Recent Content Related to Climate & Geoengineering

Media Advisory: New fact sheets reveal status of geoengineering technology development

14 June 2018

Media Advisory: New fact sheets reveal status of geoengineering technology development

June 14, 2018

As climate geoengineering – the hypothetical, intentional manipulation of Earth systems to countereffect some of the symptoms of climate change – is entering the mainstream climate discourse, more and more headlines are claiming that sulphur particles in the stratosphere or massive dumps of iron in the ocean “will save the world from climate change.”

Who Will Feed Us?

The Peasant Food Web vs. the Industrial Food Chain
15 October 2017

(Read the news release about the report launch.)

Who Will Feed Us, now in its third edition,  compares the industrial food system with peasant farming. Industrial farming gets all the attention (and most of the land). It accounts for more than 80% of the fossil fuel emissions and uses over 70% of the water supply used in agriculture, but it actually produces only about 30% of the world's food.

Related Issues: 
Seeds & Genetic Diversity
Farmers' Rights & Food Sovereignty
Biodiversity & Cultural Diversity
Genomics & Biotechnology
Climate & Geoengineering
Corporate Monopolies
Related Fora: 
Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS
Social Movements: World Social Forum
Regional: EU, Asia Pacific, Africa, Americas
Climate: UNFCCC, IPCC
Sustainable Development: Rio+20, CSD

Riding the Geostorm

09 October 2017
A briefing from civil society on Geoengineering Governance

Is it possible to govern Geoengineering?

When speaking about geoengineering governance, a sensible first question is whether geoengineering, with its inherently high risks, unequal impacts, long term effects and broad geopolitical, military, environmental and global justice implications, is even possible to “govern.”

A civil society briefing on Geoengineering

10 May 2017
Climate change, smoke and mirrors
For the past decade, a small but growing group of governments and scientists, the majority from the most powerful and most climate-polluting countries in the world, has been pushing for political consideration of geoengineering, the deliberate large-scale technological manipulation of the climate.
 
This briefing, prepared by ETC Group and Heinrich Böll Foundation in May 2017, gives an overview of what geoengineering is and why it is dangerous, as well as up-to-date information on proposed geoengineering technologies and governance.
 

Civil society: “Oil companies should not author IPCC report”

108 organizations urged IPCC to review flagrant conflict of interest of allowing two oil company employees to co-author a crucial report on global warming
03 May 2017

12 May 2017 

On 27 April 2017, 108 civil society organizations signed a letter requesting the IPCC to reconsider its list of authors for the upcoming Special Report on keeping global warming below 1.5°C. Two senior employees from major oil companies were selected among the authors for the Report, which the letter considers a major hurdle to make a fair report, and a violation of the IPCC's conflict of interest policy. 

Trump Administration – A Geoengineering Administration?

28 March 2017

Geoengineer David Keith first made his intention to launch a geoengineering trial public back in 2012 – saying then that it would take place “within a year” and naming Fort Sumner in New Mexico as the likely location.[1] All indications were that he was ready to move forward, but was first waiting to get a signal of public support from the US government, ideally in the form of funding. Tellingly, the experiment never came.

Why SRM experiments are a bad idea

28 March 2017

Solar Radiation Management (SRM) describes a set of geoengineering techniques that aim to counter human-made climate change by artificially increasing the reflection of heat from sunlight (solar radiation) back into space. Some advocates have started using the term “solar geoengineering” – but these techniques are not related to solar power production.

Trump Administration Inflates Geoengineers’ Balloon

Harvard scientists in Washington talk up stratospheric geoengineering experiments that would violate UN decision
24 March 2017

Washington, DC – The Trump administration’s repudiation of the UN’s 2015 Paris agreement on climate change and its rollback of the EPA and other US agencies on monitoring and mitigating global warming has created an unexpected opportunity for a rogue group of climate researchers to seek support for an alternative climate change strategy.

