Two geoengineering projects unfold side by side. Both involve a futuristic technology that could, in theory, cool the planet. But one involves years of careful crafting by some of the world’s leading scientists, while the other features homemade equipment and slapdash improvisation by a pair of entrepreneurs with no scientific expertise.
That’s the contrast underpinning filmmaker Ben Kalina’s newest documentary, “Plan C for Civilization,” which premiered Thursday at the prestigious DOC NYC film festival. It’s a sharp exploration of the science and politics behind a controversial technology known as stratospheric aerosol injection, a form of solar geoengineering that would — in theory — spray reflective aerosols into the atmosphere to beam planet-warming sunlight away from the Earth.
It’s also a study of the personalities advancing this emerging tech, whose confines have rapidly expanded in recent years from university laboratories to the pitch decks of Silicon Valley.
“I just thought it was really important to include both these two poles in the film — that sort of cautious, almost to a fault, researchers of the institutional breed … and the kind of move-fast-and-break things disrupters of Silicon Valley,” Kalina said in an interview with POLITICO’s E&E News. “You can love them and hate them, but they’re not going away.”
At the heart of the film is David Keith, director of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative at the University of Chicago and one of the world’s leading experts on solar geoengineering. He’s perhaps best known for his involvement with SCoPEx, a now-defunct Harvard-led geoengineering research project that aimed to investigate the behavior of aerosols in the Earth’s stratosphere. It would have been the first field experiment of its kind.
Much of “Plan C for Civilization” follows SCoPEx’s arc from its inception and official launch in 2019 to its failed field trials in Sweden in 2021, which were canceled by the Swedish Space Corp. amid opposition from environmental and Indigenous groups. Harvard officially terminated the project in 2024.
Along the way, Kalina documents the years of meticulous scientific design and logistical planning involved in the project’s development. It’s a striking contrast when viewed alongside the film’s other major storyline, which follows the geoengineering startup Make Sunsets — and its founders, Luke Iseman and Andrew Song — as they devise a homespun method to release planet-cooling aerosols into the air.
Iseman and Song aren’t scientists. And while their project is inspired by research from Keith and other experts, their methods are decidedly unscientific.
Their first scene shows them standing on a sidewalk handing out latex balloons filled with chalk dust, or calcium carbonate, a substance some studies suggest could be used for solar geoengineering. They’re later shown using pressure cookers to distill their own sulfur dioxide, the sun-reflecting substance most commonly considered in geoengineering studies. In one memorable scene, the pair struggles to quantify the speed and altitude of the experimental balloons they release into the air, information crucial for evaluating the project’s success.
Iseman and Song are candid from the start. They aren’t researchers, and their priority is speed over scientific precision. World leaders haven’t reduced emissions quickly enough, they argue, and that means immediate alternative solutions are needed to lower the Earth’s temperatures.
“I’m not against governments doing this or regulating it — ideally doing it and regulating it,” Iseman says in the film. “But, you know, they’re not. So until they do, we get to duct tape stuff to balloons and launch them into the sky.”
Iseman and Song’s bumbling approach may be entertaining or alarming, depending on the viewer. But their presence in the film is less about process and more about philosophy, according to Kalina. They symbolize a growing possibility that, as global temperatures continue to rise, private actors will take matters into their hands.
“They represent an argument, I guess you could say, that the progress on solar geoengineering research is going too slow,” Kalina said. “And, if it continues to go too slowly, that people will act.”
Other experts cited in the film say the contrast between the two projects highlights the value of methodical, scientific progress.
“I think the documentary did a good job telling a very complicated story with very different sets of protagonists,” said Shuchi Talati, founder of the nonprofit Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering and one of the experts quoted in the film. “Responsible technology development can be inherently slower versus an absurd approach like Make Sunsets with an overarching colonial way of thinking.”
And Keith, in an interview with E&E News, said the growing landscape of commercial geoengineering startups may shine a helpful light on researchers like himself.
