I have been notified that my paper submitted to NEEN26, the NEEN & ISEE Conference on Environmental Ethics which is to be held at Umeå University, Sweden, October 14-16th, titled "The ethical case against Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)", has been rejected by the organisers.
This is the second or third time I have had a paper on this theme rejected. For some reason, the ethics of CCS seems to be anathema.
See also:
I have been informed by Bloomsbury Academic that the planned publication date for my forthcoming book Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism is February 18th 2027. This is slightly more than 18 months after I submitted the full book manuscript in early August 2025 (I made revisions in May and June this year).
Today I have had half a book writing day devoted to my scientific monograph Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism, which is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 47, including 18 book writing days.
Today, on my way back to Stavanger from Oslo, I have had an article writing day devoted to finishing my article "Prolegomena to lifeworld-oriented studies of contested climate pasts and futures", which I have now submitted to a special issue of Journal of Cognitive Historiography about "Cognition and Evolution in Historical and Social Research". In the process I added 2.058 words to the manuscript - making this the most productive writing day so far this year in terms of words written. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 46,5, including 29 article writing days.
I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to NEEN26, the NEEN & ISEE Conference on Environmental Ethics which is to be held at Umeå University, Sweden, October 14-16th. The conference is organised by Nordic Environmental Ethics Network (NEEN) in collaboration with International Society for Environmental Ethics (European section) .
*
The ethical case against Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
CCS has become increasingly central as a proposed mitigation measure. The Net Zero goal presupposes Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), which may involve the use of so-called negative emission technologies (NETs), which in turn in some cases involve Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The Net Zero goal has arguably been misappropriated by fossil fuel interests to promote an agenda that seeks to avoid rapidly phasing out fossil fuels. It is commonly claimed that CCS is a necessity. But CCS as practiced to date has actually been found to be net CO2 additive. While emission reductions from CCS are often uncertain, research confirms that CCS mitigation measures have resulted in mitigation deterrence and climate delay. Regrettably, CCS has not triggered much debate in climate ethics, where anthropocentric perspectives – somewhat surprisingly – predominate. In ethical discussions about CCS, interspecies justice is particularly relevant in two ways: Firstly, in so far as CCS policies contribute to allowing continued greenhouse gas emissions and an overshoot in emissions, this will contribute to exacerbate the impact of climate change, including for non-humans. Secondly, in so far as non-humans are harmfully affected by the transportation of CO2 and long-term dedicated geological storage of CO2 in subsurface environments, this is a direct consequence of CCS policies. Lastly, while future generations is a common concern in environmental ethics, this perspective have not received much attention in the context of CCS. With its required time horizon of at least 10,000 years for underground CO2 storages, CCS is a perfect example of intergenerational externalization of costs in a climate change context. This arguably makes CCS unacceptable from the perspective of intergenerational justice and fairness. In this context, the lack of consensus among researchers on what CO2 leakage rates are acceptable is especially concerning.
Today I´ve had an article writing day devoted to my book review of Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare for Biosemiotics, with some 350 words added to the manuscript. Moreover, I discovered that my forthcoming book with Bloomsbury Academic, Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism, is now featured by Google Books, although no publication date has yet been set. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 30,5, including 21,5 article writing days.
I have been notified by the organisers of the 2026 digital conference of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP) that my paper "The ethical case against Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)" has been rejected.
Today I have had half a book writing day, with research done concerning industry news and other news related to climate change and particularly carbon capture and storage (CCS) in preparation for my forthcoming book Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 25, including 8 book writing days.
Today I have had half a book writing day and half an article writing day.
For the book writing day, I researched industry news and other news related to climate change and particularly carbon capture and storage (CCS) in preparation for my forthcoming book Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism.
For the article writing day, I conducted minor revisions of my article "På sporet av en tapt fremtid" (roughly translating to "In search of a lost future") which is now accepted and forthcoming in Salongen - nettidsskrift for filosofi og idéhistorie. Moreover, I did some initial planning concerning my paper "Ecosemiotic questions: Towards a comprehensive description of the complexity and creativity of life", which has now been accepted (as a chapter proposal - cf. previous post) for inclusion in the book Creativity – Complexity – Intelligence, Semiotic Perspectives on the Emergence of Meaning (to appear in the book series "Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture") by the book´s editors (Merit Maran, Lauri Linask and Merja Bauters).
This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 23,5, including 17 article writing days and 6,5 book writing days.
Today I have had a book writing day, with research done on industry news and other news on carbon capture and storage and related topics, and the final design of the book cover chosen for my forthcoming scientific monograph Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism (contracted with Bloomsbury Academic). Moreover, I revised writing plans for the next month, considering when the peer-review of the manuscript will likely be in. Finally, I did some reading related to my scientific monograph in spe Being and Sign.
This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 18, including 6 book writing days.
Today I have had a book writing day, with CCS industry news and other climate news processed and researched. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 10,5, including 4 book writing days.
Altogether in January I had 10,5 writing days.
I have just submitted the abstract and proposal below to the organisers of the 2026 digital conference of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP).
***
The ethical case against Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
SHORT ABSTRACT
Based on ethical considerations, this paper argues against the use of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as a climate mitigation measure. CCS has become increasingly central as a proposed mitigation measure. However, despite the widespread claim and perception that CCS is a necessity, CCS as practiced to date has been found to be net CO2 additive, and the Net Zero goal has been misappropriated by fossil fuel interests. Key arguments against CCS are derived from the perspective of interspecies justice, and from the perspective of intergenerational justice and fairness. In the latter context, CCS exemplifies unfair intergenerational externalization of costs.
