Betting on climate failure, these investors could earn billions - POLITICO
Philip Bogdonoff
Philip Bogdonoff
That’s why he’s invested more than $1 million in Stardust Solutions, a leading solar geoengineering firm that’s developing a system to reduce warming by enveloping the globe in reflective particles.
Murphy is among a new wave of investors who are putting millions of dollars into emerging companies that aim to limit the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth — while also potentially destabilizing weather patterns, food supplies and global politics. He has a degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering and views global warming not just as a human and political tragedy, but as a technical challenge with profitable solutions.
That pool of funders includes Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, and four other investment groups that have more than $1 billion of assets under management.
Of the total amount invested in the geoengineering sector, $75 million went to Stardust, or nearly 65 percent. The U.S.-Israeli startup is developing reflective particles and the means to spray and monitor them in the stratosphere, some 11 miles above the planet’s surface.
At least three other climate-intervention companies have also raked in at least $5 million.
Dr. Soumitra Das
Philip — thank you for sharing this very interesting, informative, and highly relevant article.
The roughly $116 million in venture capital investment in "solar geoengineering" may be small compared to funding for many far less consequential technologies, but it is nonetheless a meaningful signal. To me, it reflects a growing acceptance among some investors that:
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Climate impacts will be severe in the near future.
Mitigation alone will not be sufficient to manage near-term risks; and
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There is a perceived large commercial opportunity tied to climate interventions.
This likely also signals more investment to come.
I view this as a positive development for several reasons. These actors can often attract faster attention from policymakers, governments, and multilateral institutions than NGOs or academia acting alone—potentially accelerating social and political legitimacy around difficult but necessary conversations. They can also drive faster engineering development and deployable capabilities than publicly funded research typically allows. Importantly, their entry into the space will also force deeper engagement from NGOs, academia, and multilateral institutions on guardrails, governance frameworks, and oversight—where groups like HPAC have a critical role to play.
Most people in this space are already familiar with Stardust Solutions, which has received the majority of funding and attention. I don’t have sufficient technical expertise to evaluate their specific approach, but investors putting tens of millions of dollars at risk are unlikely to be doing so casually. One line from the article stood out:
“Stardust and its investors are banking on signing contracts with one or more governments that could deploy its solar geoengineering system by the end of the decade.”
Whether governments ultimately sign such contracts remains uncertain—but I am quite sure these firms will lobby governments and multilateral institutions heavily. Given the current policy paralysis around climate risk, even that pressure itself could be consequential.
Among the other initiatives mentioned, I found Reflect Orbital—and the ideas linked to Elon Musk—particularly intriguing. For disclosure, I previously worked on the Starlink project. With Starlink already operating more than 8,000 satellites—and plans for roughly 34,000 more—I can see how space-based concepts could become technically feasible, at least in principle. I don’t yet know how such ideas would play out or what their impacts might be, but their very discussion signals knowing Sequoia Capital a bit; I can say they are not making these bets lightly.
That said, I would be very interested in learning more about a few fundamental questions:
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How many satellites (or mirrors) would be required to offset ~1°C of warming?
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Is there a credible mechanism to modulate or shut such systems on and off—to enable regional vs. global interventions and manage risks dynamically?
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What are the modeled climate and ecological impacts?
Overall, the convergence of capital, engineering talent, and political attention around climate intervention suggests we are entering a new and much-needed phase of the climate debate. Deep mitigation and carbon dioxide removal remain essential, but we must also be honest that they are not sufficient to manage near-term catastrophic risks. If we are serious about protecting vulnerable populations in the coming decades, we need to engage—carefully, responsibly, and transparently—with rapid cooling options beyond mitigation and CDR.
— Soumitra
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robert...@gmail.com
Soumitra
This is a nicely balanced response. It would indeed be great if the entry of these folk into the geoengineering space did serve to accelerate it along its pathway to full deployment. However, in my usual negative manner, I just want to highlight some of the challenges this initiative is likely to present.
First and foremost I question the ability of modellers to predict, with any credible degree of accuracy and reliability, the local and regional weather impacts of a regionally targetted SRM intervention. The global weather system is driven by complex and quintessentially unpredictable temperature driven pressure gradients. This will be a source of major concern for states worried about others weaponising this technology, or not weaponising but simply not having control over its regional and local impacts. In the International Relations domain where these risks will have to be negotiated, this will be a bonanza for the lawyers and diplomats, who in our anarchic world order are more than likely to talk themselves into a prolonged state of inertia that'll make their failure to grasp decarbonisation pale into insignificance.
A second, and equal concern is the prospect that this entire debate will be controlled by literally a handful of mostly white middle-aged men who are uber-capitalists and Prometheans. Issues of equity will be of no interest to them at all other than in terms of how best they can ignore them while simultaneously avoiding revolution. More inequity, probably accompanied by some violence, is the traditional way of dealing with that.
