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Research Articles

Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

(cid:129)
Joshua B. Horton, Jesse L. Reynolds, Holly Jean Buck,
Daniel Callies, Stefan Schäfer, David W. Keith,
and Steve Rayner*

Abstrakt
Some scientists suggest that it might be possible to reﬂect a portion of incoming sunlight
back into space to reduce climate change and its impacts. Others argue that such solar
radiation management (SRM) geoengineering is inherently incompatible with democ-
racy. In diesem Artikel, we reject this incompatibility argument. Erste, we counterargue that
technologies such as SRM lack innate political characteristics and predetermined social
Effekte, and that democracy need not be deliberative to serve as a standard for gover-
nance. We then rebut each of the argument’s core claims, countering that (1) democratic
institutions are sufﬁciently resilient to manage SRM, (2) opting out of governance deci-
sions is not a fundamental democratic right, (3) SRM may not require an undue degree
of technocracy, Und (4) its implementation may not concentrate power and promote
authoritarianism. Although we reject the incompatibility argument, we do not argue that
SRM is necessarily, or even likely to be, democratic in practice.

Some scientists suggest that it might be possible to moderate anthropogenic cli-
mate change and its impacts by reﬂecting a small portion of incoming sunlight
back to space (McNutt et al. 2015; Shepherd et al. 2009). Researching such solar
radiation management (SRM), also known as solar geoengineering, was largely
taboo until recently. Current research suggests that SRM could partially counter
climate change and associated impacts but would pose serious sociopolitical
challenges and environmental risks.

One of the greatest challenges for proposed SRM methods—such as inject-
ing minute particles into the upper atmosphere—concerns governance. SRM
would have global effects, yet some versions appear to have such low direct
implementation costs and to be so technically simple that some individual
countries could implement it, at least in principle. Countries seeking to deploy
might disagree over SRM implementation, including how strongly, how quickly,

* We are grateful for the helpful comments of Toby Svoboda, Jane Flegal, three anonymous re-
viewers, the journal’s editors, and especially Clare Heyward. This article originated at the 2016
Harvard University Summer Research Residency on Solar Geoengineering.

Globale Umweltpolitik 18:3, August 2018, doi:10.1162/glep_a_00466
© 2018 vom Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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6 (cid:129)

Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

and when to intervene. Other countries might expect SRM to make them worse
off, and some might object to the very notion of deliberate intervention in the
global climate. Subsequent extreme weather events might be attributed to SRM.
Under plausible scenarios, SRM could increase international tensions and pos-
sibly destabilize the international system. Somit, as Lloyd and Oppenheimer
(2014, 50) schreiben, “the purpose of SRM governance is not only to deter SRM
deployment in the near term, but also to assure that any future consideration
of SRM deployment adheres to normative criteria.”

Many observers have argued that the environmental and political implica-
tions of SRM thus point toward the need for global governance institutions, yet
these in turn would have their own political implications at global, National,
and local levels. Researchers have considered such effects in other areas of global
environmental politics, such as carbon markets and forest conservation, Wo
efforts at transboundary environmental management have led to unexpected
and undesired outcomes. In these cases, they have largely focused on the polit-
ical consequences of policies and institutions rather than on technologies per se.
In the case of SRM, Jedoch, some scholars have argued that the technology
itself is inherently incompatible with democracy.1 This argument has been inﬂuen-
tial in SRM debates and is increasingly manifest in broader conversations about
global environmental governance (z.B., Eckersley 2017, 6). In diesem Artikel, we reject
the argument that SRM and democracy are necessarily incompatible. Obwohl
SRM, if developed, could conceivably be implemented in an authoritarian fashion,
we contend that it could also, conceivably, be deployed on alternative political
bases, including democratically. This possibility depends, unter anderem,
on how one deﬁnes democracy. Wichtig, our counterargument is not that
SRM would be democratically governed but rather that SRM could develop along
many political trajectories, including under both democracy and authoritarianism.
The most explicit statement of the view that SRM and democracy are in-
compatible is the article “Why Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering
and Democracy Won’t Mix” by Szerszynski et al. (2013), which expands on ar-
guments advanced by Macnaghten and Szerszynski (2013). Based on our read-
ing of these two pieces as well as other contributions (including Hulme 2014;
Owen 2014), we consider the argument that SRM is necessarily undemocratic—
which we call the incompatibility argument—to be composed of four claims: SRM
would stretch democratic institutions to the breaking point; it would preclude
opting out, which is essential to democracy; it would require undue technoc-
racy; and it would concentrate power and promote authoritarianism.2 Impor-
tantly, while these claims are grounded in considerations of democracy at the
national level, they are often extended to apply to global governance.

1. Some of this criticism applies generally to SRM, whereas some is directed toward one speciﬁc
proposed SRM method: stratospheric aerosol injection. We believe that both the criticism and
our counterargument are applicable to SRM as a whole.

2. Although Szerszynski et al. (2013) use four arguments, our scheme does not align with theirs.

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J.B. Horton, J.L. Reynolds, H.J. Buck, D. Callies, S. Schäfer, D.W. Keith, and S. Rayner (cid:129) 7

In the following section, we show that the incompatibility argument
depends on assumptions grounded in technological determinism and on a
particularly deliberative understanding of democracy. Following this, we summa-
rize and counter the main claims noted earlier. We end with a short conclusion.

