The Future Is the Termination Shock: On the Antinomies and Psychopathologies of Geoengineering. Part One

Abstract

As capitalist society remains incapable of addressing climate breakdown, one measure is waiting in the wings: solar geoengineering. No other technology can cut global temperatures immediately. It would alleviate the symptoms of the crisis, not its causes. But might it be combined with radical emissions cuts? This essay, the first instalment of two, scrutinises the rationalist-optimist case for geoengineering: the idea that soot planes in the sky can shield the Earth from the worst heat while society rids itself of fossil fuels. A more likely outcome is that they encourage business-as-usual to continue, while negative side-effects from geoengineering itself pile up. The logic of the enterprise points in the direction of a catastrophic termination shock. A subsequent, second instalment will subject geoengineering to a materialist psychoanalysis and argue that it represents a fantasy of repression, setting itself up for a dreadful return of the repressed.

Dialektyka natury i społeczeństwa przeciwko monizmowi. Esej recenzyjny z „Marx in the Anthropocene” Kohei Saita (2023, Cambridge University Press)

“…Trudno jednak dostrzec, w jaki sposób idea "demokratycznej kontroli" mogłaby być kompatybilna z wymagającymi ogromnych inwestycji kapitałowych, wysoko wyspecjalizowanymi technologiami takimi jak wychwytywanie i składowanie dwutlenku węgla (CCS) lub fuzja jądrowa. Nie ma też zresztą żadnych racji skłaniających do przekonania, że świat przed katastrofą uchronią geoinżynieryjne rozwiązania wprowadzane przez odpowiedzialny za obecny kryzys, sojusz biznesu i polityki (Malm 2022).…”

The Problem with the Anthropocene: Kainos, Not Anthropos

“…Of course, the status of science fiction, as a supposedly lesser literary genre, limits the extent to which these dark visions become a focus for public policy. Yet even the accumulation of hard data on Earth's prehistory (samples from the Vostok region of Antarctica date between 420,000 and 800,000 years) does not seem enough to shake our complacency (Angus, 2016; Malm, 2023). From this vantage point, the Anthropocene is the harbinger of humanity's self‐incurred catastrophe—the final, sudden overturning of the predominant civilizational narrative.…”

“…7 Although innumerable contingencies, including the sudden release of massive amounts of CO 2 and methane from thawing permafrost, could make the planet inhabitable for humans long before the ice completely melts (Wadhams, 2016). Even more dire is Andreas Malm's suggestion that our faith in geoengineering is a textbook manifestation of Freudian "repression" (Malm, 2023). 8 On the difficulty of reconstructing human prehistory and the ambivalence of archaeological evidence, see Graeber and Wengrow (2021, pp.…”