Climate Engineering Experts and Their Community: A Note on the Difference Between Japan and the West

Abstract

Amidst growing awareness of the risks of climate change, climate engineering or geoengineering, artificial interventions in the climate system, is receiving increased attention. In the 2015 Paris Agreement, the international community set the goals of keeping global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and of pursuing efforts to contain it below 1.5°C . Scenario research that has examined these long-term goals, however, demonstrates that carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere will be necessary, and that in the worst-case scenario, solar radiation modification, which reflects sunlight back to space, might have a role to play. In Europe and the United States, researchers, who take the dangers of climate change seriously, have begun to enter the field, and interdisciplinary research is being conducted not only on the direct effects of climate change, but also on its social ramifications. On the other hand, in Japan, the amount of climate engineering research in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities is far from sufficient. This paper hypothesizes that the reason for the minimal level of discussion on the proposed set of technical solutions（be it supportive or opposing）is partially due to the low level of risk perception of climate change in Japan. A sociological approach to study such differences between Japan and the West would be desirable.