Short abstract:

This paper deconstructs proposals for risk-risk analysis as an anticipatory approach to evaluate the desirability of development of geoengineering. It identifies practical and ethical shortcomings in extant proposals, discusses their implications, and proposes ways to make such analysis useful.

Long abstract:

In the face of rapidly growing climate harms, research into solar geoengineering promises possibilities of averting some of the risks of otherwise unavoidable climate change. Yet the technology would also bring novel risks. Risk-risk, or risk trade-off analysis has been proposed as an appropriate anticipatory approach to evaluate the desirability of development of solar geoengineering. This paper examines the discursive implications of risk-based approaches to climate policy, and deconstructs extant proposals for risk trade-off analysis of policy options. It argues that such proposals construct a false binary between climate harm and geoengineering and rely on a consequentialist ‘lesser evil’ argument. In both respects the discourse fails to anticipate interaction effects between potential responses. Further, the discourse frames solar geoengineering as an ‘exceptional response’ to climate risk, yet paradoxically advocates evaluation using technocratic utilitarian risk calculus, rather than engaging with the securitisation and pre-emption implied by exceptional or emergency circumstances. The paper then discusses the implications of these shortcomings for anticipatory and precautionary governance of solar geoengineering, suggesting practical methodological improvements to risk-risk analysis. It concludes by making a case for rigorous consideration of the risks and benefits of a wider range of exceptional responses to climate change, effective anticipatory governance for any exceptional response, and the urgent development of broad public participation mechanisms for shaping responses to growing climate risk.