## The Volcano Hack

In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines, injecting 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Over the next 15 months, the entire Earth's average temperature cooled by 0.6 degrees Celsius. The sulfur clouds acted like microscopic mirrors, bouncing the sun's rays back into space.

### FAQ

**Q: If global warming is an existential threat, why don't we just artificially block the sun?**
A: The rogue state problem. Geoengineering (Stratospheric Aerosol Injection) is terrifyingly cheap. For about $2.5 Billion a year—the cost of a single B-2 Stealth Bomber—a single billionaire, or a small island nation like the Maldives facing sea-level extinction, could unilaterally launch a fleet of high-altitude jets to spray sulfur into the atmosphere, cooling the planet by 1.5°C over a decade. The ROI is astronomical because preventing $1.2 Trillion in crop failures for $2.5 Billion is the greatest arbitrage in human history. The reason we don't do it is political: disrupting the global monsoon cycle could inadvertently starve 2 billion people in India and China, instantly triggering World War III.