“I think that [commercial startups] broadly do probably make those of us advancing this from NGO or academic perspectives seem more reasonable,” he said. “So I’m happy about that.”
The Make Sunsets founders, for their part, acknowledge their inexpert approach. But they don’t think the film paints anyone else in an especially positive light, either.
“Make Sunsets looks like amateur league, academics come across as hypocrites, and the nonprofits seem focused on complaining about anyone ever doing anything,” Iseman said in an email to E&E News. “In other words, Ben accurately documented reality.”
‘Somebody is gonna do this, whether we like it or not’
Make Sunsets isn’t the only startup in the solar geoengineering sphere, but it was one of the first to make international headlines.
The company began releasing sulfur dioxide-filled weather balloons in the Mexican state of Baja California in 2022, a move that was met with immediate outrage. Mexican officials swiftly announced that the country would ban solar geoengineering activities, and Make Sunsets moved its activities back to the United States.
Notably, the incident wasn’t detailed in “Plan C for Civilization,” which focused only on the startup’s U.S. activities.
“There’s totally a version where we could have talked more about Mexico,” Kalina said. “But it didn’t seem to me to bear particularly on what they were trying to do.”
Since then, other for-profit companies have moved onto the stage. Israeli-U.S. startup Stardust Solutions is the latest to garner global attention, after raising $60 million in the largest fundraising round to date for any solar geoengineering company.
The announcement has sparked a global debate about the ethics of venture capital involvement in one of the world’s most controversial and untested technologies. It’s also renewed anxiety among geoengineering critics about the technology’s potential for misuse, whether by rogue nations or unregulated private actors.
It’s a conversation that crops up time and again throughout “Plan C for Civilization,” even as the Make Sunsets founders race to launch their homemade balloons in the background.
“Sooner or later, somebody is gonna do this whether we like it or not,” says Jane Poynter, former CEO of near-space technology company and onetime SCoPEx collaborator World View Enterprises, at one point during the film. “The idea is out there. Somebody’s gonna do it, so it better be done the right way.”
Similar arguments have fueled a recent push for both increased global regulation and greater global investment in scientific geoengineering research, including the kinds of experiments that SCoPEx would have advanced. As global temperatures continue to rise, supporters argue, there’s a growing need for world leaders to at least consider the option of planet-cooling technology. And more research is needed to understand whether that option could ever be safely and effectively deployed.
After 15 years of reporting on the subject — he first started thinking about a geoengineering documentary back in 2010 — that’s where Kalina has landed, too.
“We’ve just seen time move, and we have not moved quickly enough to avoid the kinds of outcomes that we were trying to get around and avoid,” he said. “I wish we weren’t where we are right now, but we are, and the very best thing we can do is have as sober a conversation about this as we can.”
Keith’s perspective, meanwhile, has moved a step farther. For years, he was best known as the scientist who nearly launched the world’s first geoengineering field experiment. Now, he says, researchers already have enough information to know that solar geoengineering would work in practice.
Most solar geoengineering research to date has been conducted with models. That’s one of the arguments research proponents have used to push for field trials like SCoPEx. But those models “are completely based on reality,” Keith said in an interview with E&E News. And while projects like SCoPEx could help reduce “nerdy little uncertainties,” he said, modeling studies strongly indicate that solar geoengineering projects would effectively reduce the Earth’s temperatures.
Keith isn’t advocating for an immediate large-scale deployment of the technology. And he doesn’t claim to be the only — or the most important — voice on the subject. But he says he would support small-scale geoengineering projects that could potentially ramp up over time.
He sums up his views in the documentary’s final moments, a scene Kalina says “was a really important point for the film to get to.”
“If there was some global referendum now about whether or not we ought to, say, begin a subscale small deployment, say in two years, how would I vote on that referendum?” Keith says. “And I think the answer is now I would vote yes.”
