How to Block Blocking the Sun
Chances are if you ask someone in the climate space about geoengineering, they have an opinion. And chances are that opinion is strong. They might think that geoengineering is absolutely necessary to avoid climate disaster. Or they might think that geoengineering is a false solution that will create its own disaster. But they likely don’t fall somewhere in the middle.
And they’re not alone. The universal intensity and divisiveness of the geoengineering debate have captured the attention of environmental sociologists for decades. But so far, their theories haven’t quite been able to capture the debate exactly. To interrogate this, we’ll zero in on one instance where a research attempt on geoengineering technology ended in chaos for an unexpected but revealing reason. Through its analysis, you’ll gain insights into both environmental sociological theories and their implications for activists in geoengineering spaces.
Broadly speaking, geoengineering is the intentional manipulation of the earth’s climate, and it can be defined by its two main techniques: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM). CDR includes efforts such as direct air capture and storage of carbon dioxide, soil carbon sequestration, ocean-based CDR, and afforestation/reforestation. SRM refers to any effort to reflect a percentage of the sun’s energy into space, including techniques such as stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, or space-based sun shields. Most of the controversy surrounding geoengineering lies in this latter technique because it is a novel approach with relatively uncertain impacts. The focus of this article, the UK-based Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project, used this SRM approach.
The SPICE experiment first began as the brainchild of top UK research institutions including, the University of Bristol, Cambridge University, Edinburgh University, and Oxford University with significant funding from private companies like Marshall Aerospace. It was one of the first large-scale studies of SRM technologies and it was widely anticipated to be the catalyst for the expansion and SRM research and deployment. The long-term experiment was set to begin in October 2011 and run until September 2013, during which time the scientists hoped to investigate the effectiveness of SRM as a method of combating global warming. The first stage of their experiment used a helium blimp to pump 1.8 liters/minute of tap water one kilometer over the surface of an old Norfolk airfield. These results would inform the design of a future larger-scale device that could be used at 20 kilometers high. Largely because the experiment was using water instead of the sulfur-based particles that would be used in a non-experimental SRM project, the researchers repeatedly insisted that SPICE was an “environmentally benign experiment”. According to their publication, the researchers aimed to “address the three grand challenges in solar radiation management: 1. How much, of what, needs to be injected into the atmosphere to effectively and safely manage the climate system? 2. How do we deliver it there? 3. What are the likely impacts?” Unfortunately for the researchers, these questions never got the chance to be answered. But to fully appreciate the next sequence of events in our story by detailing the downfall of SPICE, it’s first helpful to have an understanding of key environmental sociological theories.
As established, the development and implementation of geoengineering are based on the belief that technological innovations are an appropriate way to respond to climate change. Ecological modernization theory (EMT), an environmental sociological theory, aligns well with this pro-geoengineering side of the debate. Ecological modernization theorists promote a technocratic worldview that emphasizes the capacity for green technologies to decouple environmental damages from economic growth. Technology, to ecological modernization theorists, is the keyway to transforming our current economic system into a green version of capitalism. By aligning profit incentives with the practical need to reduce externalities — the negative costs of production to people and the environment — capitalism will develop a reflexive response to environmental harms. Ultimately, EMT theorists hope that this creates a world where economic growth and environmental health can increase simultaneously.
And for many, this world already exists- in some Scandinavian countries like Sweden, which are heralded as EMT success stories. Örebro University scholars write that “So far the country has never developed an environmental policy that challenges the growth logic” and yet Sweden has managed to be “one of few states in the EU that have so far succeeded in reducing its emissions; recent figures show that Sweden’s emissions of greenhouse gases for 2010 had decreased by almost 9% since 1990, whereas the national goal was only a 4% decrease”. Without an EMT model, Sweden’s decoupling of economic growth and environmental protection might not have been possible.
Green technologies like geoengineering play a critical role in the EMT plan because the theory’s core argument relies on the determination that a future world with modern technologies and greener markets is fundamentally “better” than our current reality. So, research and development into key technologies like geoengineering have functional and theoretical significance. If these technologies are successful, then they legitimize the EMT beliefs.
Contrastingly, the theory of the Treadmill of Production (TOP) stands in opposition to both capitalism and the technocratic worldview of EMT. TOP argues that rather than being the solution, capitalism is the problem. This is because capitalism demands constant growth and to stay on this ‘treadmill of growth,’ firms and states permit severe environmental and social costs to be externalized to the public–especially to vulnerable communities. To TOP theorists, to truly reduce the social and environmental harms in our societies, the only way forward is to get off the figurative treadmill is by undermining capitalism through system change, democratic decision-making, and grassroots actions. To TOP activists, technologies like geoengineering merely permit the treadmill to continue running, without addressing any of the core faults in the system. Moreover, TOP opposes geoengineering not just because it upholds an economic system that they don’t find desirable, but because it also threatens to worsen global inequalities. In their eyes, the ‘cure’ will only worsen the disease. TOP activists accuse it of having the serious potential to serve as a moral hazard, undermining global greenhouse gas mitigation efforts.
