sophie's choice comparison

Gardiner’s Geoengineering piece “Arming the Future” criticizes Crutzen's favored proposal that we should be exploring the possibility of injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere in order to suppress global warming by blocking the incoming solar radiation and modifying the Earth’s albedo. Gardiner argues that making choices relying on such technological fixes as geoengineering would not solve the underlying problem but treat the symptom. He argues that this type of solution is just as reckless as the attitude that got us into the problem in the first place. Furthermore, he seems to believe that geoengineering imposes huge risks on others and further alienates us from nature.
I wholeheartedly believe most of Gardiner’s piece in terms of our blindness to the underlying problem and our arrogance to think we can control the Earth; however, there is one point in his paper that deducts from his overall argument. He details additional liabilities and marring evils to geoengineering. He makes the point that he agrees that we have a moral responsibility to future generations with geoengineering but that we also have a moral responsibility to pursue better climate policies. This is an example of Sophie’s Choice. He discusses Sophie’s Choice as an illustration that can be applied to the geoengineering debate. Sophie had a choice; one or the other. She had to choose between saving one of her children or submitting both to be killed by the Nazis. There was no in between. She made a clear choice in a black and white decision. However, in the geoengineering debate there is plenty of gray area, which makes this a poor reference and argument that deducts from Gardiner’s argument.
Geoengineering is not something that we have to do cold turkey. Why are we suggesting that it is one or the other? To do it or not? Sophie’s Choice is not a good comparison as it was only a decision with two choices. Crutzen favored exploring the possibility of geoengineering with sulfate aerosols. Therefore, with more research of geoengineering, there could be many ways in which we pursue this option so its not a do it or not solution.
Because climate change is a complex and intricate problem, there is no black and white. Thus, it might be our best option to benefit ourselves from technical fixes, like geoengineering, in the transition for a change to even occur. Why can’t we at least investigate whether geoengineering could be one of those fixes? Geoengineering might have the potential to be a good way to bring rising temperatures under short-term control and it could also allow us to wait for the longer-term fix of cutting carbon emissions. Here is a gray area that is unlike Sophie’s Choice in terms of being one or the other. Therefore, it seems as though we have a moral obligation, one that is very different from Sophie, to consider geoengineering through more research so to better understand the gray area.