Joshua B Horton
Biographic Data
| ID | 1542566 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joshua B Horton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joshua B |
| FAMILY NAME | Horton |
| SIGNATURE | HORTON J B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3606-6039 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Solar Geoengineering as a Status Symbol in International Politics
Solar geoengineering, in particular, stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), has the potential to reduce near-term climate risks, albeit while introducing risks of its own. But SAI, or at least configurations of it characterized by exclusivity and conspicuousness, also has the potential to function as a status symbol in international politics by signaling a country’s power and preeminence. The implications of SAI playing such a role would be signi…
Who Could Deploy Stratospheric Aerosol Injection? The United States , China, and Large‐Scale, Rapid Planetary Cooling
Stratospheric aerosol injection, which would reflect a small fraction of sunlight away from the Earth to lower temperatures, involves many unanswered questions. One of these is, who could deploy it? We consider this with reference to a scenario in which global temperatures are reduced by 1°C by midcentury; we term this a ‘PLUS’ deployment—Planetary, Large‐scale, Uninterrupted, and Speedy. The technical requirements of a PLUS deployment—a fleet of…
A preliminary framework for understanding the governance of novel environmental technologies
We propose a conceptual framework to explain why some technologies are more difficult to govern than others in global environmental governance. We start from the observation that some technologies pose transboundary environmental risks, some provide capacities for managing such risks, and some do both. For “ambiguous” technologies, potential risks and risk management capacities are uncertain, unknown or even unknowable. Governance systems are ind…
Parametric Insurance for Solar Geoengineering
Solar geoengineering (SG) entails using technology to modify the Earth's radiative balance to offset some of the climate changes caused by long‐lived greenhouse gases. Parametric insurance, which delivers payouts when specific physical indices (such as wind speed) cross predefined thresholds, was recently proposed by two of us as a compensation mechanism for SG with the potential to ease disagreements about the technology and to facilitate cooper…
Solar geoengineering research on the U.S. policy agenda
Solar geoengineering (SG) may be a helpful tool to reduce harms from climate change, yet further research into its potential benefits and risks must occur prior to any implementation. So far, however, organized research on SG has been absent from the U.S. national policy agenda. We apply the Multiple Streams Approach analytical framework to explain why a U.S. federal SG research program has failed to materialize up to now, and to consider how one…
The middle powers roar
An earth system governance perspective on solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering appears capable of reducing climate change and the associated risks. In part because it would be global in effect, the governance of solar geoengineering is a central concern. The Earth System Governance (ESG) Project includes many researchers who, to varying degrees, utilize a common vocabulary and research framework. Despite the clear mutual relevance of solar geoengineering and ESG, few ESG researchers have considered the …
Steering and Influence in Transnational Climate Governance
Theorists of transnational climate governance (TCG) seek to account for the increasing involvement of nonstate and substate actors in global climate policy. While transnational actors have been present in the emerging field of solar geoengineering—a novel technology intended to reflect a fraction of sunlight back to space to reduce climate impacts—many of their most significant activities, including knowledge dissemination, scientific capacity bu…
Solar Geoengineering and Democracy
Some scientists suggest that it might be possible to reflect a portion of incoming sunlight back into space to reduce climate change and its impacts. Others argue that such solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering is inherently incompatible with democracy. In this article, we reject this incompatibility argument. First, we counterargue that technologies such as SRM lack innate political characteristics and predetermined social effects, and…
The International Politics of Climate Engineering
Journal Article The International Politics of Climate Engineering: A Review and Prospectus for International Relations Get access Joshua B. Horton, Joshua B. Horton Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jesse L. Reynolds Jesse L. Reynolds Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 18, Issue 3, September 2016, Pages 438–461, https://doi.org/10.109…
The emergency framing of solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a possible response measure in the event of a 'climate emergency'. Scientific evidence for climate emergencies in the form of tipping points, however, is contested and unsettled. Furthermore, declarations of emergency entail authoritarian political tendencies that historically have given rise to repression and abuse. By definition, an emergency must exhibit a combination of high risk, urgency and necessit…
Solar Geoengineering and Democracy
Some scientists suggest that it might be possible to reflect a portion of incoming sunlight back into space to reduce climate change and its impacts. Others argue that such solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering is inherently incompatible with democracy. In this article, we reject this incompatibility argument. First, we counterargue that technologies such as SRM lack innate political characteristics and predetermined social effects, and…
The emergency framing of solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a possible response measure in the event of a 'climate emergency'. Scientific evidence for climate emergencies in the form of tipping points, however, is contested and unsettled. Furthermore, declarations of emergency entail authoritarian political tendencies that historically have given rise to repression and abuse. By definition, an emergency must exhibit a combination of high risk, urgency and necessit…
Solar geoengineering research on the U.S. policy agenda
Solar geoengineering (SG) may be a helpful tool to reduce harms from climate change, yet further research into its potential benefits and risks must occur prior to any implementation. So far, however, organized research on SG has been absent from the U.S. national policy agenda. We apply the Multiple Streams Approach analytical framework to explain why a U.S. federal SG research program has failed to materialize up to now, and to consider how one…
