Billionaire Interest in Solar Geoengineering Divides Climate Scientists

Billionaires including Bill Gates, George Soros, and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz have expressed interest in "solar geoengineering," a controversial idea that involves cooling the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space. While there are growing calls to accelerate research into solar radiation management (SRM), hundreds of climate scientists are firmly against it, warning that the increasing normalization of SRM technologies as a possible climate fix could have dangerous and unexpected consequences. The United Nations Environment Program has confirmed that SRM is not yet ready for large-scale deployment and highlighted that there is no substitute for an urgent and massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, "which must remain the global priority."