When Geoengineering Becomes Geopolitics: Inside the High-Stakes Simulation to Stop a Solar-Cooling Arms Race

Introduction and Main Facts

When climate researcher Colleen Golja accepted an invitation to participate in a diplomatic war game in London last September, she operated under a fundamental assumption: that reason, peer-reviewed science, and a shared desire for planetary survival would guide humanity’s approach to the ultimate climate intervention.

She left the simulation in tears.

The exercise, titled Exploring Geopolitical Tipping Points and Climate Cooling Strategies, convened dozens of foreign-relations experts, scientists, military attachés, and former government officials at Queen Mary University of London. Their objective was to stress-test global governance against an impending technological reality: solar radiation modification (SRM).

Often referred to as solar geoengineering, SRM involves artificially cooling the planet by reflecting a fraction of incoming sunlight back into space. Proposed methods include spraying reflective aerosols—such as sulfur dioxide—into the stratosphere, mimicking the cooling impact of massive volcanic eruptions. While the physics of lowering global temperatures through SRM are well-established, the secondary consequences are profoundly unequal. Climate models suggest that intentional dimming could disrupt monsoon patterns, induce severe droughts in sub-Saharan Africa, and trigger more violent tropical storms in the Atlantic. Furthermore, if geoengineering were suddenly halted, the planet could experience a catastrophic "termination shock," with global temperatures violently rebounding upward.

What was once a speculative niche of academic debate has rapidly accelerated into commercial and strategic reality. Private enterprises, venture-backed startups, and powerful defense apparatuses are aggressively pursuing the technology. Yet, as Golja and her fellow participants discovered during the London war games, humanity may be entirely unequipped to govern a tool capable of altering the global thermostat. Rather than fostering cooperation, the prospect of dialing down the sun has ignited deep paranoia, fierce sovereign competition, and the early contours of a terrifying geopolitical arms race.

Chronology of a Simulation: Anatomy of a Breakdown

Organized by Danielle Young, an assistant professor in international relations at Leeds University, the simulation was designed to mimic a hastily convened United Nations committee tasked with coordinating an international response to rapid breakthroughs in sunlight-reflecting technologies.

The exercise unfolded across three simulated temporal phases: the present day, September 2027, and September 2028. Participants sat in a square arrangement, representing national governments, indigenous groups, technology corporations, and climate non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Golja participated as a technical advisor, tasked with grounding political negotiations in climate science.

Phase 1: The Collapse of Trust (Present Day to 2027)

From the opening coffee break, the simulation was infected by suspicion and disinformation. As delegates attempted to draft an international framework governing outdoor research experiments, representatives for the United States and China made it clear they would reject any binding agreement that compromised their "national interest" or handed a technological advantage to their superpower rival.

The situation escalated when simulation organizers handed Russian delegates a fabricated intelligence report detailing an unidentified aircraft near the Bering Strait—purportedly tied to a clandestine US geoengineering research run. The US team, which was indeed conducting atmospheric test flights, flatly accused Moscow of spreading disinformation.

Concurrently, paranoia deepened over China’s clandestine capabilities. When Beijing’s delegates privately approached a player representing SpaceX to discuss potential technology-sharing, the SpaceX delegate immediately reported the overture to the US team. Washington demanded a full international investigation. Mutual recriminations broke out, and the talks collapsed entirely. The Canadian delegate described the outcome as a "humiliating defeat."

Phase 2: Scientific Isolation and the Fossil Fuel Interloper

In subsequent sessions, organizers sought to steer delegates back toward climate reality by injecting frequent notifications of real-world ecological disasters, such as severe droughts and glacial collapses. These alerts were largely ignored.

Golja attempted to deploy an "emulator"—a state-of-the-art scientific tool demonstrating how regional weather patterns would react to localized SRM deployments. She was routinely sidelined. Politicians and national security players viewed her data exclusively through a strategic lens, seeking only ammunition to frame rival nations as reckless or to validate their own pre-determined agendas.

Phase 3: The Final Blow (September 2028)

During the final hours of the simulation, players scrambled to respond to reports of a major aerosol plume detected in the stratosphere—the result of a joint US-Saudi test of a commercial technology developed by a startup named Stardust Solutions.

Desperate for independent oversight, delegates needed to establish a global satellite monitoring network to prevent rogue tests. At this critical juncture, a representative from an NGO called the Climate Futures Cooperative (CFC) approached Golja, offering substantial funding to launch her monitoring scheme.

The relief was short-lived. It soon emerged that the CFC was a front organization quietly backed by the fossil fuel industry. Organizers had injected the shadowy NGO to mirror real-world dynamics: major oil-producing nations and fossil fuel interests possess a profound financial incentive to back a technological "silver bullet" that cools the planet, thereby removing the political pressure to immediately phase out coal, oil, and gas.

