Susan DeRoy

I support the bill to stop any solar radiation modification (solar geoengineering in our state. SRM (e.g., injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight) only masks warming—it doesn’t reduce atmospheric CO2 levels or address the root causes, such as ocean acidification. If SRM were deployed at a meaningful scale to offset substantial warming and then suddenly stopped (due to war, political collapse, funding failure, technical breakdown, international conflict, or even a natural disaster damaging infrastructure), global temperatures could rebound extremely rapidly—potentially several degrees Celsius within years or even months in extreme scenarios. This rapid “whiplash” warming would be far more damaging than the gradual warming we’re experiencing now because: • Ecosystems, agriculture, and human societies have little time to adapt to such fast changes. • It could trigger cascading effects like intensified extreme weather, massive crop failures, accelerated ice sheet loss, and severe disruptions to monsoons and rainfall patterns that billions depend on. Even proponents acknowledge this as a serious risk, though some argue redundant systems could mitigate it. Critics (including many climate scientists, NGOs, and reports from groups like Climate Analytics and UNEP assessments) view it as an unacceptably dangerous gamble: SRM creates a new, fragile dependency where stopping becomes politically/technically harder than continuing, locking humanity into indefinite, escalating intervention while CO2 keeps accumulating underneath. In short, voting against SRM deployment (or premature large-scale experiments) avoids creating a system that could turn a solvable emissions problem into an irreversible, high-stakes commitment with a catastrophic failure mode built in. Other major concerns exist (moral hazard delaying real emissions cuts, unpredictable regional climate shifts, governance nightmares in a multipolar world), but termination shock stands out as a uniquely compelling physical reason to reject it outright. The safest path remains aggressive decarbonization, not gambling on planetary-scale atmospheric tinkering