SRM Statement by the
Global Young

NOTE: This document was completed before I recognized the full significance of artificial intelligence (AI) for humankind's ecological survival.  This recognition occurred in June, 2023.  Once my understanding of this profoundly transformative technology is adequate, I will update the text as required.


 

This statement uses the collective voice of the global young to defend their existential right to planetary cooling through solar radiation management (SRM). It expands on a key point in their statement on ecological survival.

Frank Rotering
April, 2023

We, the young people of the Global South and Global North, assert the following:

  1. Today's temperature anomaly of 1.2°C is already devastating young lives and destroying critical infrastructure;
  2. Prolonging or increasing this anomaly will threaten our very survival;
  3. THE EARTH MUST THEREFORE BE RAPIDLY COOLED;
  4. SRM is the only measure that can achieve this end;
  5. SRM must therefore be urgently deployed at the scale required.

Despite the unmistakable threat to our well-being and survival, social rulers have rejected both global cooling and SRM. 

Given this profoundly unethical stance, we implore any group with the required capacity to initiate emergency SRM as soon as humanly and technically feasible.*

We plead with all concerned and ethical people to ignore the mainstream's SRM falsehoods and support our desperate attempt to survive the ecological crisis.

* We are deeply grateful to Make Sunsets, which has courageously pioneered emergency SRM through its stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) project.

* * * * * *

Because the mainstream has massively distorted SRM, we offer a brief technical explanation to clarify and substantiate the above pleas.  Figure 1 presents the core facts and basic terminology.

Figure 1 - Global warming and global cooling

The above graph depicts the Earth's unsafe temperature over time.  The rise in this temperature is global warming.  The level it has reached is the current temperature anomaly, which can also be seen as the level of global warmthThe required temperature decrease is global cooling.

Ecological damage is caused by three factors: the speed of global warming, the magnitude of the temperature anomaly reached, and the anomaly's duration.  It is therefore represented by the red area and the slope of the global-warming line.  This damage includes the climate, land, and ocean impacts shown.

Given these realities, ecological damage will be minimized, and our survival chances therefore maximized, by removing the temperature anomaly as rapidly as possible. This implies aggressive global cooling.

This objective cannot be achieved through emissions reductions, which would at best slow the warming rate (see here for details).  Removing greenhouse gases (CDR and GGR) is extremely resource-intensive and far too slow for our short-term survival.

SRM is thus the ONLY measure that can salvage our future.

The mainstream rejects this reasoning and conclusion because they threaten the emissions-reductions story.  This story is crucial for the mainstream because it allows business as usual to continue while pacifying the populace with a purported solution.  The nullification was achieved by disseminating the SRM falsehoods mentioned above.  See here for a collection of these deceptive arguments and our critical responses.

 

* * * * * *