An Israeli company called Stardust Solutions revealed details last week about their plan to cool the planet by blotting out the sun using microscopic particles — a plan they intend to sell to governments.
Solar Engineering, as it is called, and the broader idea to technologically modulate global temperatures, have been around for a long time.
For most of that time these ideas have not been taken very seriously by those calling the shots. But in recent years climate interventions have been slowly making their way into the mainstream as greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures continue to rise.
In a way, it is an attractive idea. Spraying tiny particles 16km into the atmosphere by specially-designed high-altitude aeroplanes to reflect sunlight back into space can be done at relatively low cost (around €10bn a year).
No large-scale tests have ever been carried out, but we know it is possible.