PROPOSAL
In the global discourse, CCS has become increasingly central as a proposed mitigation measure, particularly after Net Zero targets were added to the global agenda with full force with the Paris agreement. The Net Zero goal presupposes Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), which may involve the use of so-called negative emission technologies (NETs), which in turn in some cases involve CCS. The Net Zero goal has arguably been misappropriated by fossil fuel interests and their allies to promote an agenda that seeks to avoid rapidly phasing out fossil fuels. Despite the widespread claim and perception that CCS is a necessity, CCS as practiced to date has been found to be net CO2 additive (Sekera and Lichtenberger 2020). In the big picture emission reductions from CCS are uncertain, whereas research has established that CCS mitigation measures result in mitigation deterrence and climate delay.
Regrettably, CCS has not triggered much debate in climate ethics. On a general note, I find it disappointing that anthropocentric perspectives predominate in climate ethics given that some of the most prominent philosophers engaged with climate ethics, such as Dale Jamieson (2010) and Peter Singer (2009), are well-known for their work in animal ethics. Still, neither of them emphasize interspecies justice in the context of climate ethics (see also Callicott 2011). Interspecies justice is particularly relevant in ethical discussions about CCS in two ways: Firstly, in so far as CCS policies contribute to allowing continued greenhouse gas emissions and an overshoot in emissions, this will contribute to exacerbate the impact of climate change, including for non-humans. Secondly, in so far as non-humans are harmfully affected by the transportation of CO2 and long-term dedicated geological storage of CO2 in subsurface environments, this is a direct consequence of CCS policies. This point is particularly pertinent in light of recent scientific discoveries concerning life dwelling in deep-sea and subsurface environments, which include animal habitats in the subsurface (Bright, Gollner et al. 2024). Lastly, while future generations is a common concern in environmental ethics, this perspective have not received much attention in the context of CCS. With its required time horizon of at least 10,000 years for underground CO2 storages (Lindeberg 2003), CCS is a perfect example of intergenerational externalization of costs in a climate change context. This arguably makes CCS unacceptable from the perspective of intergenerational justice and fairness. In this context, the lacklustre climate effects of CCS to date, the widespread political willingness to rely on unproven technologies, and the lack of consensus among researchers on acceptable CO2 leakage rates, is especially concerning.
REFERENCES
Bright, M., S. Gollner et al. (2024), ‘Animal life in the shallow subseafloor crust at deep-sea hydrothermal vents’, Nature Communications, 15: 8466. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-52631-9
Callicott, J. B. (2011), ‘The temporal and spatial scales of global climate change and the limits of individualistic and rationalistic ethics’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 69: 101–16.
Jamieson, D. (2010), ‘Climate change, responsibility, and justice’, Science and Engineering Ethics, 16: 431–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-009-9174-x
Lindeberg, E. (2003), ‘The quality of a CO2 repository: What is the sufficient retention time of CO2 stored underground’, in J. Gale and Y. Kaya (eds), Proceedings of Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies 6th International Conference (GHGT-6), 255–60, Elsevier Science Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-008044276-1/50041-6
Sekera, J. and A. Lichtenberger (2020), ‘Assessing carbon capture: Public policy, science, and societal need: Review of the literature on industrial carbon removal’, Biophysical Economics and Sustainability, 5: 14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41247-020-00080-5
Singer, P. (2009), ‘Climate change as an ethical issue’, in J. Moss (ed), Climate Change and Social Justice, 39–51, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Today I have had a book writing day, with research done on current industry news and other news related to carbon capture and more generally the climate issue. This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 7,5, including 3 book writing days.
I have just summed up my work year in 2025 based on my log of working hours. 2025 was my second shortest work year in living memory (with my work log going back to 2009), with an average work week of 46,2 hours all weeks in the year included. This amounts to 2409 work hours, which compares to 143% of an ordinary work year.
This year I also summed up my work/life balance, focused on sleeplessness, karate training and meditation.
Overall, the work year was characterized by making room for finishing the manuscript for my book originally titled Captured: CCS and the fight for the soul of the environmental movement and now titled Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism. I so did, in early August 2025. In my work log, this is reflected in the fact that book projects had the highest share of total work on record, and ended up as the largest category of work for the first time. Moreover, the share of my work time I spent on research plus book projects was the highest ever. Book projects was also the category whose share of all work hours increased the most from 2024.
See also:
2024: Shortest work year in living memory, at "only" 138% of normal work year
Today a chronicle of mine, titled «Vi har et ansvar for livet vi ikke ser» (literally, We have responsibility for the life we don´t see), was published in Forskersonen at forskning.no.
The title for my forthcoming book with Bloomsbury Academic previously titled Captured: CCS and the fight for the soul of the environmental movement has now been renamed Carbon Capture and the Future of Environmentalism. The book manuscript is currently in review.
As mentioned in a previous post, in the end of August I prepared an abstract in relation to an upcoming special issue of The Journal of Ethics on the theme "Climate ethics: Prospects and Retrospectives", titled "The ethical case against Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)". I have now been notified that my paper has not been selected for inclusion in the special issue.
Today I have presented my paper «Prospective Studies of Contested Climate Pasts and Futures» online at the conference "Cognition and Evolution in Historical and Social Research", which has been held at Lund University, Sweden, September 23-24th. My paper was part of session 5, «Contemporary society».
See also:
Abstract for Lund conference: "Prospective studies of contested climate pasts and futures"
My paper «Prospective Studies of Contested Climate Pasts and Futures» has been scheduled for oral presentation at the conference "Cognition and Evolution in Historical and Social Research", which takes place at Lund University, Sweden, September 23-24th, on Wednesday September 24th at 11.55–12.15, as part of session 5, «Contemporary society». The presentation will be given digitally.