Determinism and Deliberation: Problematic Prerequisites
The argument that SRM is necessarily incompatible with democracy is ﬂawed due
to two core theoretical assumptions on which it is based: Zuerst, that a technology
possesses inherent political attributes that predetermine how it enters into and
reshapes social and political life, und zweitens, that deliberative democracy offers
the only valid standard of democracy. We consider each of these in turn.

Technological determinism permeates the incompatibility argument. Für
Beispiel, Szerszynski et al. (2013, 2811) argue that SRM is intrinsically political,
“unfavourable to certain patterns of social relations, and favourable to others.”
In their view, speciﬁc distributions of power and authority are inscribed into
these technologies from the start. By making this assumption, proponents of
this argument conclude that SRM must be undemocratic rather than compatible
with multiple political conﬁgurations.

Many scholars from science and technology studies have argued that tech-
nologies are not politically neutral. This has led some to argue further, asserting
that technologies are inherently political and are imbued with essential proper-
ties that give rise to ﬁxed social and political effects. The incompatibility argu-
ment follows from this latter understanding (z.B., Gewinner 1980).

This approach has drawn criticism (z.B., Joerges 1999). Zum Beispiel,
Latour, writing as Johnson (1988), has argued that a technology’s political life
is contingent upon how human and nonhuman actors are networked with one
another. Others hold that it results from design choices, while recognizing that
these choices might ultimately become “locked in” (Collingridge 1982). In der Tat,
claims about a technology’s inevitable political consequences have repeatedly
proven wrong. Zum Beispiel, early euphoria about the emancipatory potential
of information and communication technologies is now rivaled by anxiety
about the potential for surveillance and control that connectivity affords.

Clearly some of a technology’s political implications are the product of
design choices, made within existing political, wirtschaftlich, and social structures.
Thus these implications cannot be fully determined before design choices are
made. It is conceivable that, given a particular distribution of power and inter-
ests, design choices are likely to go in one direction rather than another. Wie-
immer, a technology’s attributes are never fully ﬁxed, even after it has been
brought into physical existence, because how it is used and understood, sowie
as the technology itself, continually changes.

Although early assessments of SRM have suggested certain characteristics’
inevitability, evolving research has destabilized some of these conjectures. Sozial
scientists have encouraged SRM researchers to confront their political and social

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8 (cid:129)

Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

entanglements (Bellamy and Lezaun 2017) and have documented the articula-
tion of, and contestation over, multiple meanings and framings of SRM among
publics, suggesting its polyvalence at this stage (Burns et al. 2016). As Stilgoe
(2016) argumentiert, SRM governance stands to beneﬁt from taking the technology’s
social-experimental nature seriously and avoiding deterministic frames.

Given emerging theoretical and empirical work, and in line with a non-
deterministic perspective on technological politics, we argue that SRM’s political
future is yet to be written. If developed, SRM might be democratic, authoritarian,
or something else. Its ultimate constitution is not inscribed in its (nonexistent)
material substance. Stattdessen, its conﬁgurations of power and authority would arise
through the interplay of social and material forces that cannot be foreseen.

The second theoretical assumption of the argument that SRM is inherently
undemocratic relates to how democracy is conceived. By “democracy,” we mean a
political system in which people are meaningfully involved in decision-making,
either directly or indirectly via representatives. Außerdem, representative
democracies have free and fair elections and guarantees of civil and political
rights. Although we acknowledge that no universally accepted deﬁnition exists,
we regard ours as broadly consistent with both political theory and common
usage of the term (z.B., Dahl 1961; Held 2006).

In our view, which follows Heyward and Rayner (2016; see also Wong
2016, 182), the incompatibility argument is grounded in a speciﬁcally delibera-
tive notion of democracy, which envisions independent communities in which
citizens are highly engaged and actively involved in decision-making on an egal-
itarian basis (Leib 2004). This grounding is not explicit. In der Tat, some propo-
nents of the incompatibility argument emphasize their neutrality with respect to
models of democracy. Yet we believe it is implicit in their repeated emphasis on
the importance of deliberation, debate, engagement, consensus, and reﬂexivity.3
In our view, the notion of democracy advanced by proponents of the incompat-
ibility argument foregrounds attributes that characterize deliberative democracy,
and this carries important implications for their political assessment of SRM.

Clearly no national system of democracy meets the stringent standards of
community-wide engagement, participation, and consent integral to deliberative
democracy. Eher, where democracy is practiced, participation requires substan-
tial time, motivation, and knowledge, capacities that vary widely across publics.
Factors such as wealth and power shape individuals’ control over their own lives
and their access to decision-making. In some democracies, differences in electoral
districts mean that voters in districts with small populations wield disproportion-
ate inﬂuence. Insofar as proponents of the incompatibility argument assume that

3. This is unsurprising given that many of the same researchers have been closely involved in
developing and promoting the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Rahmen. RRI is
organized around principles of anticipation, reﬂexivity, deliberation, and responsiveness, und es
is pursued through a process of meaningful public and stakeholder engagement (Owen et al.
2013). So essential is deliberation to this approach that RRI has been dubbed “the inheritor of
deliberative democracy” (Reber 2017).

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J.B. Horton, J.L. Reynolds, H.J. Buck, D. Callies, S. Schäfer, D.W. Keith, and S. Rayner (cid:129) 9

the democratic standard to be met is deliberative in character, SRM (or any other
sociotechnical system) will face substantial hurdles in achieving legitimacy.

