# The Buying Time Argument within the Solar Radiation Management Discourse
## 2 Building Blocks of BTA
### Some BTA Proposals  
BTA advocates a preventive deployment to avoid adverse impacts in the first place. The general BTA idea has been outlined nicely by [PERSON] in 2015:  
\"The most common alternative [to the emergency framing--FN/KO], known as 'peak shaving', would entail application of SAI or some other type of solar geoengineering to reduce the worst effects of peak GHG emissions while implementing an ambitious program of mitigation and adaptation. One variant of peak shaving would involve a gradual ramp-up of solar geoengineering until a modest plateau is reached; as emissions declined, so too would injections of stratospheric aerosols. Another potential approach would utilize SRM on a regional scale, for example in the Arctic, in order to address specific, localized damages from climate change.\" ([PERSON] 2015) [14] (p. 4f). \"With the help of SAI, the worst impacts of temperature rise could be averted on global or regional scales (peak shaving). It is stated that SAI should be limited in time and should be related to long-term abatement trajectories. The 'while' indicates that abatement must be done in parallel. SAI technologies, then, might \"be used as a stop-gap measure to buy time for a societal transformation to a carbon-free economy, shaving off the worst effects of climate change along the way\" ([PERSON] 2014) [18] (p. 5). \"An optimal outcome would seem to be that mitigation can be accomplished relatively rapidly and relatively easily, such that geoengineering might need to be implemented for only several decades in order to shave off the peak change in climate and increase the likelihood that the most adverse and irreversible environmental and societal consequences will not be triggered.\" ([PERSON] 2009) [19] (p. 11). Here, the time span of SAI is specified to some decades. The Royal Society (2011) formulates the BTA similarly:  
\"The length of time required to phase out fossil fuels, and to modify the various global human systems contributing to climate change, may be longer than the time available to avoid serious adverse impacts. In this case, SRM might have the potential to temporarily stabilize the global temperature and its associated effects, while providing time to reduce GHG emissions\" [11] (p. 19). Several authors have taken the same route of argument. \"A popular framing is that sunlight reflection could 'buy time' for decarbonizing the economy and allowing greenhouse gas concentrations to stabilize and then come down.\" ([PERSON] 2013) [20] (p. 2). Note that scientists, as [PERSON], who are critical of emergency framing, see BTA differently. Another instance of BTA is this:  
\"Some geoengineering measures appear to offer humanity to shave the peaks off CO2 driven emissions and avoid tipping points. [PERSON] (2006) argues that sulphate particle injection might be used to 'buy time' in reducing CO2 emissions. This potential to shave peaks would go some way to addressing the concern voiced by some that temperature rises over the next century may exceed irreversible tipping elements' in the climate system leading to drastic changes with potentially catastrophic impacts on human and natural systems.\" ([PERSON] 2013) [21] (p. 8). These collected quotes are paradigmatic, as they indicate that BTA circles around the same basic idea. Ideas, however, always rest on presuppositions; they bring about conceptual commitments, and they have implications. Following [PERSON] [22] and [PERSON] [23], we regard the analysis of presuppositions, implications, and commitments as being one crucial task of philosophical inquiry. Such inquiry is now bestowed on the BTA. BTA assumes that unmitigated climate change poses paramount risks to the entire planet. Thus, BTA is incoherent with climate change denial. BT strategies are temporary middle-range strategies being connected both to long-term abatement and adaptation strategies. This is to say that SAI should be supplementary to abatement, but should not be seen as a substitute.