Geoengineering At the Forefront of Environmental Law Program

Pillsbury Finance partner Robert James spoke about those and other related topics at a recent geoengineering webinar. During the ELI conference, several speakers, including James, highlighted that the legal approaches to regulating the geoengineering practice are similarly ill-developed as the approach is still in early stages of research and has yet to go through real-world testing.

“In the absence of an overarching legal framework, any attempt at geoengineering would have to pass muster under a long list of laws built for other purposes, starting with the Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act and other U.S. laws in addition to their equivalents in other countries,” James said. “Whichever version is looked at, they will be looking at the question, ‘what harms can result from deployment of the technique?’ Even though that question is at the core of any environmental analysis, ritually asking it over and over through many different legal lenses would be time-consuming and risks making it all but impossible to produce a definitive answer.” Despite the potential limitations, the webinar presenters emphasized that without sharp greenhouse gas emission (GHG) cuts that many large countries have been unwilling to mandate, geoengineering may become the international community’s only option for avoiding catastrophic climate change.

“Even though the prospect of carbon-removal technology may be a dangerous excuse to avoid action on point source emissions, it has become clear that waiting for 190 countries to agree on emissions cuts is engaging in a bit of magical thinking,” James concluded.