Hello, good points! I discuss this supposed free driver/unilateralist’s curse feature of solar geoengineering in section 3.2 of my paper. This is a recurrent worry in the literature, but I don’t find it plausible. Quoting from ym paper:
“In my view, the risks of unilateralism are overstated. Firstly, as argued in Section 1, the cost estimates relied upon are likely to be a significant underestimate, plausibly by an order of magnitude. Secondly, as Parson (2014, 98) has argued “these scenarios overstate the distribution of capabilities and thus the risk of unilateral action, because they focus too narrowly on financial cost as the determinant of capability and neglect other, non-financial, requirements and constraints.” An SAI programme large enough to make a non-trivial sustained impact on the climate would be hard to conceal and vulnerable to military attack. “[U]nilaterally achieving a climate alteration that matters would require not just the money, technological capability, and delivery assets, but also the command of territory, global stature, and ability to deploy and project force necessary to protect a continuing operation against opposition from other states, including deterring their threats of stopping it through military action.” (Parson 2014, 99) This suggests that scenarios in which small states or rich individuals deploy SAI are vanishingly unlikely”
I then argue that multilateralism is actually the guiding logic of solar geoengineering:
″ Indeed, Horton (2011) has persuasively argued that SAI is actually characterised by a logic of multilateralism. The success of an actor’s SAI programme would depend on whether other actors were also pursuing their own SAI programme and would be ineffective without coordination. Moreover: “States opposed to geoengineering have a number of tools at their disposal to counteract climate interventions. In the case of SAI, for example, fluorocarbon gases could be deployed to offset cooling effects. Alternatively, the strategic use of black carbon could neutralize artificial albedo enhancement.”(Horton, 2011, 62) In short, if powerful actors were opposed to an SAI programme by a state or a collective of states, they could effectively discourage it using ordinary military threats or by counteracting the effects of SAI. The foregoing suggests that the decision to deploy unilaterally would not be taken lightly, given the incentives created by conventional military threats and the ease with which SAI schemes can be disrupted. Even for a case in which a major power is facing very severe climate impacts, SAI without support from other major powers would likely either be counter-productive or ineffective. In my view, this suggests that unilateral deployment even by a powerful state or some coalitions of powerful states is not a serious danger, provided that there are some dissenting major powers (though it should be noted that many experts disagree).”
Imagine that India is deciding whether to launch a solar geoengineering programme that would dramatically affect the weather in China. I think it is clear that they would not proceed without Chinese agreement, given the enormous risk of war.
Hello, good points! I discuss this supposed free driver/unilateralist’s curse feature of solar geoengineering in section 3.2 of my paper. This is a recurrent worry in the literature, but I don’t find it plausible. Quoting from ym paper:
I then argue that multilateralism is actually the guiding logic of solar geoengineering:
Imagine that India is deciding whether to launch a solar geoengineering programme that would dramatically affect the weather in China. I think it is clear that they would not proceed without Chinese agreement, given the enormous risk of war.