No abstract

Public views and values about solar geoengineering should be incorporated in science-policy decisions, if decision makers want to act in the public interest. In reflecting on the past decade of research, we review around 30 studies investigating public familiarity with, and views about, solar geoengineering. A number of recurring patterns emerge: (1) general unfamiliarity with geoengineering among publics; (2) the importance of artifice versus naturalness; (3) some conditional support for certain kinds of research; and (4) nuanced findings on the "moral hazard" and "reverse moral hazard" hypotheses, with empirical support for each appearing under different circumstances and populations. We argue that in the coming decade, empirical social science research on solar geoengineering will be crucial, and should be integrated with physical scientific research.

This paper examines how notions of equity are being evoked by expert advocates of more research into solar geoengineering. We trace how specific understandings of equity figure centrally-although not always explicitly-in these expert visions. We find that understandings of equity in such ''vanguard visions'' are narrowly conceived as epistemic challenges, answerable by (more) scientific analysis. Major concerns about equity are treated as empirical matters, requiring scientific assessment of feasibility, risks, or ''win-win'' distributive outcomes and optimizations, with concurrent calls to delimit risk or reduce scientific uncertainties. We argue that such epistemic framings sidestep, inter alia, the inequality in resources available to diverse non-experts-including the ''vulnerable'' evoked in expert visions-to project their own equity perspectives onto imagined technological pathways of the future. These may include concerns relating to moral or historical responsibility and/or lack of agency in shaping the directions of innovation. We conclude that the performative power and political implications of specific expert visions of equity, evoked as a rationale to undertake solar geoengineering research, require continued scrutiny.

Solar geoengineering research in the social sciences and humanities has largely evolved in parallel with research in the natural sciences. In this article, we review the current state of the literature on the ethical, legal, economic, and social science aspects of this emerging area. We discuss issues regarding the framing and futures of solar geoengineering, empirical social science on public views and public engagement, the evolution of ethical concerns regarding research and deployment, and the current legal and economic frameworks and emerging proposals for the regulation and governance of solar geoengineering.