Deliberative democracy has numerous normatively desirable aspects. Noch,
there is no consensus on what features would characterize a deliberative democ-
racy. Those who make the incompatibility argument list formal institutions as
paradigmatic features of democracy, without speciﬁc reference to how these
would further deliberation: “political pluralism, free and fair elections, equality
before the law, protection of civil liberties, freedom of speech, sovereignty of
national governments, ability to get redress for harm through the legal systems,
a minimal level of human rights, and a functioning civil society” (Szerszynski
et al. 2013, 2810). Such institutions, Jedoch, might not necessarily promote
deliberation. Dryzek (2000), zum Beispiel, contrasts formal “liberal constitution-
alist deliberative democracy” (d.h., that which is expressed through formal insti-
tutions) with “discursive democracy” in which agents promoting competing
discourses generate public opinion that ultimately shapes government policy.
For Dryzek (2000, 17–20), the latter constitutes a more “authentic” form of de-
liberative democracy compared to a liberal constitutionalism constrained by the
demands of capital, institutional failings, systematic participatory exclusions,
und so weiter. To the extent that proponents of the incompatibility argument em-
phasize the role of institutions and deemphasize communicative action, theo-
rists like Dryzek may object that they are in effect shortchanging deliberation.
Democratic theorists might also accuse these scholars of shortchanging the
practice of deliberative democracy insofar as they treat it more as a ﬁxed desti-
nation than as an unfolding, historically contingent, and transformative activity.
This is evident when those who argue for incompatibility evaluate the democra-
ticness of SRM by comparing its supposedly ﬁxed characteristics with an implicit
(institutional) ideal type of deliberative democracy. This approach is most ap-
parent in Szerszynski et al. (2013) but is also present in the other articulations
of the incompatibility argument cited earlier. This treatment of (deliberative)
democracy as a determinate outcome echoes the assumption of technological
determinism discussed previously.

This may be contrasted with an assessment method focused on evaluating
Die (deliberative) democratic potential of a sociotechnical system such as SRM.
Such an approach would seek to identify possible pathways toward democracy as-
sociated with particular technologies and practices. Zum Beispiel, Eckersley (2004,
115) views deliberative democracy not as a deﬁned end point but rather as

the process by which we learn of our dependence on others (and the envi-
ronment) and the process by which we learn to recognize and respect differ-
ently situated others (including nonhuman others and future generations).
It is the activity through which citizens consciously create a common life and
a common future together.

In her pursuit of “ecological democracy,” Eckersley regards deliberative democracy
as fundamentally a communicative process. By neglecting the process dimension

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10 (cid:129) Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

von (deliberative) democracy, those who argue that SRM and democracy are in-
compatible might inadvertently privilege one demanding, aspirational, yet
ossiﬁed model of politics, while overlooking the possibility that building SRM
governance could, through the kinds of public discourse necessary for SRM to
achieve a social license to operate, ultimately enhance democracy (Davies 2010,
279).

Beyond issues speciﬁc to deliberative democracy, most of those who make
the incompatibility argument also poorly distinguish between domestic and inter-
national politics. In analytical terms, this blurring ignores signiﬁcant differences
between politics within countries, where government ranges from democracy to
authoritarianism, and politics among countries, characterized by the absence of cen-
tral authority. In many international forums, countries with small populations
have the same legal status as much larger nations. Gleichzeitig, wealthy
and powerful ones exert disproportionate inﬂuence. In this sense, the international
system is undemocratic in sometimes contradictory ways.

International politics is not devoid of rules, norms, and expectations and
can be characterized as more or less democratic. But given the relative thinness
of social relations at the international level, global democracy is not on the
horizon (Scholte 2014). In diesem Kontext, asserting that SRM would be undemo-
cratic at the international level says little about its political attributes. Those in-
stitutions that do exist at the international level, whether one thinks of them as
democratic or not, might be sufﬁcient for political deliberation of, and decision-
making on, SRM (Schäfer et al. 2014, 242).

Grounding the argument that SRM is incompatible with democracy on an
implicit deliberative model is ﬂawed insofar as global democracy, with or with-
out SRM, is unlikely ever to meet the model’s demanding standards (ob
conceived in discursive, institutionalist, or some other terms). The valid com-
parison is not between a democratically imperfect world with SRM and a perfect
ideal of democracy but between two worlds equally imperfect in democratic
Bedingungen, one with and one without SRM. In this analysis, the key question is
not whether SRM is (In)compatible with democracy but whether it can be de-
veloped and possibly implemented through a decision-making process that
does not signiﬁcantly diminish democratic legitimacy.

Assuming technological determinism and deliberative democracy, manche
assert that SRM must be “undemocratic.” We contend that this logic is ﬂawed,
as manifest in the four key claims constituting the incompatibility argument.

