Shinichiro Asayama

The publication of the IPCC Special Report on global warming of 1.5 oC paved the way for the rise of the political rhetoric of setting a fixed deadline for decisive actions on climate change. However, the dangers of such deadline rhetoric suggest the need for the IPCC to take responsibility for its report and openly challenge the credibility of such a deadline.

The publication of the IPCC Special Report on global warming of 1.5oC paved the way for the rise of the political rhetoric of setting a fixed deadline for decisive actions on climate change. However, the dangers of such deadline rhetoric suggest the need for the IPCC to take responsibility for its report and openly challenge the credibility of
such a deadline.

Despite the ambitious temperature goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the pace of reducing global CO2 emissions remains sluggish. This creates conditions in which the idea of temperature ‘overshoot and peak-shaving’ is emerging as a possible strategy to meet the Paris goal. An overshoot and peak-shaving scenario rests upon the ‘temporary’ use of speculative solar radiation management (SRM) technologies combined with large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Whilst some view optimistically the strategic interdependence between SRM and CDR, we argue that this strategy comes with a risk of escalating ‘climate debt’. We explain our position using the logic of debt and the analogy of subprime mortgage lending. In overshoot and peak-shaving scenarios, the role of CDR and SRM is to compensate for delayed mitigation, placing the world in a double debt: ‘emissions debt’ and ‘temperature debt’. Analogously, this can be understood as a combination of ‘subprime mortgage’ (i.e. large-scale CDR) and ‘home-equity-line-of-credit’ (i.e. temporary SRM). With this analogy, we draw some important lessons from the 2007–2009 US subprime mortgage crisis. The analogy signals that the efficacy of temporary SRM cannot be evaluated in isolation of the feasibility of large-scale CDR and that the failure of the overshoot promise will lead to prolonged peak-shaving, masking an ever-rising climate debt. Overshoot and peak-shaving scenarios should not be presented as a secured feasible investment, but rather as a high-risk speculation betting on insecure promises. Obscuring the riskiness of such scenarios is a precipitous step towards escalating a climate debt crisis.

The emerging narrative of the Anthropocene has created a new space for changes in global environmental change (GEC) science. On the one hand, there is a mounting call for changing scientific practices towards a solution-oriented transdisciplinary mode that can help achieve global sustainability. On the other hand, the scientists' desire to avoid exceeding planetary boundaries has broken a taboo on researching solar geoengineering, a dangerous idea of deliberately cooling the Earth's climate. Whilst to date the two features have been discussed separately, there is a possible confluence in the future. This paper explores this close yet precarious relationship between transdisciplinary GEC science and solar geoengineering in the context of Future Earth, a new international platform of Earth system science. Our aim is to understand how a transdisciplinary mode of science can navigate the contention over solar geoengineering and its course of research without breeding polarization. By seeking the immediacy of 'problem-solving', Future Earth is drawn into the solutionist thinking that orders the mode of engagement in pursuing consensus. However, because conflict is inescapable on the solar geoengineering debate, transdisciplinary engagement might as well aim at mapping out plural viewpoints and allowing people to disagree. In transdisciplinary engagement, as co-design signifies the engagement of stakeholders with decision-making in science, a fair and transparent procedure of making decisions is also needed. From our own experience of co-designing research priorities, we suggest that, if carefully designed, voting can be a useful tool to mediate the contentious process of transdisciplinary decision-making with three different benefits for collective decision-making, namely, efficiency, inclusivity and learning. For the future directions of transdisciplinary GEC science, since the Anthropocene challenges are truly uncertain and contentious, it is argued that the science for the Anthropocene should move away from a solutionist paradigm towards an experimentalist turn.

