Conflicting goals and mixed rationales: A closer look at the objectives of EU environmental law in light of the Anthropocene

• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12234
• Published date: 01 July 2018

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Conflicting goals and mixed rationales: A closer look at the

objectives of EU environmental law in light of the Anthropocene

Edwin Alblas

Correspondence

Email: edwin.alblas@ucdconnect.ie Abstract

Environmental policymaking has conventionally aimed at preserving the integrity of the

environment. To protect ourselves from the consequences of (man-caused) environmen-

tal degradation and climatic change, however, intentional manipulation of the environ-

ment through means of technology appears more and more necessary. In this context,

this research introduces the core objectives of EU environmental law –‘preserving, pro-

tecting and improving the quality of the environment’and ‘protecting human health’–as

increasingly conflictive. Taking an environmental ethics perspective, this research explains

that both the letter of the law as well as the case law of the Court provide a mixed pic-

ture of environmental rationales captured in these two objectives.In the absence of clear

legal and ethical direction, it becomes all the more necessary to closely re-examine what

goals ought to be pursued through EU environmental law in the Anthropocene.

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INTRODUCTION

In the past 10,000 years, the stability of the Earth’s climate system

has been supportive of a wide range of species, not least us humans.

From the Industrial Revolution onwards, however, human technol-

ogies have become drivers of rapid environmental change, danger-

ously unsettling this stable state of affairs.

1

In this context, a large

number of geologists have postulated that we have entered a new

epoch: the Anthropocene (‘all human’)–for having an influence on

the planet that is both ‘unmistakable and undeniable’.

2

Today, it is

becoming increasingly clear that the effects of man’s impact on the

environment, such as global warming and the resulting rise in sea

levels, pose serious and immediate threats to planetary life.

3

The instinctive and conventional response to anthropogenic envir-

onmentalchange would be simply to restrainman’s impact on the envir-

onment. Accordingly, the signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement

agreed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions so as to contain

global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius, compared

to preindustrial levels.

4

In truth, atmospheric concentrations of green-

house gasescontinue to increase, and evensubstantive emission reduc-

tions willlikely not be enough to limit dangeroustemperature rises.

5

With the conventional solution seeming increasingly insufficient, a

radically different and counter-intuitive approach is under increasing

consideration, namely the ‘intentional large-scale manipulation of the

environment’by means of technology.

6

The most pertinent example

of such interventions in nature today, in terms of news coverage and

scientific research, appears to be solar climate engineering (SCE).

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SCE

denotes the use of technology to increase the Earth’s reflectivity and

hereby combat global warming. An example is ‘marine cloud brighten-

ing’, through which the substance of clouds is altered to bounce off

more of the sun’s heat.

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Other emerging technological intervention

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1

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report

(IPCC 2014); L Sealey-Huggins, ‘“1.5 °C to Stay Alive”:Climate Change, Imperialism and Justice

for the Caribbean’(2017) 38 Third World Quarterly 2444.

2

W Steffen et al, ‘The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives’(2011) 369

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 842; C Waters et al, ‘The

Anthropocene is Functionally and Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene’(2016) 351

Science 2622.

3

J Rockstr€

om et al, ‘A Safe Operating Space for Humanity’(2009) 461 Nature 472.

4

J Hanekamp and L Bergkamp, ‘The “Best Available Science”and the Paris Agreement on

Climate Change’(2016) 7 European Journal of Risk Regulation 42.

5

G Peters et al, ‘The Challenge to Keep Global Warming below 2 °C’(2013) 3 Nature Cli-

mate Change 4.

6

DW Keith, ‘Geoengineering the Climate: History and Prospect’(2000) 25 Annual Review

of Energy and the Environment 245.

7

See, e.g., M Lukacs, ‘Trump Presidency “Opens Door”to Planet-Hacking Geoengineer

Experiments’(The Guardian, 27 March 2017); DW Keith and G Wagner, ‘Fear of Solar Geo-

engineering is Healthy –But Don’t Distort Our Research’(The Guardian, 29 March 2017).

8

See O Boucher et al, ‘Clouds and Aerosols’in T Stocker et al (eds), Climate Change 2013:

The Physical Science Basis (Cambridge University Press 2013) 575; B Kravitz et al, ‘A Multi-

model Assessment of Regional Climate Disparities Caused by Solar Geoengineering’(2014)

9 Environmental Research Letters.

DOI: 10.1111/reel.12234

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