“Geoengineering” – meaning the deliberate large-scale manipulation of natural systems to counteract anthropogenic climate change and reduce the impacts of this change (The Royal Society, 2009) – has recently become a buzzword in climate change debates. Political progress on an adequate mitigation policy for climate change remains painstakingly slow, and climate scientists have expressed increasing concern that we are running out of time. They fear that current global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been too little and too late to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change, such as extreme weather events, droughts, floods and sea level rise. Responding to these fears, some scientists have proposed looking into a ‘plan B’, a technological solution for climate change: geoengineering. Geoengineering Geoengineering, …show more content…
Although the debate on the ethical issues of geoengineering is still in an early stage, some ethicists and social scientists have started to address a few of the moral issues. Most literature on the ethical issues of geoengineering focuses on the moral concerns underlying the ability to manipulate the climate. Are we, as human species, allowed to fiddle with the climate system? Another question that is often heard in debates on the desirability of geoengineering is: who controls the global thermostat? (Hamilton, 2013) This metaphoric question is often asked to emphasize the imminent governance issues underlying geoengineering methods. Furthermore, the moral hazard argument is often mentioned in ethical debates on geoengineering. According to this argument, the national and international will to commit to emission reductions and change consumption patterns will vanish if politicians think that there is, or will be, a cost-effective technical fix that allows for ‘business as usual’ (Robock,