Hamburg Planetarium, Germany, June 20, 2024. Photo: Charles Stakievech.
آن فروغ سپيد
آن پاك هوشيار بى سايه
radiant light of dawn . . . pure awareness without shadow
—Mihr Yašt, Avesta
JUST LAST SPRING hundreds of Hajj pilgrims died in an unprecedented heat wave that reached 125 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade at the Grand Mosque of Mecca. During the same period, hundreds more were reported dead in Delhi, which experienced its highest temperatures on record at 126 degrees Fahrenheit. With extreme heat waves hitting some of the densest and most vulnerable populations on earth, the basic cry for survival grows louder and louder with each degree the temperature rises. The escalating cost of human life, coupled with our collective failure to address the existential threat of global warming, has driven some scientists to propose a radical intervention: solar geoengineering. Offered as a last resort, solar geoengineering encompasses a set of proposals to reduce a small fraction of the sunlight from reaching the earth’s surface, effectively creating a planetary sun shield.
On a technical level, solar geoengineering appears achievable and relatively cost-efficient. The main approach, stratospheric aerosol injection, would involve temporarily introducing particles into the atmosphere. Fleets of existing aircraft would be deployed in phased cycles to altitudes above six miles, beyond regular flight paths, distributing their payload. The proposed aerosol compounds for enhancing the reflectivity of the atmosphere include sulfate aerosols, diamond dust, calcium carbonate, and silica aerogels. However, the debate around solar geoengineering is not exclusively about technological or fiscal feasibility. At its core, it represents a gamble with our planet’s protective layer, as the cascading environmental effects are extremely difficult to predict, especially at a planetary scale. Moreover, the unified global governance necessary to manage such a truly planetary endeavor seems utopian in our fractured geopolitical landscape. Yet if these hurdles can be overcome, the technology offers the possibility of countering the planet’s rising temperature.
In light of the risks, real-world scientific testing of solar geoengineering remains largely prohibited, blocked by national restrictions and strong pushback from activist groups. As a result, our understanding of its complex environmental effects is limited to predictive computational models. Interestingly, the deep history of volcanic eruptions offers some clues. Such events give us a glimpse of what local large-scale particulate emissions can do to weather patterns globally. We can look back to the well-known 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which caused a considerably cool summer in Europe that year; sequestered indoors as a result, Mary Shelley famously wrote the first science-fiction novel, Frankenstein. While such volcanic activities demonstrate the cooling potential of injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, they also highlight the volatile and unpredictable impacts that loom large.
In a worst-case scenario, some argue, the intended results of offsetting global warming would be eclipsed by more extreme weather events causing widespread collateral damage: devasting floods that destroy the food supply chain and wipe out unsuspecting communities, as well as periods of pervasive drought. Even in the best-case scenario, in which reflective aerosols manage to tame excess heat from the sun, we will be left with a disconcerting aesthetic alteration of our deeply familiar sky. The aerosol particles will diminish the blue shades, fading into a dull, white haze to create what New Yorker environmental journalist Elizabeth Kolbert refers to as life “under a white sky” in her 2021 book of the same title. The night sky will also change, appearing brighter in populated areas where there is light pollution and darker in rural regions where there is not, erasing starry constellations. The intense bursts of color we associate with spectacular sunrises or sunsets will become mundane phenomena, a daily reminder of the unnatural forces at play. The impact of such aesthetic modifications to our daily surroundings will reshape our perception of and our connection to the sky above and, in turn, our collective narratives, driving the future trajectory of our environment.