There are other challenges, but these two are more than big enough to raise concerns about global scale geoengineering being in the control of a small group of wealthy investors.
RobertC
Sev Clarke
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--On Fri, Dec 26, 2025 at 4:57 PM Philip Bogdonoff <pbogd...@gmail.com> wrote:
FYI
Betting on climate failure, these investors could earn billions - POLITICOhttps://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/26/betting-on-climate-failure-investors-could-earn-billions-00677281
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Soumitra Das
Chairman and Executive Director, HCI USAChairman, HCI India
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Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert--So, given your skeptical view of modeling the effects of SRM, despite the models doing quite well in simulating the effects of volcanic eruptions on the climate, I'm wondering if you accept the results of models in their simulations of GHG and tropospheric sulfate effects--which seem to be considered good enough by the elected leaders of the world's nations (save 1 or so) to decide they should be phasing out the global fossil fuel energy system? I do agree that the view of the business leaders is a bit different or split, but most of the world's experts are convinced that the fossil fuel system has to go (even Saudi Arabia's leaders are moving to solar).
Best, Mike
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robert...@gmail.com
Hi Mike
I've read your message several times now and can't decide to what extent it's driven by my lack of clarity and/or your perverse interpretation. I can't do much about the latter, but let me try and make my points a little more clearly.
Firstly, I was responding to the involvement of private equity in the funding of SRM R&D. I referred to models predicting local and regional weather, not climate. I was not talking about what 'experts' are or are not convinced about. I was talking about International Relations rhetoric, not science-based decision making.
Second, your response implies that the decision by most of the world's elected leaders to phase out fossil fuels is based on their confidence in climate models. But you also state that 'the view of the business leaders is a bit different' without explaining in what way and what relevance this has to the whether or not climate models are a determining factor in climate policymaking.
Premise 1.
More than 30 years of the UNFCCC demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that climate science is not a determining factor in international climate policy making, except to the extent to which it is ignored. Emissions continue to increase. CO30 was still unable to agree to the phaseout of fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia's investments in solar PV are not evidence of their willingness to phase out fossil fuels anytime soon.
Corollary 1
It follows from Premise 1 that so-called climate 'experts' have failed to impress upon policymakers and society more generally, the nature of the risks posed by climate change sufficiently to provoke appropriate timely and effective global policy responses. I am unaware of evidence that suggests that that lack of effective influence is likely to change any time soon. In saying this I need to make it clear that I am not questioning the science, I am simply noting that climate scientists have yet to become effective agents of policy change. I will not expand on this here but I refer you to my previous comments about the work of David Collingridge regarding the science/policy interface.
Premise 2
In the current anarchic world order of independent nation-states, collective action is not the default position. Responses to all collective action problems must be negotiated. National leaders are obliged to pursue what they consider, from time to time, to be the narrow interests of their citizens ahead of the wider interests of humanity or nature. National leaders are not answerable to humanity or nature, even though they may be responsible for their nation's impacts on them. With very few exceptions, national leaders' primary concern is the retention of political power, either by themselves personally or by the political group of which they are a member. This is, in part, because it is only with that power that they can directly change national policy outcomes or influence international policy outcomes.
Corollary 2
To the extent that world leaders consider their national interests threatened by adherence to the international norms of the post-WWII rules-based world order, those norms will be sacrificed, without much concern for any negative impacts on other nations. It also follows that anything that might threaten their hold on power is likely to be regarded as a threat to their national interests.
Premise 3
Climate models predict climate not weather. Yet it's the weather, what's going on outside your window, that causes the harm. It is important not to confuse an intellectual concept with reality. Climate is an intellectual concept. Weather is a reality. If that distinction seems hard to grasp, consider unfairness and torture. People are not harmed by unfairness but by the manner in which it manifests, in this example, by torture. I don't believe there are any laws against 'unfairness' but there are loads against a whole range of ways in which people are victimised by others' specific acts of unfairness. So it is with climate and weather.
Corollary 3
When International Relations actors begin negotiating collective action agreements to govern SRM, they will seek to protect those they represent from any harms the SRM might cause. This requires the harms to be attributed to the SRM. But the harms, if any, will be caused directly or indirectly by weather events and it is not possible to claim that a specific weather event was caused by climate change, only that it was made more likely or more severe than it would have been but for the climate change. Quantifying the extent to which the harm suffered was greater by virtue of climate change will be impossible to do objectively because it will always depend on unknowable and unquantifiable counterfactuals. This is not to say that an international agreement could not be reached, but it s to recognise that it will not based solely on 'the science'.
This challenge also applies to concerns about the weaponisation of SRM. Whether these are real or imagined is irrelevant because there mere fact that can be imagined is sufficient for international policymakers to be concerned about them. Again, the issue here is not about whether an international agreement on the weaponisation of SRM could be reached, but rather the uncertainty and delay that its negotiation would introduce and its impact on the actual business of developing and deploying SRM in a timely, effective and safe manner.