Claim 1: SRM Would Stretch Democratic Institutions to the
Breaking Point
The ﬁrst of these claims is that, due to the high stakes involved, interests supporting
SRM would be so entrenched and disagreements so intractable that democratic
norms, Praktiken Methoden Ausübungen, and institutions would be unable to resolve fundamental dif-
Referenzen. Weighed down and compromised by irresolvable conﬂicts, politisch

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J.B. Horton, J.L. Reynolds, H.J. Buck, D. Callies, S. Schäfer, D.W. Keith, and S. Rayner

(cid:129) 11

instability, and contested notions of the public good, democratic institutions
would prove incapable of governing. This assertion is built on three subclaims.
The ﬁrst subclaim is that SRM would inevitably “cause conﬂicts within ex-
isting institutions” (Szerszynski et al. 2013, 2811). Parties would disagree about
whether and how to use it, who would conduct it, conditions for cessation,
compensation provisions, claims of attribution, and prior consent. Some com-
mentators have argued that because SRM would produce uneven regional cli-
mate effects, it would necessarily result in winners and losers. While the
magnitude of this issue is currently unclear, even if SRM were to distribute gains
and losses unequally, it would not differ fundamentally in this respect from con-
ventional responses to climate change. Governing institutions decided in the Paris
Agreement to try to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius, or even 1.5 degrees.
Achieving this would result in an unequal distribution of gains and losses when
compared with higher, lower, or no warming targets. Ähnlich, SRM might be
implemented to limit warming to 1.5 oder 2 degrees, to reduce the rate of climate
ändern, or to eliminate it as much as possible. Each of these objectives, Wenn
achieved, would have unequal impacts relative to other targets.

Those arguing for incompatibility have also asserted that attribution of cause
and effect would be impossible with SRM, making liability and accountability for
its effects impossible. Researchers have made progress in attributing speciﬁc events
to anthropogenic climate change using probabilistic methods (Stott et al. 2016),
and this knowledge could be extended to SRM (Horton et al. 2015, 225). Dort
are also ways of dealing with compensation that avoid attribution, wie zum Beispiel
through compensation funds (Reynolds 2015; Wong et al. 2014).

Arguably, concerns about “deep uncertainty” animate some arguments
regarding the incompatibility of democracy and SRM. Uncertainty is high, Aber
that alone does not argue for the incompatibility of SRM and democracy without
the further argument that uncertainty presents systematically larger challenges for
democracy than for other forms of government. Proponents of the incompatibil-
ity argument have not articulated such a relative claim. Eher, they assert the
generally uncontested fact that uncertainty is a challenge for decision-making and
Dann (implizit) assume that this presents a particular challenge for democracy.
Aus unserer Sicht, while deep uncertainty presents challenges to democ-
racy, democratic institutions are capable of handling them, Zum Beispiel, via inno-
vative public engagement mechanisms (Bellamy and Lezaun 2017). In der Tat,
political theorists, such as Przeworski (1991), have argued that democracies are
stable and resilient precisely because they “institutionalize uncertainty,” so that
no party is permanently out of power and no policy is perpetually off the table.
The second subclaim is that the intentions behind SRM would be “plural
and unstable,” bringing “prior democratic consent” into question (Szerszynski
et al. 2013, 2812–2813). Macnaghten and Szerszynski (2013, 467) state that
“whether or not a speciﬁc action such as releasing particles into the upper atmo-
sphere counts as SRM geoengineering deployment, or as research, or even as
mere pollution cannot be determined by a mere technical procedure, but only

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12 (cid:129) Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

by reference to intent.” This need not be the case, as SRM could be regulated
without reference to intent by relying instead on the nature, location, and quan-
tity of introduced material or the expected impact (Parson and Keith 2013).
Alternativ, if such regulation were to refer to intent, it would not be novel.
Democracies regularly regulate based on intent, zum Beispiel, regarding crime.

Beyond this, Jedoch, those who assert incompatibility make the more
basic argument that because the intentions behind SRM implementation would
be plural and unstable, prior democratic consent could be rendered invalid. Für
Beispiel, if actors consented to SRM implementation with the goal of “shaving
the peak” off global warming, but the objective was subsequently altered to fully
offsetting climate change, then prior consent would be called into question. Das
scenario seems plausible, but it reﬂects a pattern common to many public policy
decisions, about which little concern regarding democratic legitimacy is otherwise
expressed. Zum Beispiel, the international regime to sustainably regulate whaling
has evolved into one to end the practice (Bodansky 2009, 577). Unanimity of mo-
tive across space and time is not a necessary condition of democracy. To the con-
trary, democracy assumes that citizens’ interests are both variable and reconcilable
through periodic elections. Recent controversies regarding same-sex marriage,
abortion, and immigration all show that democratic institutions can reach deci-
sions on such polarizing issues without imperiling underlying democratic systems.4
The third and ﬁnal subclaim is that powerful “economic interests” would
co-opt SRM.5 According to this view, political and economic actors would ex-
ploit SRM to serve their own interests rather than the public good (Szerszynski
et al. 2013, 2814). Jedoch, of the potential tools for managing climate change
risk, SRM has perhaps the smallest opportunity for direct private economic gain.
Estimates for its direct implementation costs are about US$ 5–50 billion annu-
ally, much smaller in comparison with typical projections associated with opti-
mal levels of mitigation, adaptation, and carbon dioxide removal technologies.
A more valid concern is that SRM technology might be used by interests who
rely on continued greenhouse gas emissions to weaken mitigation efforts. On one
Hand, it would be naive to assume that interests integral to the carbon economy
would not seize on SRM in this way. They have already done so (although only
partially and unsuccessfully) in the case of carbon capture and storage (Vormedal
2008). Andererseits, they have not yet advanced SRM, just as they have not
embraced climate adaptation, which could also be used to weaken mitigation
efforts. It remains unclear what approach, wenn überhaupt, they might take with respect to
SRM. Letzten Endes, the potential for fossil fuel and related industries to co-opt the
SRM agenda might, or might not, present a serious challenge. Gleichzeitig,
other instances of private interests advocating for policies that beneﬁt them are not
considered incompatible with democracy (although particular means of doing

4. The issue of motivation is also intimately entangled with ideas of consent, which we address

in the next section.

