It's July 2033. The stratospheric aerosol injection has been running for six weeks. The wealthy nations' coalition announced deployment in April, informing the world they'd reached "consensus among participating states" and would begin operations in May. They announced their decision.
The Inuit Circumpolar Council had spent three years preparing for this moment, ever since UNEA-6 failed to establish binding governance in 2024. They built technical capacity, hired atmospheric scientists, documented how even small precipitation shifts would affect caribou migration and seal hunting patterns. They submitted formal objections to every international body that would listen.
The objections went nowhere. The coalition's legal position was simple: no binding international framework prohibited SAI deployment, existing environmental treaties didn't explicitly cover stratospheric aerosols, and the climate emergency justified immediate action. By the time objections worked through various UN committees, the first aircraft were already flying.
The Inuit Circumpolar Council can document exactly how they're being harmed—precipitation shifts, ecosystem impacts, food security losses—but documentation doesn't stop deployment when frameworks fail.
The community monitoring data shows the predictions coming true. Spring rainfall timing has shifted by ten days. The elders say the ice is forming differently, in patterns they don't recognize—later, which everyone expected from climate change, and in configurations they've never seen. The caribou that usually pass through in late August haven't arrived. No one knows if they're delayed or if they've found a different route.
The wealthy nations' modeling predicted exactly this. Their technical assessments, released after deployment started, acknowledged that Arctic precipitation patterns would shift. They calculated that global temperature reduction justified regional disruption. The coalition's cost-benefit analysis assigned monetary values to infrastructure protection in wealthy nations and compared them to food security impacts in Arctic communities. The infrastructure won.
Pacific Island nations are navigating similar arithmetic. Vanuatu's government released data showing SAI deployment reduced wet season rainfall by 7%, threatening freshwater supplies on low-lying atolls. The coalition's response was to offer $50 million in desalination infrastructure funding, solving the problem they created by making Pacific communities dependent on technology they don't control.
African nations face starker calculations. Sahel rainfall has dropped 9% since deployment began, affecting 200 million people dependent on rainfed agriculture. The coalition offered adaptation funding through existing climate finance mechanisms—the same bureaucratic processes that have failed to deliver promised resources for a decade. Meanwhile, the aerosols keep spreading.
The Inuit Circumpolar Council learned that technical capacity without decision-making authority means understanding exactly how you're being harmed. They can document the precipitation shifts, model the ecosystem impacts, calculate the food security losses. They can present evidence to international bodies, file objections with environmental treaty organizations, appeal to human rights frameworks. The aircraft keep flying.
The coalition maintains that deployment is temporary, that they'll adjust injection rates based on monitoring data, that affected communities will be compensated for documented harms. "Temporary" has no end date. "Adjustment" happens on the coalition's timeline. "Compensation" requires proving causation in international courts that take years to render decisions.
The mother doesn't know how to explain that the people who changed the sky never asked permission, that the technical assessments her community spent years developing were considered input, that the framework everyone talked about building never materialized because the wealthy nations decided they didn't need one.
The Inuit technical team continues monitoring. They document every precipitation shift, every ecosystem disruption, every food security impact. The data might matter someday, in some future legal proceeding or international negotiation. For now, it quantifies their knowledge: their climate is being altered by decisions made in capitals they've never visited, for reasons that prioritize infrastructure over food systems, by institutions that promised consultation and delivered notification.
The contrails keep spreading. The monitoring continues. And mothers teach daughters which weather patterns to trust and which ones might change without warning, because that's the adaptation available when frameworks fail—learning to navigate risks you didn't consent to, in a climate someone else is engineering.