Glib suggestions that models are doing quite well in simulating climate effects of volcanic eruptions and that world leaders consider the evidence from climate models sufficiently compelling to have decided that fossil fuel energy should be phased out, are reckless oversimplifications of a very complex reality. Moreover, this will not be made any easier by profit-seekers manoeuvring to control the delivery of technologies intended to deliver humanity and the rest of life with whom we share Earth from the harmful impacts of our overconsumption. Sadly, Mike, I fear that when your brief response is unpicked, it becomes apparent why climate scientists have been so extraordinarily ineffective at changing policy. You are truth seekers with a touching but dangerously naive belief that the truth is a sufficient driver of change.
I'll leave you with a comment by the nineteenth century English man of letters, Oscar Wilde, whose remark about those that know the price of everything but the value of nothing, was levelled at the 'cynics' of his day,. It applies with equal force to today's venture capitalists, among many others.
Robert
Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert--On the issue of what models project, I presume you realize that the model simulations are of the evolution of the weather that, while not a deterministic forecast out into the future, it is hoped have the statistics of what the weather would have at the time of the projection. It is just that what is most often presented are the averages across the statistics of the weather, so the change in the average over a decade or more. I agree with you that the impacts of importance often result from particular weather situations and have been arguing for the analyses and presentations of the results focus on much more than the average of conditions over a decade or more, etc. Now, not all analyses focus on the averages--there are a number that look at changes in the statistics, so an increasing or decreasing likelihood of this or that.
Thus, I am a bit confused by your second paragraph (the one starting with "Firstly"). The models can be used and have some success in projecting the changes in the statistics of various weather conditions and do so on a regional basis. It is all in how the analyses are done--it does not just have to be the averages over a decade or more that is what is viewed as the "climate." While I have not done these analyses, my sense of the model results with SAI is that they do not show unusual weather as the envelope of the weather statistics is moved to cooler conditions by aerosol injection. Thus, I think your remarks seem to be raising an unjustified concern, which is what prompted my remarks, naive as they may be on the role that model results are or are not playing in decision making.
Mike
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robert...@gmail.com
But Mike, you're missing the point. You may well be right that the models do a good job, I have no reason to doubt that that that's true, but it doesn't inevitably follow from that that the policy regimes that emerge (or don't) based on those models will be fit for purpose. So long as scientists remain imprisoned in the straitjackets of their evidence and reasoning, they'll fail to have their essential truths and insights reflected in timely and effective policy. Most people are not scientists and don't think like scientists. Scientists won't realise their full potential until they learn to bridge that gap. Just banging on about their truths and the evidence isn't enough.
Robert
Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert--You keep over stretching the simple point that I was making about global modeling capabilities being capable of indicating changes in the weather and on a regional basis. I don't disagree that model results may well not be enough to be convincing on the policy aspects.
I would agree, of course, that your WTF model can't project the weather or regional changes, nor the interannual variability, etc.
Mike
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robert...@gmail.com
Hi Mike
I'd be interested to examine ways in which climate models could be used to support the implementation of international agreements governing SRM, specifically in regard to the determination of compensation claims where a nation claims to have been harmed by another's SRM activity. How would you see that working in practice?
You're right about WTF's limitations. These are generic limitations of all SCMs. They just define the realm of applicability for the models. For rhetorical purposes in persuading people that climate change is perhaps more of a problem than they might have thought, SCMs do a better job than more complex ESMs because they focus attention on a small number of core variables. This makes it easier for the non-expert to understand what's going on and what's important. The deliberate simplification in SCMs is a communication issue, not a science one.
RobertC
Michael MacCracken
Hi Robert--On your first point, I think it will be very difficult to provide a convincing argument of adverse SRM consequences, though I do admit that lawyers are quite clever. I say this because whatever SRM does is going to be less than what the GHGs are doing--that is, are within the context of what GHGs are doing, and what the GHGs are doing is causing larger and larger anomalies and without SRM it will be likely that extremes are worse. And given the uncertainties associated with the GHG influences, I would think the SRM uncertainties will be, in a sense, on top of that. While the difference in the average changes between GHGs only and GHG plus SRM will hopefully be evident when averaging over multiple years, getting at the differences in weather events will likely be tougher and, assuming things are going well, will probably be lessening the incidence of adverse weather. Thus, it would seem to me that the attribution analyses are most likely to focus on the GHGs as the primary driving factor and the SRM effects as somewhat cancelling and perhaps in rare circumstances as a slight amplifier of a baseline extreme impact of GHGs.
It would just seem quite odd to me if the argument is that SRM caused an adverse to a baseline effect that was natural plus GHG induced changes--and if so, how that baseline would be defined in a precise enough way to really say that what SRM caused was adverse on top of that.
I'd be interested in your thoughts about how a nation might thus make a convincing claim.
Best, Mike