By Chelsea Harvey
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.”