| The scientists who study solar geoengineering don’t want anyone to try it. But climate inaction is making it more likely.  Illustration by Lina Müller In the fight to address climate change, some solutions are better than others. And then there’s one big idea that even the people studying its potential consider to be “a terrible thing”: dimming the sun. “If we decide to ‘solar geoengineer’ the Earth—to spray highly reflective particles of a material, such as sulphur, into the stratosphere in order to deflect sunlight and so cool the planet—it will be the second most expansive project that humans have ever undertaken,” Bill McKibben writes, in a deeply reported new feature about the possibility of “blocking from the Earth some of the sunlight that has always nurtured it.” Solar geoengineering is among the options that global leaders and researchers are seriously considering as our world rapidly overheats. McKibben explains how it works, and why it’s sparked a heated debate in the scientific community, with hundreds of experts from around the world signing a letter earlier this year urging a moratorium on exploring the concept. Dimming the sun could turn out to be “very easy,” McKibben writes. “The question is more: what else would it do?” —Jessie Li, newsletter editor Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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