[kelnos]

The thing about a plan like this, though, is it doesn't require cooperation from the public. Getting everyone to stay home, wear masks, socially distance, and get vaccines is indeed a pretty hard problem.

But decreeing that a few hundreds or thousands of scientists and engineers are going to make a possibly-catastrophic change to our biosphere doesn't require getting regular citizens to do anything.

Having said that, I do expect public opinion to play a role in deciding what (if anything) gets done. Whether or not it'll be enough to stop something catastrophic from happening... probably not?