Slow down there, Mr. Burns.

This sounds more like something out of a Mad Max type universe rather than sci-fi. A world living off fossil fuels because daylight has been reduced to 10% of the normal duration or something like that.

Or the "water company" from Tank Girl - blocking the sun to drive up revenues for the oil/coal companies.

Nah, you just need a simple Bond Villain Plot.

Step One: build a machine that can cool the Earth, solving global warming Once and For All.

Step Two: demand the governments of the Earth pay you $1 trillion to turn it off at the appropriate time.

I mean, a trillion dollars to solve global warming sounds like a pretty good deal to me?

That would be a good ending. The villain suddenly becomes the hero, but his evil purpose disappears and he gets depressed. :)

and then he proceeds to train ChatGPT5 with given money, even though it wasn't $7T he was hoping for.

It's not solving if they can turn it back on, it's a subscription. The elite want renters, 'you will own nothing and be happy'.

It should give people pause that with all the push for more renewables in California and Germany, they now have among the most expensive electricity on Earth.

You're conveniently leaving out that, at least for Germany, this was already the case before.

Shit, I think the US spent several times that per year, without even a good plan to pay it back. Does that mean the United States is irresponsible, or the amount is just so trivial they can't be bothered? Who cares, it's some other administration's problem.

Solving global warming, turning off the earth iceball machine when it's time? Easily worth $100 trillion. OP just has no supervillain potential.

"I demand the sum of... $1 million dollars!" -- Dr. Evil

Also sharks, with friggin lasers attached to their heads.

And countries which use reliable sources of energy like nuclear would be unaffected. How curious...

Perhaps building unreliable energy infrastructure dependent on favorable climatic conditions is not the greatest idea. Especially if there's going to be major climate change. How's Germany doing again with all its solar lol.

Well, if Exxon builds a space ship…