Abstract

Climate change is expected to lead to rising sea levels, higher frequency of natural hazards, extended phases of drought, and many other negative impacts. To minimize these threats, the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris agreed that the global mean temperature must be kept “well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels” (United Nations 2015). For this target to be feasible, most climate models assume not only heavy cuts in emissions but also negative emissions via the large-scale capture and storage of carbon dioxide (K. Anderson and Peters 2016). This chapter investigates the considerations of ethics and justice that are relevant to the fair governance of the carbon capture and storage technologies required to produce negative emissions.1 I argue that the governance of these negative emission technologies (NETs) demands the fair distribution of the additional burdens and risks associated with them and that their ethical evaluation requires the appropriate involvement of those most directly affected. The main argument justifying these claims relies on the infeasibility of achieving justice in the governance of NETs. However, the solutions recommended for dealing with this challenge also face some feasibility constraints. I demonstrate how challenges of feasibility shape the directions of moral thinking about this area of climate action.