From Greek mythology’s Icarus, whose wax wings melted after he flew too close to the sun, to Goethe’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” who unleashed forces he couldn’t control, our culture warns us that hubris rarely ends well. 

A California startup wants us to “work together to cool our planet for future generations.” Make Sunsets seeks to combat climate change by reflecting sunlight (albedo enhancement) through releasing a balloon loaded with sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The plan is for the balloon to burst, scattering sulfur dioxide particles that then form clouds of dust that will block the sunlight, thereby cooling the planet. Serving as a role model is Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, whose 1991 volcanic eruption “cooled the Earth by 0.9°F or 0.5°C for over a year,” the company notes on its website.   

Depending on the altitude and latitude at which they are released, Make Sunsets’ dust clouds can stay in the sky from six months to three years. The solar geoengineering company has raised more than $1 million from investors and sold $100,000 worth of “cooling credits” this year, The Washington Post reports. Make Sunsets has sprayed just over 240 pounds of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere this year — far short of the millions of tons needed to block enough sunlight to lower temperatures.   

Standing in the way of wider application are skeptical governments. “Tennessee, Louisiana, and Florida have banned the practice, and further bans have been proposed in 34 other U.S. states, at the federal level, and in Mexico,” the Post notes. The Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates sulfur dioxide as a criteria air pollutant under the Clean Air Act, acknowledges that it is investigating Make Sunsets.   

“Geoengineering, weather modification, stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening … the list goes on where people have questions,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told The Daily Caller in early December.  “And my position is that they deserve answers.” 

Aside from EPA’s concerns about a technology whose centerpiece is the injection of vast amounts of a criteria pollutant into the stratosphere, there are other reasons to be worried about solar geoengineering. What if the technology actually succeeded in blocking sunlight?   

A 2018 study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution explored how the introduction of solar geoengineering, also known as solar radiation management (SRM), could affect biodiversity. The type of solar geoengineering it investigated involved injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, which would form a protective veil around the Earth, reflecting sunlight and cooling the planet. 

“Aerosols have a limited lifetime in the stratosphere and would need to be released at regular time intervals in order to be effective,” Carbon Brief explains. “If the release of aerosols were suddenly stopped, global temperatures could rapidly rise again.” Many species would be unable to cope with rapidly changing environmental conditions, study author professor Alan Robock of Rutgers University told Carbon Brief: 

“The main findings are that any implementation of stratospheric geoengineering could end catastrophically for many species. Although if geoengineering were ever done, it would not make sense to abruptly end it, there are credible scenarios where this might happen. Might society ever take that risk?” 

Geoengineering, along with never-ending lawsuits, has become the Plan B for alarmists who have seen their fortunes wane, as the public’s appetite for climate-related sacrifices diminishes.  But the risks of geoengineering are real and are being pursued in the absence of any compelling reason.

“Satellite data from the past four decades confirm a significant growth in vegetation over as much as half the globe,” Vijay Jayaraj, a science and research associate at the CO2 Coalition, points out. “During this period, atmospheric CO2 increased from about 350 parts per million (ppm) to more than 400 ppm.” The result is the “longer growing seasons of a modestly warmer climate paired with higher levels of CO2. This is hardly the making of a catastrophe that some would have us believe.”   

Starving the Earth of sunlight and reducing atmospheric levels of life-sustaining CO2 would open a Pandora’s box of troubles that threaten both wildlife and agricultural productivity. As the low crop yields and resulting famine during the Little Ice Age (ca. 1300–1850) document, there is nothing desirable about a cooler planet. 

Efforts to promote global cooling by fiddling with the stratosphere will backfire on far more than just the misguided souls who set the scheme in motion.  

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D., is a senior policy analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). 

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