The middle powers roar
A preliminary framework for understanding the governance of novel environmental technologies
We propose a conceptual framework to explain why some technologies are more difficult to govern than others in global environmental governance. We start from the observation that some technologies pose transboundary environmental risks, some provide capacities for managing such risks, and some do both. For “ambiguous” technologies, potential risks and risk management capacities are uncertain, unknown or even unknowable. Governance systems are ind…
An earth system governance perspective on solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering appears capable of reducing climate change and the associated risks. In part because it would be global in effect, the governance of solar geoengineering is a central concern. The Earth System Governance (ESG) Project includes many researchers who, to varying degrees, utilize a common vocabulary and research framework. Despite the clear mutual relevance of solar geoengineering and ESG, few ESG researchers have considered the …
Steering and Influence in Transnational Climate Governance
Theorists of transnational climate governance (TCG) seek to account for the increasing involvement of nonstate and substate actors in global climate policy. While transnational actors have been present in the emerging field of solar geoengineering—a novel technology intended to reflect a fraction of sunlight back to space to reduce climate impacts—many of their most significant activities, including knowledge dissemination, scientific capacity bu…
The emergency framing of solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a possible response measure in the event of a 'climate emergency'. Scientific evidence for climate emergencies in the form of tipping points, however, is contested and unsettled. Furthermore, declarations of emergency entail authoritarian political tendencies that historically have given rise to repression and abuse. By definition, an emergency must exhibit a combination of high risk, urgency and necessit…
The International Politics of Climate Engineering
Journal Article The International Politics of Climate Engineering: A Review and Prospectus for International Relations Get access Joshua B. Horton, Joshua B. Horton Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jesse L. Reynolds Jesse L. Reynolds Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Review, Volume 18, Issue 3, September 2016, Pages 438–461, https://doi.org/10.109…
Solar Geoengineering and Democracy
Some scientists suggest that it might be possible to reflect a portion of incoming sunlight back into space to reduce climate change and its impacts. Others argue that such solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering is inherently incompatible with democracy. In this article, we reject this incompatibility argument. First, we counterargue that technologies such as SRM lack innate political characteristics and predetermined social effects, and…
An earth system governance perspective on solar geoengineering
Solar geoengineering appears capable of reducing climate change and the associated risks. In part because it would be global in effect, the governance of solar geoengineering is a central concern. The Earth System Governance (ESG) Project includes many researchers who, to varying degrees, utilize a common vocabulary and research framework. Despite the clear mutual relevance of solar geoengineering and ESG, few ESG researchers have considered the …
Steering and Influence in Transnational Climate Governance
Theorists of transnational climate governance (TCG) seek to account for the increasing involvement of nonstate and substate actors in global climate policy. While transnational actors have been present in the emerging field of solar geoengineering—a novel technology intended to reflect a fraction of sunlight back to space to reduce climate impacts—many of their most significant activities, including knowledge dissemination, scientific capacity bu…
Parametric Insurance for Solar Geoengineering
Solar geoengineering (SG) entails using technology to modify the Earth's radiative balance to offset some of the climate changes caused by long‐lived greenhouse gases. Parametric insurance, which delivers payouts when specific physical indices (such as wind speed) cross predefined thresholds, was recently proposed by two of us as a compensation mechanism for SG with the potential to ease disagreements about the technology and to facilitate cooper…
Solar geoengineering research on the U.S. policy agenda
Solar geoengineering (SG) may be a helpful tool to reduce harms from climate change, yet further research into its potential benefits and risks must occur prior to any implementation. So far, however, organized research on SG has been absent from the U.S. national policy agenda. We apply the Multiple Streams Approach analytical framework to explain why a U.S. federal SG research program has failed to materialize up to now, and to consider how one…
The middle powers roar
A preliminary framework for understanding the governance of novel environmental technologies
We propose a conceptual framework to explain why some technologies are more difficult to govern than others in global environmental governance. We start from the observation that some technologies pose transboundary environmental risks, some provide capacities for managing such risks, and some do both. For “ambiguous” technologies, potential risks and risk management capacities are uncertain, unknown or even unknowable. Governance systems are ind…
Who Could Deploy Stratospheric Aerosol Injection? The United States , China, and Large‐Scale, Rapid Planetary Cooling
Stratospheric aerosol injection, which would reflect a small fraction of sunlight away from the Earth to lower temperatures, involves many unanswered questions. One of these is, who could deploy it? We consider this with reference to a scenario in which global temperatures are reduced by 1°C by midcentury; we term this a ‘PLUS’ deployment—Planetary, Large‐scale, Uninterrupted, and Speedy. The technical requirements of a PLUS deployment—a fleet of…
Solar Geoengineering as a Status Symbol in International Politics
Solar geoengineering, in particular, stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), has the potential to reduce near-term climate risks, albeit while introducing risks of its own. But SAI, or at least configurations of it characterized by exclusivity and conspicuousness, also has the potential to function as a status symbol in international politics by signaling a country’s power and preeminence. The implications of SAI playing such a role would be signi…
Climate Change and Geoengineering (11 works) · Climate change (7 works) · Geoengineering (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Corporate governance (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life (5 works)