5. See also Stirling (2014, 21), who asserts that SRM is “‘regressive’ in the sense of being aligned
with entrenched existing concentrations of power extending out from the energy sector.”

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(cid:129) 13

so might be). In der Tat, many political theorists regard pluralism—according to
which government mediates among a competing array of interest groups and
other private actors—as essential to democracy (Dahl 1961).

Claim 2: SRM Would Preclude Opting Out, Which Is Essential
to Democracy

The second key claim of the incompatibility argument is that the global scale of
SRM’s effects means that actors and communities would lose their right to “opt
out” of collective decisions when they conﬂict with strongly felt preferences
and that this right is a core tenet of democracy. Macnaghten and Szerszynski
(2013, 473) state this most clearly:

While plausibly able to accommodate diverse views into the formulation of
[SRM’s] use, once deployed, there remains little opportunity for opt-out or
for the accommodation of diverse perspectives. … Following deployment it
could only be controlled centrally and on a planetary scale.

From this, they conclude that SRM has an “anti-democratic constitution” and is
“incompatib[le] with liberal democracy.” Likewise, for Hulme (2014, 81–82),
the technical characteristics of SRM preclude opting out, therefore its gover-
nance can never be satisfactory and it should not be pursued. The implication
is that compatibility with democracy requires an ability to opt out of the effects
of public decisions regarding technologies.

The assertion that democracy entails such a right to opt out is a speciﬁc
form of the assertion that democracy entails a right to opt out of the effects
of any government policy. Proponents of this view appear to believe that
democracy must allow people to shield themselves from the effects of public
policies to which they object.

Put bluntly, this is simply not how democracy, or any government, funktioniert
(Heyward and Rayner 2016; see also Hansson 2006; Morrow et al. 2013, 148–149;
Wong 2016). It is an axiom of social contract theory that the establishment of
a democratic state requires the consent of the governed. It is equally axiomatic,
Jedoch, that once a democracy is operating, citizens should comply with the
law so long as it was developed democratically and basic rights are protected.
Zum Beispiel, Rousseau (1998, 108) argued in The Social Contract that

there is but one law which by its nature requires unanimous consent, das ist,
the social compact…. When the State is established, consent lies in resi-
dence; to dwell in the territory is to submit to the sovereignty…. The citizen
consents to all the laws, even to those passed in spite of him, und sogar zu
those that punish him when he dares to violate any of them.

Although exit rights, entitling those who wish to opt out of one jurisdiction to
move to another, might exist, residents of a country may not choose to opt out
of individual policy decisions.

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14 (cid:129) Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

Tatsächlich, it is the absence of a right to opt out that gives governments—
including democracies—the capacity to address problems that self-organizing
individuals cannot. Suppose that a policy beneﬁts all or most people but
requires some contributions from them. If people could opt out, then each
person might do so with the hope of free riding on others’ contributions.
Außerdem, few actual policies beneﬁt everyone. Zum Beispiel, suppose a
factory is prohibited from using cheap but polluting production processes.
The pertinent regulation might lead to a net improvement in people’s well-
Sein, but the factory’s owners (and perhaps its workers and consumers of
its products) would suffer. If the owners could opt out of this regulation,
then the harmful pollution would continue. Letzten Endes, a right of opt out
from collective decision-making would give each person a veto over many,
if not all, public policy decisions and undermine the stability of social
relations on which polities, democratic or otherwise, depend (Rawls 1999,
398).

Rather than the Lockean concept of consent of the governed, those
who make the incompatibility argument appear to have in mind something
closer to prior informed consent, a procedure relating to participation in
hazardous activities, such as medical research. Szerszynski et al. (2013),
Zum Beispiel, use terms such as “prior democratic consent” (2813) and “in-
formed consent” (2814). The standards for prior informed consent are more
demanding than for democratic consent more generally, and SRM might or
might not meet the former standards. Jedoch, democracy does not require
prior informed consent, which in practice is used only under a narrow set of
circumstances.

Democratic forms of government are also characterized by the boundaries
they should not cross, insbesondere, fundamental rights. Violations of these can
justify protest or civil disobedience, through which citizens in effect seek to “opt
out” of democratic overreach. Yet it is unclear how SRM might violate funda-
mental rights to a degree that exceeds what occurs routinely in tax collection,
military conscription, and eminent domain (d.h., expropriation), all of which
are viewed as compatible with democracy.

The fact that SRM would have global impacts does not undermine our
counterargument. To the extent that institutions of global governance might re-
ﬂect democratic values at the international level (Buchanan and Keohane 2006),
the ability to opt out of the effects of global public policies is not a necessary
condition, for similar reasons of efﬁcacy and stability. Asserting such a right to
opt out would both undermine the purposes of global governance, das ist, man-
aging and resolving transnational problems (Dingwerth and Pattberg 2006), Und
undercut the institutional and policy stability on which successful global gover-
nance depends.

