@article {17766, title = {Strategic implications of counter-geoengineering: Clash or cooperation?}, journal = {Journal of Environmental Economics and Management}, volume = {95}, year = {2019}, pages = {153-177}, abstract = {Solar geoengineering\ has received increasing attention as an\ option\ to temporarily stabilize global temperatures. A key concern is that heterogeneous preferences over the optimal amount of cooling combined with low deployment\ costs\ may allow the country with the strongest\ incentive\ for cooling, the so-called free-driver, to impose a substantial\ externality\ on the rest of the world. We analyze whether the threat of\ counter-geoengineeringtechnologies\ capable of negating the climatic effects of solar geoengineering can overcome the free-driver problem and tilt the game in favour of international cooperation. Our game-theoretical model of countries with\ asymmetric\ preferences allows for a rigorous analysis of the\ strategic interactionsurrounding solar geoengineering and counter-geoengineering. We find that counter-geoengineering prevents the free-driver outcome, but not always with benign effects. The presence of counter-geoengineering leads to either a climate clash where countries engage in a non-cooperative escalation of opposing climate interventions (negative welfare effect), a moratorium treaty where countries commit to abstain from either type of climate intervention (indeterminate welfare effect), or\ cooperative\ deployment of solar geoengineering (positive welfare effect). We show that the outcome depends crucially on the degree of asymmetry in temperature preferences between countries.}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069618305035}, author = {Daniel Heyen and Joshua Horton and Juan Moreno-Cruz} }