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Billionaire Nicole Shanahan Reacts to EPA Threat, “We Need to Take Immediate Action”

by in Daily Edition | April 15, 2025

Nicole Shanahan

Nicole Shanahan, Gage Skidmore , CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

President Trump’s Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Lee Zeldin has accused the South Dakota-based solar geoengineering company Make Sunsets of “polluting the air we breathe.”

Make Sunsets releases biodegradable latex balloons filled with hydrogen gas and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) in the stratosphere to create reflective clouds and “cool the Earth.”

The company is inspired by natural volcanic eruptions including the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, “which cooled the Earth by 0.9F or 0.5C for over a year.” The company has launched 147 balloons and delivered more than 128,000 cooling credits.

Zeldin shared a letter written by the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation (below) which is evaluating whether Make Sunsets is subject to the Clean Air Act, and added: “Make Sunsets is a startup that is geoengineering by injecting sulfur dioxide into the sky and then selling ‘cooling credits.’ This company is polluting the air we breathe. I’ve instructed my team that we need to quickly get to the bottom of this and take immediate action.”

[Note: On the company website, Make Sunsets says it’s method “to cool Earth falls under the Weather Modification Act of 1976 and report yearly to NOAA of our deployments as required. When we do the deployments, we contact the proper authorities. For example, we notify the FAA when we deploy a balloon to issue a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM). We’ve been in contact with multiple US government agencies (CIA, FBI, FAA, and NOAA). They are aware of our business and activities.”]

Billionaire Nicole Shanahan, whom Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. picked for his 2024 presidential running mate and who is now a supporter of President Trump, replied with approval of Zeldin’s post with a purple heart emoji.

Not all MAGA supporters are impressed with Zeldin’s action against Make Sunsets.

As one self-described MAGA and MAHA supporter replied: “This is a total distraction. Is releasing a few pounds of sulfur dioxide attached to balloons wrong? Yes, but on a matter of scale it is nothing compared to the jet aircraft, including military cargo planes, that spray 40 – 60 million tons of poison worldwide annually.”

[Note: In February, Shanahan made a video at the beach and claimed that the contrails in the sky were not contrails, evidently aligning with the “chemtrails conspiracy theory” — that the trails left in the sky by aircraft are “chemtrails” consisting of chemical or biological agents.]

Note: Zeldin is not the first Republican to argue against geoengineering. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently supported a bill proposed by Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia to ban geoengineering which DeSantis called “nonsense.” The bill was blocked.

Make Sunsets also has Silicon billionaires in its corner, listing one of its backers as the heavy-hitting venture capital group Draper Associates, run by investment legend Tim Draper who claims early investments in such juggernauts as SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitch.

Draper is also vocal on the political scene, recently supporting President Trump’s tariffs, even if he begins his support with the claim “I am always for free trade.”