While the absence of an ability to opt out of decisions about SRM does not
run counter to democracy, the same cannot be said of the potential for unilat-
eral deployment. The possibility that one state (or a handful of them) might

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(cid:129) 15

implement SRM against the wishes of the international community represents a
threat to democracy insofar as people and states might be denied meaningful
involvement in decisions that signiﬁcantly affect them. Yet this feature is hardly
unique to SRM. In der Tat, restraints on unilateral action constitute much of the
substance of democratic politics domestically and globally, from national pol-
lution controls to international trade law, and the technologies and activities
regulated by such restraints are not regarded as somehow incompatible with
democracy.

Claim 3: SRM Would Require Undue Technocracy

The third claim of the incompatibility argument is that, because decisions
about implementing and maintaining SRM would be highly technical,
SRM would require undue technocratic governance in which a narrow set
of expert elites would determine climatic conditions (Hulme 2014; McLaren
2016; Szerszynski et al. 2013). Such technocracy, proponents claim, würde
be undemocratic. Szerszynski et al. (2013, 2812), zum Beispiel, assert that
SRM

could generate a closed and restricted set of knowledge networks, highly
dependent on top-down expertise and with little space for dissident sci-
ence or alternative perspectives. Außerdem, the complexities that would
accompany the climate modelling would ensure that expertise would re-
main minimally distributed and personally remote. The idioms surround-
ing discussion over its use would remain, at least at ﬁrst, expert led and
opaque.

Such critics argue that by virtue of its complex, technical nature, decision-making
about SRM would privilege experts at the cost of public input into decisions
regarding SRM. The inaccessibility of technical language and a lack of specialized
training would place laypeople and even popular representatives in positions
of dependence and potential vulnerability vis-à-vis expert managers. Self-
determination would be supplanted by technocratic fiat and, with it, a corner-
stone of democratic politics.

In Beantwortung, we argue ﬁrst that SRM might not require governance that is
more technocratic than that of other existing endeavors and second that such
existing arrangements can be compatible with democracy.

To be clear, any responsible implementation or large-scale outdoor experi-
ments of SRM would indeed require expert input, guidance, and decision-making.
Jedoch, this fact alone does not imply that decision-making regarding SRM
must be technocratic in a way that excessively wrests authority from demo-
cratic institutions. When it comes to nonexpert involvement in technical
decision-making, there is substantial evidence that opening up risk assessment
to democratic debate is good for science and innovation (Sarewitz 2015). Mit
regard to SRM, empirical research indicates that lay publics can sufﬁciently

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16 (cid:129) Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

understand and engage with technical issues (Pidgeon et al. 2013; Wibeck et al.
2015). There is no a priori reason to assume that nonexperts could not be in-
volved in SRM decision-making.

Societies, including democratic ones, already engage in and govern a number
of activities that rely on technical experts for decision-making (Keith 2017). In
these arrangements, the nature of expert accountability varies. There are at least
three archetypal technocratic arrangements, each of which contains mechanisms
to facilitate and/or enhance democratic accountability and legitimacy. Erste, Experten
can function as advisers, but public actors who are usually democratically account-
able make decisions. Such decisions are sometimes made with public input
obtained through formalized processes and are subject to other checks, wie zum Beispiel
judicial review. Zum Beispiel, in the US, independent expert-led Base Realignment
and Closure commissions have recommended which military bases to close
since the end of the Cold War, but Congress has made the ﬁnal decisions. Zweite,
in other instances, appointed experts make decisions but are subject to demo-
cratic oversight and are accountable to the public, at least indirectly, und zu
judicial review. Zum Beispiel, environmental agencies—whose leadership is ap-
pointed by and serves at the pleasure of elected leaders—set limits for pollutants.
Endlich, in manchen Fällen, technical experts who are not directly accountable, or only
tenuously so, are responsible for decision-making, frequently to prevent interest
groups from inﬂuencing outcomes for their own beneﬁt. Even these expert
decision-makers are ultimately accountable, Jedoch. They can be appointed by
elected representatives, who also often can renew (or not) their terms, and some-
times remove them. At the very least, their actions and legacies are subject to public
debate. An example is constitutional courts, whose delegated authority is some-
times criticized as politically problematic but rarely as inherently incompatible
with democracy.

Decisions regarding SRM could conceivably assume any of these forms.
Experts’ role in governing SRM could be limited to that of expert advisers, mit
substantive decisions left in the hands of some conﬁguration of traditional rep-
resentatives or diplomatic representatives thereof. Alternativ, the experts who
make decisions could be accountable to democratic leaders. Or substantially
empowered, highly insulated experts could undertake SRM decision-making.
Letzten Endes, if we can conceive of decision-making processes for SRM that con-
tain robust elements of democratic accountability, then such decision-making
need not necessarily be incompatible with democracy, even if these processes
are somewhat technocratic.

Claim 4: SRM Would Concentrate Power and Promote Authoritarianism
The ﬁnal key claim of the incompatibility argument is that SRM implementation
and maintenance would require a truly global environmental management system,
and enforcing compliance with its directives would necessitate the accumulation of
power in centralized global institutions in a way that would favor the emergence of

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(cid:129) 17

authoritarianism.6 Such a system would be at odds with democratic constraints
on excessive concentrations of power. As Szerszynski et al. (2013, 2812) Leg es,

the social constitution of SRM geoengineering through stratospheric aero-
sol injection would be strongly compatible with a centralised, autocratic,
command-and-control world-governing structure, in tension with the cur-
rent, broadly Westphalian, international system based on national self-
determination.

