Elsevier

Current Opinion in Psychology

Volume 42, December 2021, Pages 66-70
Current Opinion in Psychology

Review
Public perceptions of geoengineering

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.03.012Get rights and content

Abstract

In the face of unrelenting climate change and insufficient mitigation, experts are increasingly considering using geoengineering — carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management — to manipulate the Earth's climate. So far, most laypeople are unaware of geoengineering, and many are resistant to these technologies when told about them. A growing literature finds that these initial reactions are tied to psychological traits, beliefs, and identities including trust in the actors involved, political and social identities, beliefs about tampering with the natural world, and perceived trade-offs between geoengineering and alternative approaches. Finally, given the lack of existing knowledge of geoengineering, public acceptance is highly susceptible to how these technologies are framed, offering both risks and opportunities for climate communication.

Introduction

Given the dire threat of climate change and insufficient mitigation, researchers and policymakers are increasingly discussing geoengineering: intentional manipulation of the climate [1,2]. These interventions fall into two categories. The first — solar radiation management (SRM) — involves strategies to reflect sunlight back into space, such as injecting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere, placing mirrors in space, or brightening clouds [3∗∗]. The second — carbon dioxide removal (CDR) — involves strategies that capture and store CO2 from the atmosphere to prevent further warming, such as direct air capture, bioenergy plus carbon capture and storage (BECCS), reforestation, or ocean fertilization [3∗∗,4]. These technologies vary wildly in their methods, effectiveness, trade-offs, and uncertainties.

Deciding to implement geoengineering is not a one-time choice but an ongoing series of decisions to invest in and conduct laboratory and field research, to deploy technologies in small-scale settings, to scale up, and potentially to continue deploying these technologies for centuries [1,2,5∗∗]. Each step along the way requires acceptance from people (including scientists, policymakers, and members of the public), so understanding public opinion on these technologies and the psychological phenomena underpinning these attitudes is crucial [5∗∗,6]. This has led to several calls for the inclusion of social science (including psychology) in discussions of geoengineering [5∗∗,7,8∗∗,9], and a small but growing literature has set out to answer this call.

Section snippets

Unaware and wary

The most consistent finding about public perception of geoengineering is that the public has no perception of it yet: most people have never heard of geoengineering or know very little about it [10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. Furthermore, they are not enthusiastic about it; initial reactions to CDR and SRM range from neutral [3∗∗,6,14] to negative [10,17,18]. Public opinion varies across the multiple types of geoengineering techniques and stages of decision-making: people are generally more wary

Perceptions of trust and trade-offs

There are a number of ways that framing shapes discourse about geoengineering. Framing can highlight particular actors responsible for researching, deploying, and governing geoengineering [26]. Laypeople often suspect that geoengineering efforts are motivated by profits rather than public good [13,27]. In general, the public trusts scientists more than for-profit companies when it comes to geoengineering [12] and thus tends to prefer geoengineering that results from scientific (rather than

Perceptions of the naturalness of geoengineering

A number of studies have highlighted the importance of perceived naturalness to public perceptions of geoengineering. People often perceive geoengineering to be unnatural and therefore treat it as suspicious [30], and individual geoengineering approaches differ in how much they are perceived to tamper with the natural world [21∗]. Specifically, people think that direct air capture and BECCS tamper with nature more than reforestation, leading to less support for the former CDR strategies. People

Identity-based reactions to geoengineering

Although climate change has become deeply politically polarized, especially in the US [36,37], support for geoengineering to combat climate change has not (thus far) [3∗∗,38∗]. Some evidence suggests that geoengineering may appeal to people high in hierarchical or individualistic worldviews (who tend to be politically conservative), even leading to higher self-reported acceptance of climate science [39]. One explanation for this trend is that geoengineering may be seen as a substitute for

Crowding-out effects of learning about geoengineering

In addition to factors that predict public perceptions of geoengineering itself, scholars have studied the effects of learning about geoengineering on support for emission reductions. This phenomenon goes by a number of names, including crowding-out [43], moral hazard [44], or risk compensation [4]. Whatever its moniker, the fear is that discussions of geoengineering will lull the public (or policymakers) into thinking that geoengineering negates the need for emission reductions. Notably, while

The need for a global focus

A major caveat to this literature is that it is largely limited to participants in the US, the UK, and Western Europe, with occasional inclusion of other wealthy countries. This presents major challenges to understanding public reactions to geoengineering. First, the political divides over climate change that could leak into discourse on geoengineering are an anglophone exception rather than a global rule [51]. Thus, the bulk of geoengineering perception research conducted in English-speaking

Conclusion

Geoengineering offers a rare opportunity for climate change psychologists to study an emerging phenomenon before battle lines are drawn over social identities and to shape how the public is engaged on this topic. While public perception of geoengineering is linked inextricably to perceptions of climate change (one does not need geoengineering without climate change), initial research suggests that there are unique perceptual challenges and opportunities to geoengineering that do not align with

Conflict of interest statement

Nothing declared.

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      Our study did not attempt to confirm the generalizability of these views through other forms of data collection such as household surveys, community interviews, or site visits – such a task, admittedly worthy, is intended for future research. We nevertheless believed the topic best suited to expert interviews given that general knowledge of geoengineering among the lay public is quite low as well as malleable to the framing and presentation of information (Burns et al., 2016; Cox et al., 2020; Jobin and Siegrist, 2020; Merk et al., 2019; Raimi, 2021). This signals that attitudes may not yet be stable or well-formed.

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