ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the value of non-domination, including and especially how it relates to global inequality, should guide our thinking about how to legitimately engage in research into solar radiation management. It also argues that some geoengineering strategies offer specific governance challenges due to the greater power they offer potential deployers over the environment. Developed in a political milieu where states became more powerful domestically, Enlightenment era domination theorists argued that by dividing state power along functional lines, creating independent judiciaries, and introducing democratic politics, the absolutist authority and increasing institutional power of the state could be made consistent with non-domination of its citizenry. Well-meaning advocates of geoengineering could be seen as referencing Indigenous peoples indirectly when they claim that perhaps the primary goal of geoengineering is to support people who are vulnerable to some types of climate change impacts, and where vulnerability is primarily looked at as rooted in economic inequality.