Due to the fear of the consequences of climate change, many scientists today advocate the research into—but not deployment of—geoengineering, large-scale technological control of the global climate, to reduce the uncertainty around its efficacy and harms. Scientists propose in particular initiating field trials of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). This paper examines how the meanings of geoengineering experimentation, specifically SAI field trials, are reconfigured in the deliberation of the lay public. To this end, we conducted focus groups with Japanese citizens in June 2015 on the geoengineering concept and SAI field trials. Our main findings are as follows: the ‘climate emergency’ framing compelled the lay public to accept, either willingly or reluctantly, the need for ‘geoengineering research’; however, public discourse on SAI field trials was ambiguous and ambivalent, involving both tensions and dilemmas in understanding what the SAI field trial is for and about. Our results exhibit how the lay public wrestles with understanding the social, political, and ethical implications of SAI field trials in multiple dimensions, namely, accountability, controllability, predictability, and desirability. The paper argues that more clarity in the term ‘geoengineering research’ is needed to facilitate inclusive and pluralistic debates on geoengineering experimentation and not to preemptively arrive at a consensus that ‘we need more research.’ We conclude that ambivalence about both the pros and cons of geoengineering experimentation seems to be enduring; thus, instead of ignoring or repressing it, embracing ambivalence is required to keep the geoengineering debate democratic and inclusive.

Great expectations have been expressed for carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a key climate change mitigation option, primarily because CCS possesses the political capital to reconcile continued use of fossil fuels with greenhouse gas emissions reduction. However, technological innovation of CCS has recently stagnated, and therefore, CCS still exists largely as a technological imaginary, is shaped more by narrative than by physical reality. This study examines how narratives or imaginaries of CCS technology were constructed in four major Japanese newspapers from 2006 to 2013. Based on a discourse analytic approach, we identify three dominant storylines of CCS: (1) the promise of large CO2 storage capacity; (2) the compatibility with the fossil energy regime; and (3) the forefront of high-tech innovation. The results show that all three storylines are strongly in favor of CCS, inflating blind optimism in the technical prospects of CCS while ignoring the many risks and uncertainties around it. Given the complexities of CCS as a socio-technical system, however, the role of media narratives is to enhance broader social learning about CCS. The paper argues that more plural, balanced, and critical narratives are required to sustain a sound balance between uncertainty and optimism over CCS.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a significant role in bridging the boundary between climate science and politics. Media coverage is crucial for understanding how climate science is communicated and embedded in society. This study analyzes the discursive construction of the IPCC in three Japanese newspapers from 1988 to 2007 in terms of the science–politics boundary. The results show media discourses engaged in boundary-work which rhetorically separated science and politics, and constructed the iconic image of the IPCC as a pure scientific authority. In the linkages between the global and national arenas of climate change, the media “domesticate” the issue, translating the global nature of climate change into a discourse that suits the national context. We argue that the Japanese media’s boundary-work is part of the media domestication that reconstructed the boundary between climate science and politics reflecting the Japanese context.

Interest in climate engineering research has grown rapidly owing to the slow progress of international climate negotiations. As some scientists are proposing to expand research and conduct field tests, there is an emerging debate about whether and how it should proceed. It is widely accepted both by the supporters and critics that public engagement from the early stage of research is necessary. Nonetheless, most, if not all, of existing research projects of climate engineering were designed predominantly by experts. To produce socially relevant knowledge, and hence, pursue transdisciplinary research that integrates interdisciplinary research and public engagement, it is desirable for scientists to decide together with the public on what kind of research should be done. In this paper, we both as Japanese scientists and stakeholders collaboratively identify 40 socially relevant research questions on climate engineering with a particular emphasis on stratospheric aerosol injection, using a method designed to encourage science–policy collaboration. While we acknowledge some methodological problems and the difficulty in obtaining active participation from stake- holders, the list of identified questions covers broad inter- disciplinary perspectives and diverse interests, and may provide an important foundation for future transdisci- plinary research on climate engineering. Given the dynamic nature of climate change and policy responses, research agendas should be periodically and iteratively reviewed and updated through transdisciplinary processes.