Our current moment echoes other points in history when humans have attempted to conquer the environment in response to ecological crisis. One of humanity’s earliest negotiations with the sun can be traced to the ancient Iranian worship of Mithra, a prominent deity whose name is etymologically linked to the sun as well as to light, friendship, and contractual exchange. Although archaeological evidence is limited, remains across the Iranian plateau and western parts of Asia point to Mithraic worship practices that harmonized celestial influences with terrestrial needs. Though Mithraism is often associated with a Roman mystery cult that flourished from the first to the fourth century CE, the ancient Iranian spiritual practice was thousands of years older, believed to predate the schism when a proto-Indo-Iranian language split into Iranian and Indo-Aryan, around 2000 BCE. The ancient worship of Mithra over four thousand years ago laid the foundation for the world’s first monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism, whose scriptures integrate Mithraic oral tradition. While such an ancient time is shrouded in mystery, with layers of oral history and revisionist narratives, one thread remains: The deity Mithra radiates a divine light, overseeing all witnessed by the omnipresent sun. Within this history, a most intriguing correlation appears: The forging of Mithraic beliefs coincides with a planetary climate change around 4,200 years ago.
During this time, significant aridification and long-term drought triggered a climatic event and political upheaval in Mesopotamia—a triadic alignment of sun, agriculture, and politics that reappears cyclically throughout history. We can imagine the great impact of this climate change on the ancient Iranians, whose agricultural society was deeply reliant on stable weather, making them particularly vulnerable to environmental fluctuations. During this era, it was commonly believed that terrestrial events such as droughts, floods, and plagues were influenced by celestial drama. Thus the hardship brought on by the climatic drought may have been perceived as the sign of a cosmic imbalance imposed by the sun. In the limited surviving iconography, Mithra is depicted triumphant over the sun, adorned with rays of light. In this cosmological framework, we can speculate that the myth of Mithra emerged as a response to the environmental crisis, cementing the association between the deity and the sun. Mithra worshippers simultaneously sought to sustain the sun’s life-giving warmth and generosity and to deflect its destructive capacity, felt in the climate change of their era. This drive to control the sun was a central aspect of a solar economy that evolved and expanded over the course of millennia, one in which the sun was commodified as the ultimate energy source. Fundamentally, the worshippers of Mithra, connected to the all-encompassing divinity of light, were concerned with harnessing the sun’s power to secure their agricultural yields and thus advance their civilization.
To mark the annual harvest—the end of the scorching summer sun—Mithraic worshippers celebrated their most significant event: the Mihragän, or festival of Mithra. According to historian Mircea Eliade, drawing on the eleventh-century Persian polymath Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni, Mihragän marked the cyclical end of the land’s bounty consumed as crops, symbolizing the “exhaustion of biological resources on all cosmic planes, a veritable end of the world.” Forged during a period of climate catastrophe, the practice of Mithra worship developed into a tool of imperial conquest and territorial expansion: The conviction that the sun could be controlled led to dominance over the land and surrounding populations alike.
Resonating with times past, we are currently confronted with our own climate crisis. Yet today there is a stark difference: The devastation is of our own making, causing the accumulation of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. Faced with a fatal predicament, much like the ancient followers of Mithra, we seem to need extraordinary intervention. However, it is not mythical beliefs and religious traditions that sustain our hope from above, but a turn to planetary-scale technologies to mediate our relationship with the sun.
We must be cautious of our propensity to want to control the sun. With the benefit of millennia of hindsight, we can now see that the ancient belief in Mithra’s domination of the sun formed a culture that conquered landscapes, terraformed the planet for agricultural industry, and burned for the expansion of empire. Thousands of years later, as we reach the “exhaustion of biological resources,” as Eliade described the Mihrgän’s metaphorical purpose, we are facing the compounding effects of such solar exchange in today’s ecological crisis. A recurring theme in human history is that we struggle to balance worship and stewardship—and our entanglement with the sun is no exception.
This essay is adapted from the lecture performance “Solar Exchange: From Ancient Mithraic Sun Worship to Future Speculations on Solar Geoengineering” originally presented at the Hamburg Planetarium, June 20, 2024.
Ala Roushan is a Persian curator and Associate Professor at OCAD University in Toronto whose research explores artificial environments. Currently, she is leading a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council project titled Shaping Atmospheres, examining the critical implications of today’s solar politics and speculations on solar geoengineering.
