Should We Deploy Solar Geoengineering to Cool the Planet?

• We are not on track to meet 1.5°C or even 2°C; stratospheric aerosol injection is the only technology that could meaningfully reduce temperatures within years, not decades; responsible research is necessary to understand whether and how it might be used if needed.
• The research community is not proposing deployment but field trials to understand atmospheric behavior; blocking outdoor experiments on precautionary grounds is epistemically self-defeating — we can't know if it works without testing it.
• We already geoengineer inadvertently through aviation contrails and shipping sulfur emissions; intentional and controlled understanding is better than inadvertent and unmanaged intervention in a system we're already perturbing.

Debater: To be announced

• Solar geoengineering creates classic moral hazard: once even the prospect of a technological fix exists, the political pressure to cut emissions — already weak — will collapse further; we are not deciding between geoengineering and emissions reductions but between emissions reductions and geoengineering plus continued emissions.
• Stratospheric aerosol injection will change precipitation patterns in ways that benefit some regions and devastate others — monsoon-dependent populations in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are the most likely losers, and they have no voice in the decision to proceed.
• Termination shock is the existential risk: once started, solar geoengineering must be maintained indefinitely; any discontinuation causes rapid unmasked warming far faster than natural climate change — committing to geoengineering is committing to it forever, under every political system that follows.

Debater: To be announced