Increasing interest in climate engineering in recent years has led to calls by the international research community for international research collaboration as well as global public engagement. But making such collaboration a reality is challenging. Here, we report the summary of a 2016 workshop on the significance and challenges of international collaboration on climate engineering research with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Because of the region’s interest in benefits and risks of climate engineering, there is a potential synergy between impact research on anthropogenic global warming and that on solar radiation management. Local researchers in the region can help make progress toward better understanding of impacts of solar radiation management. These activities can be guided by an ad hoc Asia-Pacific working group on climate engineering, a voluntary expert network. The working group can foster regional conversations in a sustained manner while contributing to capacity building. An important theme in the regional conversation is to develop effective practices of dialogues in light of local backgrounds such as cultural traditions and past experiences of large-scale technology development. Our recommendation merely portrays one of several possible ways forward, and it is our hope to stimulate the debate in the region.

There is a growing literature on public surveys regarding solar geoengineering, but the spatial coverage has been mostly limited to the Western societies. However, the non-Western voices are paramount to climate engineering governance since technology's reach is global and since different cultures and socio-political backgrounds might substantively affect governance discourse. Here we report a preliminary analysis of an international webbased survey conducted in March 2016, targeting university students in Japan, Korea, Australia (OECD countries), China, India, and the Philippines (non-OECD), a diverse set of six countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Our questionnaire builds on earlier studies by Mercer et al. (2011) and Merk et al. (2015) but digs deeper into the aspect of field experimentation. The survey results show that non-OECD undergraduates tend to be more seriously concerned about climate change and open to the idea of climate engineering than OECD
counterparts. Majorities of the students believe that an international framework is needed and that scientists should openly disclose all the results of field tests, including negative ones.

This study explores how Japanese newspapers frame carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. We applied frame analysis with the basic content analysis of newspapers texts. The newspaper texts are analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The major newspapers in Japan portray CCS in very positive and technocratic framings. Specifically, the newspaper portrayals presuppose very optimistic technology development by trusted bureaucrats and industry experts, and promotes CCS as a promising technology fix for mitigating climate change. In other words, the discursive space of CCS newspaper coverage is filled
with optimistic technocratic expectations for CCS. As a result, the
potential risks of CCS such as environmental and health risks and the necessary governance structures of CCS to address such risks have been ignored, and civil society actors and the general public who have enormous interest in avoiding such risks have been marginalized in the newspaper coverage.

CO2を大気中から隔離する技術であるCCSが近年，有望な気候変動の緩和策として注目されている．し かし，CCS の技術開発には技術的・政策的なリスクをめぐって論争がある．本稿は言説分析によって日本 の新聞報道における CCS のフレーミングを明らかにし，メディア言説が CCS のガバナンスに対して持ち うる政策的含意について考察した．日本の新聞報道はCCSを大幅なCO2排出削減が可能な革新的技術と表 象し，技術開発に対する楽観主義的な言説を構築する一方で，CO2 漏洩リスクやカーボン・ロックインと いった問題を言説的に捨象していた．日本のCCSガバナンスの文脈では，日本の新聞報道は既存のテクノ クラート主義的な統治構造を言説的に補強する政治的な機能を持っていることが指摘できる．

本研究では，日本の新聞(『読売新聞』，『朝日新聞』，『毎日新聞』)のIPCC報道によって，日本社会におけるIPCC像がどのように構築されたのかを分析し，その社会的含意を導出した．具体的には，IPCCが設立された1988年から2007年までの各紙の新聞記事を対象としたフレーム分析を行った．その結果，IPCCが地球温暖化問題における“科学の専制支配”のなかで，理性的な“警告者”として構築されてきており，新聞各紙のフレーミングとその推移が画一的であることを明らかにした．IPCCに関するフレーミングの社会的含意としては，そのフレーミングが日本の温暖化政策の決定要因である可能性は低いこと，科学的信頼性が乏しい知見が，IPCCによって言及されただけで新聞に掲載される可能性が高まり，それが地球温暖化問題の公衆理解に悪影響を及ぼす危険性があること，IPCCの科学的側面が過度に強調されているために，IPCCによる科学アセスメントの多様な側面に関する理解が阻害されてしまうこと，の3点を導出した．