While savvy players like Russia, the US, and representatives from private aerospace firms had figured out the CFC’s true allegiance, they calculated that the chaos served their interests and remained silent. When the CFC finally struck, offering money to Golja, it completely cratered her credibility, effectively silencing and isolating the voice of science in the room. By the final gavel, Golja was in tears, and the simulation concluded without a single cooperative agreement.

Supporting Data and Technical Realities

The war game’s grim conclusions are underpinned by a shifting technological and economic landscape that makes geoengineering governance an immediate crisis rather than a distant sci-fi scenario.

• Venture Capital Influx: In the private sector, solar geoengineering is transitioning from theoretical physics to commercial enterprise. Last year, the US-Israeli startup Stardust Solutions secured $60 million in venture capital. In May, the firm unveiled a proprietary suite of delivery systems designed to precisely regulate global temperatures.
• Billionaire Backing: In August, Elon Musk threw his weight behind the technology, posting on X (formerly Twitter) that "Space satellites to control temperature and massive geo-engineering will be needed or it will be game over." SpaceX remains a primary candidate for providing the heavy-lift launch capabilities required to loft aerosols into the stratosphere.
• The Science-Policy Gap: Historical stigma surrounding geoengineering has severely penalized academic researchers. Scholars attempting to study SRM have reported professional ostracization, career barriers, and social blacklisting, leaving a dangerous vacuum of independent scientific oversight just as commercial actors race to market.
• Accelerating Climate Tragedies: The simulation’s bleak atmosphere mirrored actual ecological collapse. Throughout Europe, unprecedented summer heatwaves and severe droughts broke historical records. In the final week of August, the catastrophic collapse of a glacier on the Tibet-Nepal border resulted in over 1,450 fatalities, validating decades of catastrophic climate models while politicians in the simulation bickered over sovereign advantage.

Official Responses and Geopolitical Posture

As the boundary between science fiction and statecraft dissolves, governments are beginning to codify their positions on solar radiation modification, often through a lens of defensive nationalism rather than planetary stewardship.

• The United States and "Weather Sovereignty": In March, influential policy papers published by conservative US think tanks urged the Trump administration to seize leadership in solar radiation modification to preempt Chinese technological dominance. One paper coined a distinctly nationalist term: Weather Sovereignty.
• The United Kingdom’s Stance: The UK Ministry of Defense commissioned a deep-tech security consultancy to study sunlight reflection technologies. Shortly thereafter, the British government released its first official policy paper on SRM. While the policy formally supports academic research, it explicitly states that the UK does not support deployment and "does not plan to do so."
• Industry Perspectives: Commercial entities maintain that their work is transparent and governed by reality. Yanai Yedvab, CEO of Stardust Solutions, noted that corporate lobbying is growing easier as policymakers become increasingly literate in the technology’s potential. "We are developing a very powerful tool," Yedvab told reporters. "When you develop this kind of powerful technology—and you have many precedents—national interests will play out. We’re not naive about it."
• The Threat of an Arms Race: Major Jeffrey Nielsen, a US Army major who played a national security attaché during the war game, emphasized that his views were private but reflected a dangerous truth. In a system characterized by profound distrust, "any action related to the issue by one actor can be perceived as malintent by the other." Former diplomats noted that while SRM shares structural similarities with nuclear arms dynamics—where the fear of falling behind drives rapid R&D—it differs because it offers tangible environmental benefits alongside unknown hazards, making it an interdependent, non-zero-sum equation on paper, even if treated as a zero-sum game in practice.

Implications: The Retreat to the Local

The takeaways from the London simulation extend far beyond academic theater. According to Cynthia Scharf, a former UN advisor, humanity must establish governance frameworks for solar geoengineering within the next decade, not the next half-century. However, achieving "scientifically transparent international collaboration" between nuclear superpowers like the US and China remains a monumental, perhaps insurmountable, diplomatic hurdle.

For Colleen Golja, the experience permanently altered her worldview. Rather than expending her energy trying to inform global superpowers that prioritize strategic dominance over empirical data, she has redirected her expertise.

Pinned to the corkboard behind her office desk is a new blueprint for a world governed by narrow geopolitical self-interest. Golja plans to leave climate modeling behind and return to her small coastal hometown in Connecticut. There, she intends to work directly with local communities, applying her scientific knowledge to help build seawalls, coastal erosion buffers, and local resilience infrastructure against an increasingly hostile climate.

"To try and make a difference where it feels like I actually have traction," Golja reflects. After witnessing firsthand how easily scientific truth is warped, weaponized, and drowned out by the drums of state competition, chasing global climate governance no longer feels like science. It feels deeply, painfully personal.