Climate cooperation in the shadow of solar geoengineering: an experimental investigation of the moral hazard conjecture

ABSTRACT

As international efforts to mitigate greenhouse gases continue to fall short of global targets, the scientific community increasingly debates the role of solar geoengineering in climate policy. Given the infancy of these technologies, the debate is not yet whether to deploy solar geoengineering but whether solar geoengineering deserves consideration and research funding. Looming large over this discussion is the moral hazard conjecture – normalizing solar geoengineering will decrease mitigation efforts. Using a controlled experiment of a collective-risk social dilemma that simulates the strategic decisions of heterogeneous groups to mitigate emissions and deploy solar geoengineering, we find no evidence for the moral hazard conjecture. On the contrary, when people in the experiment are given the option to deploy solar geoengineering, average investment in mitigation increases.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• solar geoengineering
• moral hazard
• mitigation deterrence
• crowding out
• experimental economics

Acknowledgments

We thank Billy Pizer, Mark Borsuk, Tyler Felgenhauer, Jonathan Wiener, Khara Grieger, Jennifer Kuzma, Linda Thunström, Jim Murphy, Alex James and Jason Shogren for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2022.2066285

Notes

1. Stratospheric aerosol injection is also referred to solar radiation modification, solar radiation management or climate engineering.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2033855. Moreno-Cruz acknowledges support from the Canada Research Chairs program.