Using geoengineering to mitigate climate change’s effects is an alarming prospect, but there are no non-terrifying paths forward through the crisis. Our civilization’s greenhouse emissions will continue to affect the atmosphere for centuries to come, and we’re in the middle of a mass extinction. As I said, terrifying.

There’s no single “first cause” of this disaster, and thus there can be no single solution. But one thing is absolutely certain: the business-as-usual approach, which brought us to this point, must be rejected.

Humanity needs to work together, putting the long-term survival of our species above short-term profit and self-interest. For all its potential hazards, solar geoengineering will never be as dangerously uncontrolled an experiment as the multi-century project called industrial civilization.

Warren Senders

West Medford