Seminar

Abstract

Climate change requires urgent action. Increasingly, the world is considering technology-based climate intervention approaches – often called geoengineering. Many of these approaches are untested and the consequences are not well understood. While climate intervention research has been justified as being necessary in order to expand the range of options available to policy makers in the future, some public opposition to geoengineering exists, whether to research or implementation, due to risks not being fully understood.

In 2022, AGU launched its plan to develop an Ethical Framework for Climate Intervention Research – a code of conduct to guide climate intervention measures that may be needed in addition to emissions reduction. The proposed ethical framework principles underwent a public comment period in 2023; and, after a rework process with additional invited contributors, the Ethical Framework Principles for Climate Intervention Research was release to the public in October 2024. The foundations for these principles and associated recommendations, the process by which they were developed, their implications, and the proposal for global dissemination and engagement will be discussed. Research funding is rapidly expanding in this area, also accelerating the need and urgency for ethical principles awareness and adoption.

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Billy Williams is a senior Vice President at the American Geophysical Union. Prior to joining AGU as Science Director in 2012, Williams served as a Senior Program Officer at the National Academy of Sciences and as a Global Research and Development Director at the Dow Chemical Company. While at Dow, he led global research teams with operations in France, Germany, Japan, and the U.S. While at the National Academies, he was study director for the report National Security Implications of Climate Change for U.S. Naval Forces. In addition to other scientific leadership responsibilities for AGU, he now co-leads a global initiative to develop and gain global engagement on an ethical framework for climate intervention research and potential scaling.