Stephen M. Gardiner (SM) is Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Professor of the Human Dimensions of the Environment at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he is also Director of the Program on Ethics. He is the author of A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford 2011), and co-author of Debating Climate Ethics (Oxford 2016) and Dialogues on Climate Justice, a book for students and general readers (Routledge 2023). His edited books include The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics (Oxford 2025), The Ethics of “Geoengineering” the Global Climate (Routledge 2020), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (Oxford 2016), and Climate Ethics: Essential Readings (Oxford 2010). He is the author of over fifty articles and book chapters, including in general philosophy journals, such as Ethics, Ethics and International Affairs, Journal of Political Philosophy, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, and Philosophy and Public Affairs, and in specialist environmental journals such as Climatic Change, Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, and Ethics, Policy and the Environment. He has been engaged in research on the ethics of solar geoengineering since 2007. He is the lead author of the Tollgate Principles for governing geoengineering.
Plenary 5, Friday 4 July 10.10-12.30: Geoengineering and the concept of responsible climate intervention
Climate Desperation, Ethics and Geoengineering’
What if, in the face of catastrophic impacts, the most vulnerable countries initiate solar geoengineering (SE), or beg the richer, more technically sophisticated countries to do it? Wouldn’t SE then be not only ethically permissible but also ethically required?” Such questions are intended to be rhetorical: it is assumed to be obvious that the appeals of the desperate would justify SE. Desperation becomes a trump card in the policy discourse. This paper argues that the ethics of SE is morally complex in ways unappreciated by simple appeals to desperation, and in some contexts the desperation argument may even be morally horrifying.