change. It introduces key trends in coal consumption, production and trade, before appraising the relevant literature. Finding surprisingly little literature directly focussed on coal and climate change compared with related fields, it appraises existing work and highlights key areas for future work. In addition to established bodies of work on the situated politics of coal and the political economy of coal, new work calling for demand side policies to be supplemented with supply side policies highlights the increasing importance of how normative contestations drive debates over coal, suggesting that future work needs to engage not only much more directly with climate change as an issue, but particularly with the place of coal in a just transition. Because of coal’s mammoth contribution to climate change and the complex political economy which drives its production and consumption, it is likely that coal will remain at the centre of difficult questions about the relationship between climate action and development for some time