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Why Consider the Planetary Sunshade?
Escalating climate impacts, and increasing risk of catastrophic tipping points, will drive political will for climate action. Reducing emissions to zero can stop the problem from getting worse, and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would eventually reverse the greenhouse effect. In the meantime, reflecting sunlight is the only other variable to impact the Earth’s global temperature.
Why Now?
Climate disruption is an existential threat. At the same time, the capability to build a planetary sunshade is arriving faster than the governance to oversee it.
The capability to build terawatt-scale data centers in space is the same capability needed to build a planetary sunshade. SpaceX’s IPO is raising tens of billions of dollars to create a company whose core business will be exactly that kind of orbital logistics.
Sunshades should be built in the public interest and accountable to all. That’s why public-interest research matters now.
About Us:
The Planetary Sunshade Institute advances the world’s understanding of space based climate stabilization. We work to answer the question ‘how can the world build a planetary sunshade?’ The world of tomorrow deserves to know if this could work.
To do this, we:
- Organize world experts, including aerospace engineers, climate scientists, and governance leaders.
- Design a sunshade system, constantly improving our understanding of the optimal technical pathway
- Participate in governance development by engaging with the forums developing climate and space policy.
- Develop research funding, working with donors to advance priority research.
Core Values
- First Principles & Science. Our understanding is that humanity stabilizes the climate by reducing emissions, removing greenhouse gases, & reflecting sunlight. If these conclusions turn out to be incorrect, we’ll adjust accordingly.
- Solutions Thinking. We start by imagining what would work, and work backwards from there.
- Integrity. We invest in building trust with our collaborators & community
- For the public benefit. A sunshade is only possible with legitimate governance. Only governments can authorize and fund geoengineering deployment.
The SpaceX IPO is seeking to raise 10s of billions for a stated goal of building data center infrastructure on the scale of sunshades. SpaceX is accelerating the world toward the capability of building a sunshade. Public interest research will put government, not billionaires, in control of this work.
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