Developments in nanotechnology and planetary-scale engineering point to new possibilities for us to conform the global environment to our needs. These advances combined with one person's dream to make clouds "snow" ice cream inspired The Cloud Project.

“Imagine, at the very point where humanity begins to push the boundaries of sustainable existence under existing conditions, we develop the means to conform our global environment to our needs—inverse-evolution if you like. We discover that science and technology give us a lever large enough to shift the world, metaphorically speaking. We find that by controlling matter at the nanoscale, we can bend it to our will at the megascale. In short, geoengineering appears to be humanity’s right-of-passage to planetary maturity. But these abilities seem to far outstrip our understanding of their consequences. It almost seems that scientists are in danger of applying the hypothesis-driven science of the laboratory to the whole world, while forgetting that when the hypothesis fails, there aren’t too many options to go back and start again.”

Dr. Andrew Maynard, Chief Science Advisor, Project of Emerging Nanotechnologies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars