Right, but you could develop the capability. Asking the government for millions of dollars to do feasibility research is quite different from asking permission to push a button.
A more pragmatic approach might be to just do it and ask forgiveness instead. Mosquito-borne diseases kill millions each year. One child every 40 seconds*. Do you really fear a hostile response from eliminating the mosquito? You'd be irreproachable. Nobel prizes would be awarded.
(The more frightening risks are what would happen if this same technology were applied to, say, wheat, corn, or cows.)
A more pragmatic approach might be to just do it and ask forgiveness instead.
If you have a few million dollar yourself that might be true. On the other hand running a kickstarter campaign for this idea and then managing the whole thing is outside of my capabilities. On the other hand hosting a website and writing a petition isn't.
I even have some media contacts from my time in Quantified Self.
I think that there are enough people who really hate mosquitos to produce enough political pressure if those people can be convinced that we can simply buy the re...
According to Louie Helm eradicating a species of mosquitoes could be done for as little as a few million dollar.
I don't have a few million dollar lying around so I can't spend my own money to do it. On the other hand, I think that on average every German citizen would be quite willing to pay 1€ per year to rid Germany of mosquitoes that bite humans.
That means it's a problem of public action. The German government should spend 80 million Euro to rid Germany of Mosquitos. That's an order of magnitude higher than the numbers quoted by Louie Helm).
The same goes basically for every country or state with mosquitos.
How could we get a government to do this without spending too much money ourselves? The straight forward way is writing a petition. We could host a website and simultaneously post a petition to every relevant parliament on earth.
How do we get attention for the petition? Facebook. People don't like Mosquitos and should be willing to file an internet petition to get rid of them. I would believe this to spread virally. The idea seems interesting enough to get journalists to write articles about it.
Bonus points:
After we have eradicated human biting mosquitoes from our homelands it's quite straightforward to export the technology to Africa.
Does anyone see any issues with that plan?