The Common Law of Geoengineering: Building an Effective Governance for Stratospheric Injections

• Author: Edward J. Larson
• Position: Pepperdine University School of Law
• Pages: 329-368

e Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law

ISSN: 2338-7602; E-ISSN: 2338-770X

http://www.ijil.org

© 2015 e Institute for Migrant Rights Press

329

THE COMMON LAW OF GEOENGINEERING

BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE FOR STRATOSPHERIC INJECTIONS

EDWARD J. LARSON

Pepperdine University School of Law

E-mail: Ed.Larson@pepperdine.edu

A landmark report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued in 2015

is the latest in a series of scientic studies to assess the feasibility of geoengineering

with stratospheric aerosols to oset anthropogenic global warming and to

conclude that they oers a possibly viable supplement or back-up alternative to

reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Evidence for this once taboo form of climate

intervention relies heavily on the known past eect of major explosive volcanic

eruptions to moderate average worldwide temperatures temporarily. In the

most extensive study to date, an elite NAS committee now suggests that such

processes for adjusting global temperature, while still uncertain, merit further

research and eld testing. With the benets of such interventions certain to be

unevenly distributed and the risks of them not fully known, every study stresses

the need for transparent international governance of stratospheric injections.

After examining the roadblocks to such governance, this paper explores the

statutory and common law frameworks that could provide some form of stop-

gap approaches until the needed regulatory regime emerges.

Keywords: Climate Change, International Environmental Law, Global

Governance, Global Warming, Law and Technology, Law and Science.

The Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law Volume II Issue 2 (2015) at 329–68

Edward J. Larson

330

I. NATURAL GEOENGINEERING

e great Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted at 10:02 A.M. local time

on Monday, August 27, 1883, in an explosion heard thousands of miles

away. From the Philippines in the north to Australia in the South and

Sri Lanka in the West, it sounded as if cannon were red at sea. Similar

accounts came from places around the Indian Ocean and South China

Sea.1 An ocial on Rodriguez Island, nearly 3000 miles west of Krakatoa,

noted that “reports were heard coming from the eastward, like the distant

roars of heavy guns.”2 In Burma, the police dispatched a launch to look

for a ship in distress. Imperial Dutch soldiers in western Sumatra feared

their fort was under attack. e explosion was then and remains today

the loudest (or at least most distantly heard) terrestrial noise—natural or

human generated—in historical memory.3

While awesome, sound was one the explosion’s lesser eects. A steep,

conical, 2700-foot-high volcanic island in the narrow, funnel-shaped

Sunda Straits between the heavily populated big islands of Java and

Sumatra, the explosive eruption and virtual incineration of Krakatoa sent

walls of water across the sea in every direction.4 ese tsunamis crashed

into the nearby shores at heights of up to 135 feet, destroying 165 coastal

villages and killing over 36,000 people.5 “At rst sight it seemed like a

low range of hills was rising out of the water,” one observer recalled. “A

second glance—and a very hurried one at that—convinced me that it was

a lofty ridge of water many feet high.”6 Diminishing as they spread, the

waves reached halfway around the globe, ooding low-lying regions in Sri

Lanka, hitting the South African coast with four-foot-high breakers, and

1. S W, K: T D  W E 261-2 (2003).

2. T S  R S. F, K  146 (1983).

3. S  F, supra note 2, at 146; W, supra note 1, at 264.

4. A busy commercial waterway, Sunda Strait narrows to nineteen miles wide a few

miles north of Krakatau. W, supra note 1, at 155. On Krakatau Island

before the eruption, see S  F, supra note 2, at 190

5. S  F, supra note 2, at 15; W, supra note 1, at 140-50.

6. W, supra note 1, at 240.

Edward J. Larson

The Common Law of Geoengineering: Building an Effective Governance for Stratospheric Injections

331

rippling shores as far away as France and California.7

Although less destructive than the sea-waves, another eect of

Krakatoa’s eruption carries greater signicance today. Krakatoa is the type

of volcano formed at a geological subduction zone where a heavier oceanic

tectonic plate collides with and sinks beneath a lighter continental tectonic

plate. Seawater carried with and trapped in the descending rock and soil

percolates upward into the overlaying mantle, lowering its melting point

and density. As the resulting magma rises toward the surface, carbon

dioxide, water vapor, and other gases dissolved in it escape from solution

and collect with the molten rock in a chamber under or in the volcanic

cone, leading to an explosive eruption when the pressure building within

overcomes the cone’s structure.8 is type of steep-sided stratovolcano

diers from the rounded shield volcanos that rise over geological hotspots

or divergent boundaries between separating tectonic plates and erupt in

non-explosive uid lava ows.

Displacing more than six cubic miles of earth, Krakatoa’s explosive

eruption was one of the largest on record.9 When it ended, only one-third

of the formerly three-by-six mile island remained above sea level.10 Lumps

of pumice rained down onto the surrounding sea and, being lighter than

seawater, oated in the ocean for months, drifting west with the currents

as far as the African coast.11 Visible ash from the eruption rose higher

than the pumice and, carried with the winds, caused midday darkness

in nearby regions and settled as a gray dust over the ensuing days at sites

up to 3775 miles away.12 e force of the explosion was such, however,

that much of the ejected matter was all-but vaporized into particles of a

micron or less in diameter that were shot over twenty-ve miles into the

atmosphere and had prolonged worldwide eects.13

Once lodged in the stratosphere, this volcanic cloud of sulfate aerosols,

7. W, supra note 1, at 276-78; S  F, supra note 2, at 148.

8. W, supra note 1, at 312-13.

9. Id. at 308.

10. S  F, supra note 2, at 15.

11. Id. at 149-53.

12. Id. at 37-39, 149.

13. W, supra note 1, at 283; S  F, supra note 2, at 418.