How Much Risk Ought We to Take? Exploring the Possibilities of Risk-Sensitive Consequentialism in the Context of Climate Engineering

Abstract

When it comes to assessing the deontic status of acts and policies in the context of risk and uncertainty, moral theories are often at a loss. In this paper we hope to show that employing a multi-dimensional consequentialist framework provides ethical guidance for decision-making in complex situations. The paper starts by briefly rehearsing consequentialist responses to the issue of risk, as well as their shortcomings. We then go on to present our own proposal based on three dimensions: wellbeing, fairness and probability. In the last section we apply our approach to a comparison of different climate policy options, including stratospheric solar-radiation management.

Responsible Innovation and Climate Engineering. A Step Back to Technology Assessment

“…Still, from a normative viewpoint we need to conduct in-depth philosophical research before using the SDGs and to look for possible conflicts between different objectives (Holden et al 2017 ; Nilsson and Lucas 2013 ). For the development of criteria, one would also need to refer to indicators that are able to signal the (expected) transgression of certain thresholds as minimal standards that need to be fulfilled by any given option (Stelzer and Schuppert 2016 ). Such an approach enables the use of multiple thresholds functioning as guardrails that open up a certain range of options while also clearly indicating when an option is outside of this range.…”

Solar geoengineering to reduce climate change: a review of governance proposals

“…Regardless, the results of less research, transparency and cooperation could be poorly informed subsequent decision-making and greater climate change impacts. It is for these reasons and others that some scholars are critical of moratoria [115,147,183,184].…”