Moral hazard [ˈmôrəl ˈhazərd, noun]—The lack of incentive to guard against risk when one is protected from its consequences.
The first thing to know about “moral hazard” in the context of solar geoengineering (SG) is that it is a misnomer. The possibility that merely discussing SG could weaken efforts to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions is not a case of moral hazard as much as it is a simple case of SG “crowding out” mitigation.
The second thing to know is that whatever we call this crowding-out phenomenon, it is clearly real. And well beyond crowding out emissions abatement, vested interests will surely exploit the availability of SG as yet another reason to do too little to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the first place.
The third thing to know is that none of this should be an excuse not to consider – or not to conduct research into – SG.
Full text: “Moral Hazard and Solar Geoengineering”
This brief is, to a large extent, based on: Wagner, Gernot and Christine Merk. “The Hazard of Environmental Morality.” Foreign Policy, 24 December 2018.
It was written for a volume of 26 briefs, based on a workshop on “Governance of the Deployment of Solar Geoengineering,” hosted in September 2018 by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements with collaboration and support from Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program.
Citation:
Wagner, Gernot and Christine Merk. “Moral Hazard and Solar Geoengineering.” In: Governance of the Deployment of Solar Geoengineering. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, edited by Robert N. Stavins and Robert C. Stowe, p. 135-9 (February 2019).