After close to two years of research and development, including initial field experiments, it was announced in late October that the Israeli-American start-up Stardust Solutions closed a $60 million funding round, led by venture capital investors from Silicon Valley.
The company also began secretly lobbying the US Congress, signaling an escalation from technical work to political influence.
However, Stardust is not just any company. It is a for-profit startup developing proprietary aerosols, dispersion technology, and monitoring capabilities for stratospheric aerosol injection, a form of solar geoengineering (also called solar radiation modification or SRM).
The sky is not a testing ground
Solar geoengineering is a set of approaches designed to reflect sunlight and cool the planet – planetary-scale interventions with far-reaching potential risks and benefits. In a world increasingly overwhelmed by droughts, floods, heatwaves, and food system instability, SRM may one day be able to help reduce the worst climate impacts, but it may also exacerbate some harms.
Alongside deep mitigation, adaptation and carbon removal, well-governed research to understand what SRM can and cannot do will be essential to help decision-makers navigate the decades ahead. The sky is not a testing ground for unregulated startups, nor is it a domain for private ownership. Private geoengineering comes at a cost, and that cost is public.
Stardust has offered no public data, independent oversight, or evidence of community consultation. Yet it is charging ahead with a “do first, ask later” approach to one of the most challenging and controversial spaces in climate technology.
Their website makes vague promises about safety and integrity, but there is no information on where their work is taking place, who is advising them, or what standards guide them. All while framing their work as a public-interest effort to stabilize Earth’s temperature to protect communities and ecosystems.
You have 65.29% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
