Opium for the Earth at the expense of nonhuman animals? Geoengineering and interspecies justice

Abstract Anthropogenic climate change profoundly impacts nonhuman animals, leading to habitat destruction, resource scarcity, and extreme weather events. Despite these consequences, ethical discussions on climate change, including the debate on geoengineering, remain predominantly anthropocentric. Geoengineering, defined as the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of Earth's climate to counteract climate change, also has significant implications for nonhuman animals. This article advocates a non-anthropocentric perspective on geoengineering, emphasizing the need for ethical consideration of nonhuman animals within justice debates. It identifies key research gaps, including ethical justifications for broadening geoengineering debates to nonhuman animals, comparative analyses of animal well-being under geoengineered and non-geoengineered climates, and political representation of nonhuman animal interests. In the last part, the article briefly reflects on the research gaps that exist for a theory of interspecies justice in the context of marine cloud brightening. By doing so, the article calls for integrating animals' interests into the broader climate ethics discourse and urges further ethical and interdisciplinary research to assess the implications of climate interventions, such as the various geoengineering methods, on nonhuman animals.