A critical examination of the climate engineering moral hazard and risk compensation concern

Abstract

The widespread concern that research into and potential implementation of climate engineering would reduce mitigation and adaptation is critically examined. First, empirical evidence of such moral hazard or risk compensation in general is inconclusive, and the empirical evidence to date in the case of climate engineering indicates that the reverse may occur. Second, basic economics of substitutes shows that reducing mitigation in response to climate engineering implementation could provide net benefits to humans and the environment, and that climate engineering might theoretically increase mitigation through strong income effects. Third, existing policies strive to promote other technologies and measures, including climate adaptation, which induce analogous risk-compensating behaviours. If the goal of climate policy is to minimize climate risks, this concern should not be grounds for restricting or prohibiting climate engineering research. Three potential means for this concern to manifest in genuinely deleterious ways, as well as policy options to reduce these effects, are identified.

Questioning the technological fix to climate change – Lay sense-making of geoengineering in Sweden

“…However, the method we applied and our limited empirics do not reveal much of the more general relation between GE and mitigation (c.f. Reynolds, 2014), but the topic definitely deserves further attention.…”

“…Does GE challenge democratic governance principles ? Could the results of field experiments be scaled up and, if so, how (Lawrence and Crutzen, 2013;Robock and Kravitz, 2013)? Will uncertainties preclude meaningful scientific results and would such results even be meaningful in informing decision making (Fernow, 2012;Hansson, 2014)?…”

Making sense of climate engineering: a focus group study of lay publics in four countries

“…This indicates that for the focus group participants, climate engineering seemed to have a 'reverse moral hazard' effect (Reynolds 2015), i.e. increased willingness to consider and even advocate behavioural changes, rather than being deterred by the introduction of new technologies for large-scale climate control.…”

Do climate engineering experts display moral-hazard behaviour?

“…Thirdly, so far, the moral-hazard discussion has focused on SAI, where the costs appear to be low and the risk are high (Baatz, 2016;McLaren, 2016;Reynolds, 2014). However, CDR technologies, which are seen as more expensive and a more benign technologies, may in fact be more likely to cause moral hazard.…”