Abstract
The Paris Agreement’s entry into force in November of 2016 was hailed as a hallmark achievement by the world community in addressing what many believe is the greatest existential global threat of this century and beyond, climate change. In seeking to avoid some of the most serious potential climatic impacts for human institutions and ecosystems, the Agreement, inter alia, calls for “[h]olding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.” To operationalize this goal, the Agreement also calls upon the parties to “aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with best available science, so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century.”
This book grew out of a conference held under the auspices of the Northwestern University Center on Law, Business and Economics, formerly the Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth. We would like to thank the Center at the outset for bringing together many of the contributors to this volume to workshop some of the topics in this book.
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Notes
- 1.
Fiona Harvey, Paris Climate Change Agreement Enters into Force, The Guardian, Nov. 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/04/paris-climate-change-agreement-enters-into-force, site visited on Feb. 15, 2017; Natalya D. Gallo, et al., Ocean commitments under the Paris Agreement, 7 Nature Climate Change 833, 833 (2017). The Agreement has been ratified 189 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to date, UNFCCC, Paris Agreement – Status of Ratification, https://unfccc.int/process/the-paris-agreement/status-of-ratification, encompassing more than 97% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, World Resources Institute, Paris Agreement Tracker, https://cait.wri.org/source/ratification/#?lang=en. Of course, a blow has been dealt to the Agreement by the decision of the largest industrial greenhouse emitters, the United States, to withdraw from Paris, which will take place on November 4, 2020, Michael M. Pompeo, Press Statement, U.S. Department of States, On the U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, November 4, 2019, https://www.state.gov/on-the-u-s-withdrawal-from-the-paris-agreement/; US formally starts withdrawal from Paris climate accord, Euractiv, Nov. 4, 2019, https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/news/us-formally-starts-withdrawal-from-paris-climate-accord/
- 2.
The Paris Agreement, FCCC/CP/2015/L.9, Conference of the Parties, 21st Session (2015), at art. 2(1)(a).
- 3.
Id. at art. 4(1).
- 4.
Id. at art. 3.
- 5.
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- 7.
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- 8.
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- 9.
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- 10.
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- 12.
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- 13.
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- 14.
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- 17.
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- 19.
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- 21.
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- 24.
Wil Burns & Charles R. Corbett, Antacids for the Sea? Artificial Ocean
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- 25.
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- 26.
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- 27.
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- 28.
Xiongxiong Bai, et al., Responses of soil carbon sequestration to climate-smart agriculture practices: A meta-analysis, 25 Global Change Bio. 2591–2606 (2019).
- 29.
The Royal Society, supra note 12, at 34.
- 30.
David P. Keller, Ellias Y. Feng & Andreas Oschlies, Potential Climate Engineering Effectiveness and Side Effects During a High Carbon Dioxide-Emission Scenario, Nature Comm., Feb. 25, 2014, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4304, at 5-6, http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140225/ncomms4304/pdf/ncomms4304.pdf, site visited on Feb. 14, 2017.
- 31.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group III, Ch. 6, Assessing Transformation Pathways, at 93; Giulia Realmonte, et al., An inter-model assessment of the role of direct air capture in deep mitigation pathways, 10 Nature Communications, 3277 (2019), at 3; Etsushi Kato & Yoshiki Yamagata, BECCS Capability of Dedicated Bioenergy Crops under a Future Land-Use Scenario Targeting Net Negative Carbon Emissions, 2 Earth’s Future 421, 421 (2014).
- 32.
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- 35.
The Royal Society, supra note 12, at 31. See also Charles C. Gertler, Weakening of the Extratropical Storm Tracks in Solar Geoengineering Scenarios, 47 Geophysical Res. Letters 1–9, e2020GL087348 (2020).
- 36.
Holly Jean Buck, Geoengineering: Re-Making Climate for Profit or Humanitarian Intervention?, 43(1) Dev. & Change 253, 255 (2011).
- 37.
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- 39.
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- 41.
R.S. Lampitt, et al., Ocean Fertilization: A Potential Means of Geoengineering?, 366 Phil. Trans. R. Soc’y 3919, 3925 (2008).
- 42.
Pete Smith, et al., Biophysical and Economic Limits to Negative CO2 Emissions, 6 Nature Climate Change 42, 46 (2016). See also Phil Williamson, Scrutinize CO2 Removal Methods, 530 Nature 153, 154 (2016); Markus Bonsch, et al., Trade-offs Between Land and Water Requirements for Large-Scale Bioenergy Production, 8 GCB Bioenergy 11, 11 (2014).
- 43.
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- 44.
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- 45.
Mike E. Kelland, et al., Increased yield and CO2 sequestration potential with the C4 cereal Sorghum bicolor cultivated in basaltic rock dust-amended agricultural soil, 26 Global Change Bio. 3658, 3659 (2020).
- 46.
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Jens Hartmann, et al., Enhanced Chemical Weathering as a Geoengineering Strategic to Reduce Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, Supply Nutrients, and Mitigate Ocean Acidification, 51 Rev. Geophys. 113, 113 (2013).
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Burns, W., Dana, D., Nicholson, S.J. (2021). Introduction. In: Burns, W., Dana, D., Nicholson, S.J. (eds) Climate Geoengineering: Science, Law and Governance. AESS Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72372-9_1
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