David Morrow

DAVID
MORROW

 
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about david morrow

David R. Morrow is the Director of Research for the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy and the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at American University, where he studies the governance and ethics of carbon removal and solar geoeoengineering. Dr. Morrow is also a Research Fellow in the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy at George Mason University, where he studies climate ethics more generally. He also writes philosophy textbooks and teaches the occasional course in philosophy or climate policy. He received a PhD in Philosophy from The Graduate Center of The City University of New York and an MA in Public Policy from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He lives in Washington, DC with his family.

For more details, download David Morrow’s CV.

 
 
 
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climate ethics & policy

 

David Morrow's current scholarly work focuses on climate ethics and climate policy, with a special interest in the ethics and governance of carbon removal and solar geoengineering. This page includes links to selected publications.

 
 

adaptation and carbon removal

Holly J. Buck, Jay Fuhrman, David R. Morrow, Daniel L. Sanchez & Frances M. Wang

One Earth (2020)

DOI 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.09.008
Carbon dioxide removal and climate change adaptation are rarely analyzed together, yet it is critical to consider the interactions between these forms of climate response. We identify ways to foreground adaptation in carbon removal policies and project designs and to incorporate carbon removal into adaptation efforts. Attempts at aligning adaptation and carbon removal may genuinely increase adaptive capacity or introduce new vulnerabilities, depending on policy and project design. Based upon four case studies of addressing adaptation needs with adaptive carbon removal, we find that effective implementation is likely to hinge upon predictable climate policy, innovative technical policies such as rigorous life-cycle assessment, and project design with local ecological conditions in mind. We propose three simple principles for integrating carbon removal and adaptation: identify opportunities for adaptive carbon removal in planning, prioritize adaptive value of projects, and give credit for carbon removed.

principles for thinking about carbon dioxide removal in just climate policy

David R. Morrow, Michael S. Thompson, Angela Anderson, Maya Batres, Holly J. Buck, Kate Dooley, Oliver Geden, Arunabha Ghosh, Sean Low, Augustine Njamnshi, John Noël, Olúfẹ́mi O.Táíwò, Shuchi Talati & Jen Wilcox

One Earth (2020)

DOI 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.07.015 (open access)
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is rising up the climate-policy agenda. Four principles for thinking about its role in climate policy can help ensure that CDR supports the kind of robust, abatement-focused long-term climate strategy that is essential to fair and effective implementation.

Those principles are:

  1. Don’t Forget the Long Game: CDR is only one part of a long-term climate strategy.

  2. It’s Not All About the Carbon: social, economic, and environmental impacts matter.

  3. Split, Don’t Lump: assessing CDR requires going beyond technology-level analyses.

  4. Don’t Bet It All on Being Right: climate policy needs to be resilient against unexpected outcomes.

A mission-driven research program on solar geoengineering could promote justice and legitimacy

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2020)
DOI 10.1080/13698230.2020.1694220

Over the past decade or so, several commentators have called for mission-driven research programs on solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management (SRM) or climate engineering. Building on the largely epistemic reasons offered by earlier commentators, this paper argues that a well-designed mission-driven research program that aims to evaluate solar geoengineering could promote justice and legitimacy, among other valuable ends. Specifically, an international, mission-driven research program that aims to produce knowledge to enable well-informed decision-making about solar geoengineering could (1) provide a more effective way to identify and answer the questions that policymakers would need to answer; and (2) provide a venue for more efficient, effective, just, and legitimate governance of solar geoengineering research; while (3) reducing the tendency for solar geoengineering research to exacerbate international domination. Thus, despite some risks and limitations, a well-designed mission-driven research program offers one way to improve the governance of solar geoengineering research relative to the ‘investigator-driven’ status quo.

Solar Geoengineering: Social Science, Legal, Ethical, and Economic Frameworks

Jane A. Flegal, Anna-Maria Hubert, David R. Morrow & Juan B. Moreno-Cruz
Annual Review of Environment & Resources 44 (2019)
DOI
10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-030032

Solar geoengineering research in the social sciences and humanities has largely evolved in parallel with research in the natural sciences. In this article, we review the current state of the literature on the ethical, legal, economic, and social science aspects of this emerging area. We discuss issues regarding the framing and futures of solar geoengineering, empirical social science on public views and public engagement, the evolution of ethical concerns regarding research and deployment, and the current legal and economic frameworks and emerging proposals for the regulation and governance of solar geoengineering.

GOVERNING CLIMATE ENGINEERING: A PROPOSAL FOR IMMEDIATE GOVERNANCE OF SOLAR RADIATION MANAGEMENT

Sikina Jinnah, Simon Nicholson, David R. Morrow, et al.
Sustainability (2019)
DOI 10.3390/SU11143954 (open access)

Solar radiation management (SRM) technologies would reflect a small amount of incoming solar radiation back into space before the radiation can warm the planet. Although SRM may emerge as a useful component of a global response to climate change, there is also good reason for caution. In June 2017, the Academic Working Group on Climate Engineering Governance released a policy report, “Governing Solar Radiation Management”, which developed a set of objectives to govern SRM in the near-term future: (1) keep mitigation and adaptation first; (2) thoroughly and transparently evaluate risks, burdens, and benefits; (3) enable responsible knowledge creation; and (4) ensure robust governance before any consideration of deployment. To advance the governance objectives identified above, the working group developed twelve recommendations, grouped into three clusters: (1) create politically legitimate deliberative bodies; (2) leverage existing institutions; and (3) make research transparent and accountable. This communication discusses the rationale behind each cluster and elaborates on a subset of the recommendations from each cluster

FAIRNESS IN ALLOCATING THE GLOBAL EMISSIONS BUDGET

Environmental Values (2017)
DOI 10.3197/096327117X15046905490335
[Download a one-page summary here]

One central question of climate justice is how to fairly allocate the global emissions budget. Some commentators hold that the concept of fairness is hopelessly equivocal on this point. Others claim that we need a complete theory of distributive justice to answer the question. This paper argues to the contrary that, given only weak assumptions about fairness, we can show that fairness requires an allocation that is at least as prioritarian as the equal per capita view. Since even the equal per capita view is more prioritarian than is politically feasible, fairness is univocal enough for all practical purposes.

GEOENGINEERING and NON-IDEAL THEORY

with Toby Svoboda
Public Affairs Quarterly
(2016)
[Download a preprint here]

The strongest arguments for the permissibility of geoengineering (also known as climate engineering) rely implicitly on non-ideal theory—roughly, the theory of justice as applied to situations of partial compliance with principles of ideal justice. In an ideally just world, such arguments acknowledge, humanity should not deploy geoengineering; but in our imperfect world, society may need to complement mitigation and adaptation with geoengineering to reduce injustices associated with anthropogenic climate change. We interpret research proponents’ arguments as an application of a particular branch of non-ideal theory known as “clinical theory.” Clinical theory aims to identify politically feasible institutions or policies that would address existing (or impending) injustice without violating certain kinds of moral permissibility constraints. We argue for three implications of clinical theory: First, conditional on falling costs and feasibility, clinical theory provides strong support for some geoengineering techniques that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Second, if some kinds of carbon dioxide removal technologies are supported by clinical theory, then clinical theory further supports using those technologies to enable “overshoot” scenarios in which developing countries exceed the cumulative emissions caps that would apply in ideal circumstances. Third, because of tensions between political feasibility and moral permissibility, clinical theory provides only weak support for geoengineering techniques that aim to manage incoming solar radiation.

 
 
 

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You can email at morrow@american.edu or find me on Twitter @climateMorrow.