“[W]hen you start to reflect light away from the planet, you can easily imagine a chain of events that would extinguish life on earth.”
That’s what David Keith, one of the world’s top solar engineering scientists, told the New Yorker about his own life’s work.
With a warning like that, it’s easy to see why Mexico is banning solar geoengineering. That, and the fact that a start-up called “Make Sunsets” was caught trying to block the sun in Baja California Sur—without permission from, or even notifying, the government!
In the U.S. state legislators are starting to take action. The Atmosphere Protection Act has been introduced in Rhode Island and the Clean Atmosphere Preservation Act in New Hampshire.
Moving in the other direction, the Biden Administration is officially exploring ways to stop sunlight from reaching the Earth, while the European Union has recently floated “a potential international framework” for going forward with research into this misguided and ineffective attempt to address the global climate crisis.
TAKE ACTION: Tell your state legislators to say no to solar geoengineering!
Read more here: Blocking the Sun Is NOT a Climate Solution!
*SAMPLE TEXT TO YOUR STATE LEGISLATORS*
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Dear [Member of State Legislature]
Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen wrote a seminal essay in 2006, asking if injection of sulphate particles (which act to cool the atmosphere because they are reflective, and scatter a small fraction of incoming sunlight back into space) into the stratosphere was a feasible solution to tackling climate change.
Subsequent research suggests that so-called “stratospheric aerosol injection” could cool the global climate by as much as 2°C, but there are many downsides to this intervention.
It might result in temporary global cooling, but it would also disrupt Asian and African monsoon systems that are the water supply of billions of people.
Injection of sulphate particles into the stratosphere leads to ozone destruction and increased UV radiation, which damages human health and the Earth’s ecosystems, for example killing plankton near ocean surfaces.
Stratospheric aerosol injection would do nothing to combat the underlying causes of global warming. Greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise, causing ocean acidification, and the impacts of acid rain could be intensified.
If stratospheric aerosol injection were implemented and then stopped, “termination shock” would ensue. Atmospheric temperatures would rebound by as much as 5 degrees centigrade in a few decades.
Now is the time to take a stand against stratospheric aerosol injection and other forms of solar radiation modification.
State legislators in Rhode Island have introduced the Atmosphere Protection Act. Similar legislation should be considered across the country.
Learn more at https://www.handsoffmotherearth.org or https://www.solargeoeng.org.
The only tried-and-true climate solution with multiple benefits and no downside is regenerative organic agriculture.
Learn more at RegenerationInternational.org.
Thank you!
[Your Name]