The Law and Policy of Earth System Interventions

As climate change grows more severe, intentional, large-scale Earth System Interventions (ESI, or geoengineering) are increasingly proposed as additional tools to limit global climate and environmental risks. Research suggests some of these hold great promise, particularly to limit near-term climate harms while other essential responses like decarbonizing the world energy system grow to the required scale. They also carry significant uncertain risks and pose novel, potentially severe challenges to legal and governing institutions. This course will introduce students to the main types of intervention, the current state of knowledge, and the main concerns and controversies around them, with particular focus on: 1) the specific challenges they are likely to pose to law and policy; 2) the ability of relevant instruments of US and international law, in their current state or with marginal adjustments, to address these challenges; 3) insofar as these interventions require developing significant new legal authorities or governance capacity, what are the main required elements of these and what might be effective strategies to develop them?