Because implementation would be planetary in scale, decisions would need to
be planetary as well, leaving little room for dissent. In some versions of this
claim, decisions rely on emergency rationales (Hamilton 2013, 104, 134; Hulme
2014, 77).

On closer examination, this claim is imprecise, confused, and presump-
tiv. The claim is imprecise insofar as it is not always clear whether the imagined
authoritarianism would be required at the national level, the international level,
oder beides. In principle, exclusively authoritarian sovereign states could make col-
lective global governance decisions on a democratic intergovernmental basis.
Gleichermaßen, one hegemonic democratic state could impose its will on less powerful
democracies in a coercive manner.

The claim is confused about what constitutes authoritarianism. Propo-
nents of the incompatibility argument often seem to equate authoritarianism
with centralized decision-making. At the extreme, this is true: a single deci-
sion maker wielding absolute power is by deﬁnition an autocrat. Yet there is
a wide spectrum of political centralization, including within democracies.
Political scientists, Zum Beispiel, distinguish between relatively centralized
majoritarian models of democracy and relatively decentralized consensus
Modelle, with a number of hybrids occupying the space between (Lijphart
1984). Zusamenfassend, some degree of hierarchy and centralization characterizes
every polity. Whether a hierarchical or centralized political system qualiﬁes
as authoritarian depends on additional factors, such as the impartiality of
rules, accountability, Transparenz, Zugang, modes of participation, and free-
dom of expression, upon which those who allege SRM’s incompatibility with
democracy do not elaborate.

Endlich, the claim is presumptive in assuming that SRM decision-making
would be centralized. Certainly a vision of centralized SRM has dominated the
discourse about it, but SRM could be implemented by numerous, loosely coor-
dinated actors with no central control, each contributing to a global result. Während
such a distributed form of SRM has not been widely discussed, it appears possible
and runs counter to the concentrated power constitutive of authoritarianism.

This worry about authoritarianism might have been born out of the spe-
ciﬁc implementation scenarios sometimes considered by early SRM researchers

6. By authoritarianism, we mean a political system characterized by a hierarchical power structure

with little opportunity for popular participation in decision-making.

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18 (cid:129) Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

(Heyward and Rayner 2016). Talk of a so-called climate emergency in which
SRM would have to be deployed “quickly” might have conjured up thoughts
of authoritarian governments declaring martial law, usurping and centralizing
all decision-making power to avert a crisis (Horton 2015). Such an emergency
response could pose a serious threat to democratic norms and practices. Wie-
immer, in recent years, researchers have moved away from such emergency fram-
ing toward alternative scenarios, Zum Beispiel, slowly ramping up SRM to shave
off peak climate risks (Keith and MacMartin 2015).

More broadly, and contradicting the claim that SRM would require
authoritarianism, the need for centralized decision-making does not automati-
cally entail authoritarian control. Coordination and cooperation can be
achieved in a multiplicity of ways that do not involve authoritarianism, as mul-
tiple domestic and international regimes show. The US Clean Air Act is an ex-
ample at the domestic level. While acceptable levels of air quality are decided
centrally at the federal level, implementation is conducted at the state level.
Internationally, the Montreal Protocol requires all parties to reduce their chloro-
ﬂuorocarbon consumption and production, a decision that has positive envi-
ronmental effects but initially at least had substantial economic consequences.
All countries of the world, many of them democracies, agreed upon the Proto-
col. SRM implementation could have a similar trajectory, allowing for periodic
assessment and input from various parties pertaining to the experienced effects
of implementation.

It is entirely possible that SRM could be controlled along authoritarian
lines in the future. Yet this possibility exists with many technologies and other
contemporary phenomena for which authoritarian control is not a foregone
conclusion. We contend that multiple states can and do cooperate in managing
global issues and that democracies can and do maintain their democratic char-
acters even when making decisions with high stakes, high complexity, and deep
uncertainty.

Conclusions

The argument that SRM is necessarily incompatible with democracy is a
prominent one in discussions of SRM. We reject this argument and the four
key claims on which it is based. Contrary to what some observers contend,
democratic institutions are resilient, and SRM would not necessarily stretch
them to the breaking point. A broad ability to opt out of collective decisions,
far from being essential to democracy, is likely to undermine it. SRM might
not require undue technocracy, and its implementation might not promote
authoritarianism. Fundamentally, the argument that SRM and democracy
are incompatible is based on problematic assumptions of technological
determinism, which is misguided in its neglect of social contingency, Und
deliberative democracy, which is an excessively high standard for contempo-
rary politics.

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(cid:129) 19

Although we do not assert that SRM would likely be democratic in
üben, we can envision a variety of SRM governance institutions that could
promote debate and reach agreement in ways widely regarded as democratic.
Such institutions at the international or global level may be less democratic than
those at national or local levels, yet they might still embody democratic princi-
ples in ways that are meaningful to states and their citizens (Buchanan and
Keohane 2006).

We share with proponents of the incompatibility argument a sense of
urgent concern about the legitimacy of governance for SRM, but we hold that
governance institutions—not technologies—are the proper objects of political
assessment. In der Tat, SRM poses substantial challenges for global governance.
We do not dismiss commentators’ speciﬁc concerns about potential conﬂict,
consent, technocracy, and authoritarianism. We have also noted problems re-
lated to possible unilateral and/or emergency implementations. Other challenges
include, Unter anderem, the possible weakening of mitigation efforts in response to
SRM, compensation for harm, long-term management requirements, and pro-
gram termination. How global governance norms, rules, and institutions could
ultimately be developed to address these issues is uncertain and contested, Aber
we strongly believe that any governance institutions that are developed should
be aligned with democratic principles.

