“[P]erhaps surprisingly, [geoengineering expert David Keith] says in an interview in The Atlantic that “the most disastrous thing that could happen would be for Barack Obama to stand up tomorrow and announce the creation of a geo-engineering task force with hundreds of millions in funds”. Why, then, does he expressed this modest or even negative view towards funding his own research area? The answers to be found in the concept of moral hazard. This is the phenomenon where, e.g., someone who buys insurance may feel tempted towards riskier behavior than otherwise. In the present case, the moral hazard is that the more attention geoengineering gets (as, for instance, in a high-profile announcement from the American president), the greater will the temptation be for decision-makers and voters to think that there is no big hurry to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, because if worst comes to worst we will surely be able to work things out with in one geoengineering scheme or another.”

— Olle Häggström, Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity, Chapter “Our planet and its biosphere”, pp. 32-33