It was once the stuff of science fiction. It is still the stuff of crank conspiracy theories about the vapor trails that streak behind airplanes in the sky. But as the planet warms and efforts to curb fossil fuel demand take a back seat to geopolitics and the data center boom, scientists and environmentalists are, as I have previously told you in this newsletter, embracing the need to at least study the potential to artificially cool the planet by spraying reflective aerosols into the atmosphere.
The U.S.-Israeli geoengineering startup Stardust Solutions is making the world’s most significant attempt at establishing a commercial enterprise for that eventual possibility. So far, the company has sold investors, raising $60 million last year.
Now it’s looking to sell the rest of us. Today Stardust is putting out two papers — one, a detailed statement of ethics and principles; the other a technical framework for how the firm believes its technology could be safely tested — meant to start a public conversation about its potential role in any future geoengineering program. I got an exclusive first look at both documents for The Atlantic.
“The way we see the requirements paper is that it’s trying to answer the ‘what’ question — what will it take for this to be safe and controlled. The Guiding Principles document answers the ‘how’ question — how should we conduct this work in a manner that is responsible,” Stardust CEO Yanai Yedvab told me in a remark that’s exclusive to this newsletter. “We see these as complementary counterparts, the two foundations of our work.”
The consensus on what was once broadly considered (and still is by many) a dystopian Pandora’s box has shifted in recent years. Where once the concept was dismissed as the premise to films such as Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, even many skeptics now see the value of understanding the technology before a chaotic future moment when that knowledge might be sought out of scrambling necessity. If it could work, better to start researching it now so both the technology and the guardrails are ready when we need them. If all evidence points to disaster, better to sort that out now before some country goes rogue amid a deadly heatwave and unilaterally pursues a geoengineering program.
What role private companies should play in that process, however, is debatable. The documents Stardust put out today are meant to start that conversation. To the company’s credit, it marks a stark shift from how other would-be geoengineering entrepreneurs approached the issue.
As I wrote in The Atlantic:
As a field, although admittedly a small one, geoengineering’s testing strategy has hitherto erred on the side of asking for forgiveness, not permission: In 2012, for instance, a U.S. businessman conducted an experiment that allegedly violated United Nations rules and involved dumping iron sulfate off Canada’s west coast in a bid to speed up carbon absorption. Ten years later, a start-up carried out a rogue experiment in Mexico, sending two weather balloons filled with sulfur dioxide and helium into the air. Stardust told me it has no outdoor tests planned and that it will not conduct any until relevant regulations are established; its framework proposes extensive laboratory testing and computer modeling before beginning small-scale testing that they will “tightly monitor,” eventually scaling up to dispersing the particles across a wider area.
The papers don’t answer perhaps the biggest question skeptics have about Stardust: What is the particle? Yedvab told me the company will release that “in the coming months.” That gradual unveiling may agitate some critics who feel the bar for earning public trust is so high it demands extraordinary transparency. But what to a critic looks like opaqueness looks to a proponent like caution.
“The essence of what we’re doing … is to take what used to be a theoretical concept, a subject primarily of basic research, and bring it down to earth: making this a real-world option,” Yedvab told me.
“We are taking the first step in a new phase of our work. It takes the conversation one major step forward. If you look back at how people related to this technology, they mostly asked abstract questions — are they for it or against it, do they think it’s safe or not — in a very abstract and vague way,” he said. “What we’re doing in these documents is to take the conversation one step further, asking concretely: what will it take for this to be considered safe and conducted responsibly?”
You can read my full story in The Atlantic.
Want to help finance independent, accurate, on-the-ground reporting about energy? Your support for this newsletter makes that work possible. Purchasing a subscription for $6 per month or $60 per year helps a lot more than you think. Thank you so much!
Signing off from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn — a zissen pesach!
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.