Global Climate Governance in the Light of Geoengineering : A Shot in the Dark?

Solar radiation management (SRM), as one form of geoengineering, has been proposed as a last exit strategy to address global warming. Even though SRM is expected to be cheap, it may be risky and associated with high collateral damages. We analyze how SRM affects equilibrium mitigation strategies, the governance architecture of a climate agreement and whether and how signatories to a climate agreement can avoid that non-signatories deploy SRM. We show under which conditions the threat to deploy geoengineering can stabilize a large climate agreement. Results are derived in a cartel formation game and all qualitative conclusions are confirmed in a repeated game framework