Once again, the heatwave. We’re being cooked alive. Millions of people are crammed into concrete blocks, trapped in sprawling megacities where the only relief is to plunge their poisoned bodies into the murky waters of a polluted river. Around these cities, data centers are multiplying, draining water supplies that are already running dry. These episodes have become our new normal. But there is no need to worry: in their air-conditioned laboratories, scientists, engineers, and other white-coated sorcerer’s apprentices are working around the clock. They are relentlessly pursuing their quest: developing yet another magic fix (or to put it more accurately, technological fix) to teach us how to live comfortably in a world engulfed by flames. Their newest achievement is pushing the boundary between science fiction and reality.
With a name as enchanting as the fairy dust it promises, the Israeli-American company Stardust Solutions has been making waves: as early as this year, it plans to release particles into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and, perhaps, cool the planet. On its website, the company presents this madness as another triumph of industrial civilization - another demonstration of humanity’s technological genius and its supposed ability to tame nature and push beyond the limits of what is possible:
“Throughout human history, we have managed and shaped our environment, building a world capable of supporting billions of people. Humanity has healed the ozone hole, eradicated diseases, and created systems that have transformed the world.”
According to this glorious narrative, the climate is simply another technical problem waiting to be solved. One more challenge to overcome between two industrial breakthroughs. Simple as that.
Do these words make your skin crawl? Does this project terrify you to the point that you want to reject it outright? That would be the natural reaction. One might even expect it from any reasonable person, starting with the authorities of industrial society: our dear politicians and their scientific allies, backed and funded by the state. Yet what concerns them is not so much the danger posed by solar geoengineering itself, but the fact that a private company, backed by $75 million from Silicon Valley, could upend the established order and race far ahead of publicly funded research.
They whimper in unison: “But there is a moratorium! There are regulations! There are safeguards!” Our response is simple: there were regulations for nuclear power, AI, and GMOs too. The insatiable appetite of a system designed to expand and conquer new frontiers drives its own endless rush forward. This race for technological progress will always end up breaking through the rules meant to contain it. Just look at the sky: one sociopathic technocrat was able to impose Starlink on the entire planet, filling the heavens with 10,000 satellites.
So who is to blame? Silicon Valley? Billionaires? The state of Israel? No. The cause is systemic, and those who shape industrial society will never truly oppose such innovations. In the United Kingdom, the government is already funding its own £60 million research program. In the United States, the federal government is following the same path, funding research into “climate intervention technologies.” In France, the national research agency CNRS is advocating “geoengineering based on responsible research.” Public or private, tech bros or governments, left or right - they are all part of the same headlong rush forward. Technological innovation has become an end in itself. The survival of the living world is sacrificed along the way.
So if they will not do it, then we must. We must put an end to this relentless rush that is driving us straight into the wall. We must stop waiting for salvation from political and scientific institutions trapped within the very industrial logic they claim to regulate. Stop defending “responsible science” when its main purpose is to make the unacceptable seem acceptable: a destabilized climate that they are trying to fix by sprinkling particles into the atmosphere, so that they can continue destroying a planet that is becoming uninhabitable. Perhaps the truly responsible thing to do is simply to keep our feet on the ground, face reality as it is, and choose the only path left: to organize ourselves to put an end to the technological system.