UN Convention still says “No” to manipulating the climate

UN Convention on Biological Diversity reaffirms its moratorium on climate-related geoengineering
16 December 2016

CANCUN, MEXICO – The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which gathered at its 13th Conference of the Parties (COP 13) in Mexico from December 4-17, decided to reaffirm its landmark moratorium on climate-related geoengineering that it first agreed to in 2010.

Geoengineering at COP 13 - Convention on Biological Diversity

04 December 2016
Briefing for Government Delegates

Key points:

• CBD Decision X/33, 8 (w) on geoengineering remains valid and should be affirmed and strengthened.

• The potential impacts of geoengineering on biodiversity have been scarcely studied. Studies and policy recommendations on the impacts on biodiversity and associated livelihoods caused by any geoengineering intervention are, and should remain, under the mandate of CBD and its bodies.

• New research papers continue to demonstrate high risks and uncertainties associated with the full range of geoengineering proposals.

No to 1.5°C with geoengineering!

Sign-on letter
11 December 2015

Paris, 11 December 2015

Seemingly out of the blue (or rather, out of the black smog of the UNFCCC process), some of the largest historical culprits for climate change, countries including the United States, Canada and the European Union, have decided to back an "ambitious goal" of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. To achieve this, radical emissions cuts would be needed from now, but in the case of these countries, that's not their real intention.

Report Release: Outsmarting Nature?

New Report Questions Risky Synthetic Biology Developments Promoted Under “Climate-Smart” Guise
26 November 2015

Paris, 27th November 2015 – Some of the world’s largest agro-industrial corporations will be flying the flag for ‘climate-smart agriculture’ at the upcoming Climate Summit. They will claim that hi-tech crops and intensive industrial agriculture are needed to rescue farmers (and the hungry) from a warming world – a claim widely dismissed by peasant movements and civil society groups.

Outsmarting Nature?

Synthetic Biology and Climate Smart Agriculture
26 November 2015

Many of the world's largest agro-industrial corporations are pushing forward the poorly-defined idea of "Climate-Smart Agriculture"(CSA) to re-market industrial agriculture as 'climate-ready'. This report uncovers how some advocates of CSA are embracing the extreme genetic engineering tools of synthetic biology ("Syn Bio") to develop a set of false solutions to the climate crisis.

The 20-page report includes:

-       An overview of the Players lining up behind the “Climate-Smart” brand and the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture (GACSA).

Related Issues: 
Seeds & Genetic Diversity
Farmers' Rights & Food Sovereignty
Biodiversity & Cultural Diversity
Synthetic Biology
Genomics & Biotechnology
Climate & Geoengineering
Corporate Monopolies
Related Fora: 
Food and Agriculture: FAO, CGIAR, CFS
Climate: UNFCCC, IPCC

Report Release: Extreme Biotech meets Extreme Energy

New report exposes biotech’s big bet to prop up fossil fuels + International video release.
24 November 2015

Paris, 24th November 2015 - At the upcoming Climate summit in Paris, some governments and much of civil society will be pushing for an urgent transition away from the carbon-rich fossil fuels responsible for climate chaos. However, one hi-tech sector, the multi-billion dollar Synthetic Biology industry, is now actively tying its future to the very oil, coal and gas extraction it once claimed to be able to displace. That’s the conclusion of a new report released jointly today from the ETC Group and Heinrich Böll Foundation. Titled “Extreme Biotech meets Extreme Energy”, the report predicts that as the extreme biotech industry and the extreme extraction industry move towards deeper collaboration, the biosafety risks and climate threats emanating from them will become ever more entangled.

Extreme Biotech meets Extreme Energy

an ETC Group and Heinrich Böll Stiftung Report
24 November 2015

As the synthetic biology industry and the extreme extraction industry move towards deeper collaboration, the climate and biosafety risks and threats from both will become more entangled.

Related Issues: 
Synthetic Biology
Climate & Geoengineering
The Bioeconomy
Related Fora: 
Biodiversity: CBD, SBSTTA, IPBES
Climate: UNFCCC, IPCC

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