In search of weakened resolve: Does climate-engineering awareness decrease individuals’ commitment to mitigation?

Abstract

As climate predictions become more dire, it is increasingly clear that society cannot rely on mitigation alone. In response, climatologists and engineers have been developing climate-engineering technology to directly intervene on the climate through strategies such as solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal. While these technologies have some encouraging features, they also involve risk on many dimensions. One behavioral risk that concerns many observers is the possibility that the prominence of climate-engineering scenarios could decrease the public's commitment to mitigation, a concern variously described as moral hazard or weakened resolve. Across 8 experiments (N = 2514) we tested whether exposure to naturalistic information about climate-engineering technology decreases individuals' commitment to mitigation efforts. We did not find compelling evidence of strong or reliable effects. We draw from motivational theory to contextualize our findings in a literature characterized by mixed results, and we propose new directions for behavioral research on the weakened-resolve/moral-hazard concern with respect to climate engineering.