Some preliminary work on governance reﬂects this concern. Zum Beispiel,
a group of scholars (including one of the present authors) developed a set of
ﬁve general principles for geoengineering governance (Rayner et al. 2013). Jede
of these “Oxford principles” could help make democratic governance of SRM
more likely. Two of them in particular—“public participation in geoengineering
decision-making” and “disclosure of geoengineering research and open publica-
tion of results”—are clearly essential to democratic governance. The principles
have been generally well received by diverse actors in the geoengineering dis-
course. Following such early efforts, a more robust literature on possible gover-
nance arrangements for SRM has emerged (Lloyd and Oppenheimer 2014;
Parson 2017; Virgoe 2009; Zürn and Schäfer 2013). Up to now, Jedoch,
scholars have not speciﬁcally addressed the degree to which more detailed gov-
ernance proposals meet democratic criteria. We advocate more research on this
critical question, without assuming answers a priori.

Joshua B. Horton is research director of geoengineering at the Harvard Kennedy
School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and also manages the
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Initiative on Climate Engineering.
His research encompasses the politics, Politik, and governance of solar geoengi-
neering, with a current focus on compensation for harms arising from possible
future deployment of the technology. Aus 2013 Zu 2016, DR. Horton was a post-
doctoral research fellow in the Belfer Center’s Science, Technologie, and Public
Policy Program. He obtained a PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins
University in 2007, where he specialized in international relations.

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20 (cid:129) Solar Geoengineering and Democracy

Jesse Reynolds is an assistant professor at the Utrecht Center for Water, Oceans,
and Sustainability Law, Utrecht University, die Niederlande. He will soon be an
Emmett/Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law and Policy at the University of
Kalifornien, Los Angeles, School of Law. Reynolds’s monograph The Governance
of Solar Geoengineering is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
DR. Reynolds obtained his PhD in international public law from Tilburg Uni-
Vielseitigkeit (in part as Fulbright Fellow) and his master’s in environmental policy
from the University of California, Berkeley (as a US Environmental Protection
Agency Science to Achieve Results Graduate Fellow).

Holly Jean Buck is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of the Environment
and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. She’s interested
in how communities can be involved in the design of emerging environ-
mental technologies. She works at the interface of environmental sociology
and science and technology studies, with a PhD in development sociology
from Cornell University. Her diverse research interests include agroecology
and carbon farming, new energy technologies, artiﬁcial intelligence, Und
the restoration of California’s Salton Sea. At present, she is studying the socio-
political feasibility of using solar geoengineering to scale up carbon removal.

Daniel Edward Callies obtained his PhD from Goethe University Frankfurt,
where he is a postdoctoral scholar at the DFG-funded Excellence Cluster
“Normative Orders.” His research focuses on normative and applied ethics,
political philosophy, and climate justice. Aus 2016 Zu 2017, he was a pre-
doctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in the
Wissenschaft, Technologie, and Public Policy Program, und in 2017, he was the
Bernheim Postdoctoral Fellow in Social Responsibility at the Université catho-
lique de Louvain, Belgien. Before coming to Europe, he studied at San Diego
Staatliche Universität, where he obtained both his BA (2008) and MA (2012) In
philosophy.

Stefan Schäfer leads a research group at the Institute for Advanced Sustain-
ability Studies in Potsdam, Deutschland, and is a visiting fellow in the Science,
Technologie, and Society Program at Harvard University. He is also an associate
fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation, and Society of the University of
Oxford, where he was an Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow in 2017. Stefan was a
guest researcher at the Social Science Research Center Berlin from 2009 Zu 2012
and has spent research stays at University College London (2013) and Harvard
Universität (2015, 2016). He holds a doctorate in political science from Freie
Universität Berlin.

David Keith has worked near the interface between climate science, Energie
Technologie, and public policy for twenty-ﬁve years. Best known for his work
on the science, Technologie, and public policy of solar geoengineering, David

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J.B. Horton, J.L. Reynolds, H.J. Buck, D. Callies, S. Schäfer, D.W. Keith, and S. Rayner

(cid:129) 21

led the development of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program.
He took ﬁrst prize in Canada’s national physics prize exam, won MIT’s prize
for excellence in experimental physics, and was one of TIME magazine’s
Heroes of the Environment. David is a professor at the Harvard School of
Engineering and Applied Sciences and Harvard Kennedy School and founder
of Carbon Engineering, a company developing technology to capture carbon
dioxide from ambient air.

Steve Rayner is James Martin Professor of Science at Oxford University, Wo
he codirects the Oxford Geoengineering Programme. He has served on various US,
Vereinigtes Königreich, and international bodies addressing science, Technologie, and the environment,
including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Britain’s Royal Com-
mission on Environmental Pollution, and the Royal Society’s Working Group on
Climate Geoengineering. In 2012–2014, he directed the UK ESRC’s Climate
Geoengineering Governance Project (http://geoengineering-governance-research.
org). He is coeditor of the four-volume Human Choice and Climate Change
(Battelle Press, 1998), The Hartwell Approach to Climate Policy (Earthscan,
2014), and Institutional Capacity for Climate Change Response (Routledge, 2017).

Verweise

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