The deployment of geoengineering requires someone to make the critical determination of who decides to alter the climate, whose consent is sought or not sought, how much benefits and harm are acceptable, and where and to whom the benefits and harms are distributed. Unless actively prevented, the results of these determinations will exacerbate current systems of power, serving the socially privileged groups at the expense of the rest of the world. TOP academics have written on this neglected area of EMT. Vincent Ialenti, a USC-Berggruen fellow, bluntly states, “EM(T) also fails to address ways industrial technologies have been put to uses antithetical to aspirations for better lives — like in, for example, the Nazi war machine. What policies, one could ask EM(T), must be in place to ensure that the tech theorists advocate does not inadvertently result in innovations serving inhumane ends? …these questions remain unanswered”. But for anti-geoengineering activists, this absence has been an exploitable strategic opportunity to insert their own imaginings of what the “worst-case” implementation could look like. As we will see in their reframing campaigns, anti-SPICE activists clearly paid attention to this debate.
When applied to geoengineering, it could be easy to believe that the two opposing theories map neatly onto the debate: EMT in favor of geoengineering and TOP against. But it’s worthwhile to question this simplistic conclusion. Some scholars like University at Buffalo’s Holly Jean Buck try to resist this neat binary mapping of sociological theories on the debate, arguing that TOP and EMT can in fact be compatible in geoengineering discussions if considering what “good” implementation looks like. Echoing a category of EMT known as thick EMT/strong EMT, Buck argues that democratization, grassroots action, and system accountability are necessities for any green technology implementation. Only when these conditions are met, could a diverse society accept geoengineering, avoid conflict between opponents and supporters, and be equitable in its rewards and costs. These sorts of thick EMT conditions align surprisingly with the sorts of social and political transformations called for by TOP advocates, as detailed earlier. Buck reflects on this, writing, “Systemic change is absolutely necessary. But geoengineering does not have to substitute for transformative change–in fact, to work well, geoengineering requires systemic change”. Good geoengineering, Buck argues, could look a lot like the transformative change demanded by TOP.
Although the likelihood of this type of major transformation occurring is unexamined in her work, academics like Buck do offer useful insights through these types of claims: the two sociological theories are not completely mutually exclusive.
Let’s apply this insight in another instance. Both TOP and EMT theorists broadly recognize that the fundamental relationship between the economic, political, and socio-cultural spheres has shifted in our late-stage capitalism. In this stage, civil society occupies a passive role in society while the political sphere generates crises of legitimation and rationality. These political crises then become resolved by moving through the economic sphere. Put simply, the origin and type of the problems in late-stage capitalism as compared to earlier stages have shifted away from being purely economic issues. Consequently, the economic sphere has lost some of the autonomy it enjoyed in previous stages of capitalism — making the economy vulnerable to appropriation and corruption from political actors. More often than not, this corruption is harmful to solving environmental issues. EMT and TOP both recognize this reality. They simply differ in what they imagine the appropriate solution to this economic vulnerability is. EMT argues that collaborative governance structures can be organized to ensure accountability between the state and economy whereas TOP believes fundamentally restructuring our economic system is the only way to check corruption. Regardless, this shared recognition of the economy’s current vulnerability is a valuable insight worth keeping in mind as we revisit the SPICE case study.
As mentioned earlier, the SPICE project was never completed. Its downfall occurred in two main stages which I refer to as The Reframing and The Scandal.
The Reframing was led by anti-geoengineering advocacy groups who sought to paint the SPICE experiment in the worst possible light. Civil society groups like the Canadian-based Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC) and Friends of the Earth spearheaded the “Stop the Trojan Horse’’ campaign in September 2011, a month before the SPICE experiment was set to begin. The campaign, which was endorsed by sixty other civil society groups, accused the experiment of being deceptively harmless. In their open letter, a representative of ETC commented “This is a Trojan Horse — our objection is not that they want to spray water but that they are preparing the technology that can shoot sulfates into the stratosphere to try to block sunlight from reaching the earth”. In channeling TOP logic and reframing an experiment once publicly thought of as ‘environmentally benign’ as a dangerous gateway experiment, they erased the idea that SPICE was a one-off harmless field experiment. Strategically, for the civil society organizations, this was incredibly useful. The “Trojan horse” framing allowed them to push back against an SRM project at earlier stages of development, while it was still using harmless water particles, rather than having to wait until environmental harms could be measured from the full deployment of the technology.
