The Solar Geoengineering Power Elite: The Funders of Solar Geoengineering 2020-2025

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: The Contested Science of Climate Crisis

Abstract

This paper investigates the organizations responsible for funding solar geoengineering in the six-year period from 2020 through 2025. Solar geoengineering is a techno-fix aimed at slowing global warming without addressing the current economic system or the root causes of the crisis. Solar Geoengineering can be considered a production science that indirectly serves the purposes of all industries with significant energy demands as it aims to forestall rapid decarbonization that would increase the overall cost of energy. Solar geoengineering funders have many shared traits, including more than half of the individual funders of solar geoengineering activity making much of their wealth from equity in high-technology firms, either through founding or investing in those companies. This, combined with the significant investments that many of these funders have in energy-intensive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and cryptocurrencies, characterizes their role in supporting solar geoengineering as a techno-fix to maintain the status quo as long as possible and prevent economic changes that would reduce their current and future wealth.

Author

• Jared Weld Sanborn, University of Utah