As another layer of their reframing, the organizations copied a page out of the TOP playbook by accusing SPICE of being a moral hazard. The ETC group wrote in their publication, “The active development of geoengineering tools and experiments enables delayed climate action and provides a justification for easing restrictions on high-carbon-emitting industries. Already some of the loudest voices calling for geoengineering research are neo-conservative think tanks close to the fossil fuel industry who previously peddled climate denialism”. By framing SPICE as a sort of false solution to climate change that was being appropriated by a conservative political agenda, the activists reduced the experiment to being a desperate tactic of the polluters. SPICE isn’t a respectable scientific exploration of geoengineering, they argue, it’s the dirty attempt for polluting industries to grease the treadmill of production.
The Reframing stage clearly landed its punches. Only three days after the launch of the prolific campaigns, the SPICE project was suspended by its leadership team, citing a need “to allow time for more engagement with stakeholders”.
But this isn’t the end of the story. SPICE’s fatal blow proved to be The Scandal. A few weeks into the project’s start, it was publicly revealed that two SPICE team members, Peter Davidson (a SPICE consultant who also ran a technology consulting firm) and Hugh Hunt (a SPICE project investigatory engineer), preemptively submitted a patent for intellectual property rights for the exact technology involved in the SPICE field experiment. The patent application was submitted a full year before the project launch for an “apparatus for transporting and dispersing solid particles into the Earth’s stratosphere” by “balloon, dirigible or airship” — the technology involved in the SPICE field trial. The intellectual property rights patents gave exclusive rights to Peter Davidson and Hugh Hunt, which would permit them to collect any potential commercial revenue generated from the technology. This revelation was made all the more shameful in light of the earlier assurances made by SPICE’s funders that no results from the experiment would be patented as its scientists were “committed to putting all the results arising from the SPICE project into the public domain”. In reaction to this news, the lead scientist at SPICE publicly commented “The details of this [patent] application were only reported to the project team a year into the project lifetime and caused many members, including me, significant discomfort”. The anti-geoengineering groups responded similarly, alleging that there was a serious conflict of interest and that the experiment could not be trusted to move forward. The SPICE team seemed to agree. After this public revelation, the project was officially abandoned.
This patent scandal proved to be the critical circumstance to unite the anti-SPICE camp and the pro-SPICE teams together, surprising those who believed the two sides were incompatible. But when thinking back to the sociological theories, the reaction makes sense. The patent scandal hit a shared critique of modern society: economic corruption is rampant in our current economic systems and it’s harmful to solving environmental issues.
The SPICE patent scandal blatantly exposed how private interests invaded the pursuit of climate solutions. For the SPICE EMT crowd, this corruption scandal threatened their basic belief that green capitalism is capable of being ‘done well’, immune from economic corruption. For the TOP civil society groups, the scandal was a strategic opportunity to expose what they saw as the inevitable consequence of capitalism and technocratic worldviews. For both sides, shutting down SPICE was the best choice for acting in line with their theoretical foundations.
As you may recall from earlier in this article, EMT and TOP theories have conventionally been thought of as incompatible and mutually exclusive. But the SPICE case reveals that there is more to the story. There were two groups seemingly opposed to one another, yet under a particular set of circumstances, they voluntarily advocated for the same thing: blocking the experiment. Clearly, there is an overlapping relationship between the theories that has failed to be captured in conventional EMT v. TOP theory debates. Both theories are opposed to the existing economic corruption in our current form of capitalism.
So, what is the use of studying SPICE? For EMT and TOP theorists, it should encourage them to challenge the rigid attitudes towards these sociological theories (and sociological theories more broadly) and to place greater examination on the ways that the theories intersect and the role of contextual factors, like public scandals. When we begin to break down the artificial divisions between theories, it may even yield a more accurate understanding of the world around us. For anti-geoengineering activists, the SPICE story could serve as a recipe for how to make a successful movement. To slow down the experiment, they need to reframe it as a dangerous gateway and a moral hazard. To stop the experiment, they need to hunt for and expose economic scandals, corruption, or individual profiteers.
On paper, SPICE is easy to write off. It’s a failed experiment that never even happened. Perhaps that’s enough for many to never seriously consider it. Yet, I feel it’s ripe for study. Its failure reveals critical information that expands our understanding of traditional environmental sociology and offers insights into what the future of anti-geoengineering activism may look like. For those reasons, even though SPICE was abandoned, we shouldn’t abandon studying SPICE.
By: Alora Cisneroz
