As the most recent projections suggest, humanity is not doing enough to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping the global temperature under the critical threshold of 2.5°C above the pre-industrial level, and the temptation of resorting to some sort of ‘plan B’ is growing. Some believe that the intervention of a Deus ex machina is needed. A possibility consists in researching those technologies grouped under the overarching notion of geoengineering intended to make possible a “deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming” (Shepherd, 2009). They are broadly divided into two different categories: solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) (Asayama, Sugiyama and Ishii, 2017). SRM aims at “cooling the Earth by either reflecting more sunlight back to space, or by modifying cirrus cloud properties to allow more terrestrial infrared radiation to escape to space”, while CDR relies on “actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere” through various means, as pointed out by the Nobel Prize-laureate supporter of research in the field Paul Crutzen and his colleague Mark Lawrence (2017). Crutzen himself already envisioned the need for an “escape route” from out-of-control global warming before (2006a).
Much of the critical scholarly on the issue of geoengineering analyses the discursive practices intended to legitimize scientific research on SRM and CDR or even to advocate for the deployment of such technologies (Nerlich and Jaspal, 2012; Sikka, 2012; Porter and Hulme, 2013; Anshelm and Hansson, 2014; Markusson et al., 2014; Jacobson, 2018). However, the literature often neglects the agency of the machina bringing the Deus on stage, or, in other words, the ‘political materiality’ that sustains such legitimizing narratives and practices (Latour, 2005; Pilo’ and Jaffe, 2020). The aim of this paper is, indeed, to understand how nonhuman actors that constitute the ‘political materiality’ of ‘planetary crisis management’ (Peoples, 2021) have a role in shaping the security process underpinning geoengineering research and implementation advocacy. I argue that the momentum gained by geoengineering research is the result of an ongoing securitization of the climate crisis (Buzan, Wæver and Wilde, 1998) whose referent object is, however, the currently hegemonic development model embedded in the capitalist industrial modernity, rather than planetary security per se (Gills, 2020; McLaren and Corry, 2021; Peoples, 2021). However, this securitization process cannot be explained without understanding the agency of the non-human actors by which it is prompted and sustained. Indeed, “material technological and infrastructural forms […] – and the knowledge and practices they produce and sustain” and “particular conceptions of social and political order” (Peoples, 2021) ‘coproduce’ reality in both its social and technological dimensions (Callon, 2009). Material and social resources together make possible the identification of the Anthropocene climatic regime (Steffen, Crutzen and McNeill, 2007; Dalby, 2013) as a threat to ‘our very way of life’ by geoengineering scientists (Svensson and Pasgaard, 2019, cf. Dalby, 2018), potential securitizing actors empowered by the claim of scientific neutrality (Svensson and Pasgaard, 2019) and the hegemonic conception of the human-nature relationship (Hamilton, 2014), as well as by their ‘expertise’ (ibid.), a social currency relying on the centrality of artifacts scientists themselves produce and possess (Selin, 2007).
To gain an understanding of geoengineering-related activities as constructed in both material and discursive registers (Salter, 2019), I will rely on a conceptual framework pertaining to the so-called ‘material turn’ in social sciences (Müller and Richmond, 2023), a stream of research that highlights “how the physical and technical features of ‘things’ matter” and “can alter the ways in which society and politics function” (DeLanda, 2008). The aim of the analysis is to partially trace the actor-network that legitimizes geoengineering research to shed light on the “dynamics of position, privilege, and power” such network entails (Salter, 2019). To do so, in the first part of this paper, I will clarify some theoretical concepts applied in subsequent sections. The second part will highlight several legitimizing narratives cutting across different sources of knowledge production about geoengineering. In the third part, I will try to analyze two sub-assemblages that sustain the technopolitics of geoengineering, namely the orbital satellite infrastructure and the technology of global climate modelling.
Matter matters
Neo-materialist approaches, by adopting the principle of ‘generalized symmetry’ in considering the ontology of human and non-human actors (Callon, 1986), are able to account for the ‘political materiality’ embedded in our reality, i.e. the “role of objects in mediating relations of power” without determining them (Pilo’ and Jaffe, 2020). The principle of generalized symmetry entails that the observer does not “change registers” when moving “from the technical to the social aspects of the problem studies” (Callon, 1986): both human and non-human actors are considered as equally capable of agency, i.e. the capacity of “modifying the state of affairs by making a difference” (Latour, 2005, p. 71). The same principle also implies that reality is the result of a ‘coproduction’ of social and material elements (Callon, 1986; Latour and Callon, 1992) that traditional approaches consider as ontologically different by overlooking the agency of the latter. In other words, “the production of knowledge” and “the construction of a network of relationships” are simultaneous (ibid). The network can be understood as a form of technopolitics, i.e. “an assembly of elements that are both human and nonhuman, both intentional and not, and in which the intentional or the human is always somewhat overrun by the unintended” (Mitchell, 2002, p. 42), reflecting, in addition, the hierarchies and inequalities of particular societies (Hecht, 2011). Such inequalities are reflected also in the technopolitics of geoengineering as long as epistemic communities of scientists have unevenly distributed capacities of defining problems and developing responses (McLaren and Corry, 2021), due to both hegemonic narratives they reproduce and the mediation of material resources they possess.
Both linguistic and material resources are, indeed, necessary for the constitution of ‘technology’, understood as the ‘culmination’ of a process that transcends the objects which it is constituted by (Selin, 2007; Bourne, 2016). In this regard, also the representation of technological artifacts is part, together with objects themselves, of a broader actor-network of heterogenous actors and contribute shaping visions of the future, or, in other words, ‘scripts’, a form of anticipatory knowledge pivotal in the analysis of ‘new technologies’ such as SRM and CDR (Akrich and Latour, 1992; Selin, 2007). Indeed, it can be argued that geoengineering techniques does not yet ‘exist’, but the ‘inscription’ of scientific knowledge about climate modification in a specific technological network reinforces the opposite claim that geoengineering “already exists” as a sociotechnical imaginary and an “established field of research” explored by “particular scientific elites” (Corry, 2017; Peoples, 2021).
Research itself has a peculiar political performativity that unfolds in at least three ways (McLaren and Corry, 2021): it “enables the construction of particular configurations of material technology "while contributing also to the rise of “epistemic communities and stakeholder groupings” and to the normalization of certain ways of framing expectations, problems and related solutions informed by particular sets of values despite the positivist claim of objectivity and neutrality, a claim neglecting the ‘reflexivity’ of research (ibid). The capacity of such scientific elites to represent the whole scientific community and other “silent actors of the social and natural worlds they have mobilized” derives from a process of ‘translation’ “during which the identity of actors, the possibility of interaction and the margins of maneuver are negotiated and delimited” (Callon, 1986). Translation entails the enrollment of actors into positions suiting scientists’ purposes and relies on both discursive and material resources (Selin, 2007). Translation is, therefore, an inherently more-than-human act which shapes the actor-network in diverse ways. It may also resemble a process of securitization, now understood as the assembling of a hybrid set of resources stabilizing social links and relations of power (Salter, 2019), a view that helps overcoming the linguistic ‘reductionism’ of traditional securitization theory (e.g. Buzan, Wæver and Wilde, 1998).
“Replenish the Earth, and subdue it”
Most commonly, critics of geoengineering research deem it implies a ‘moral hazard’ (Lin, 2013; Corner and Pidgeon, 2014): they maintain the potential reliance on a ‘plan B’ would reduce the perceived need and the urgency of reducing global emissions (Corry, 2017) , or, more precisely, to “opt for immediate and radical social change” (Peoples, 2021). Nerlich and Jaspal (2012) identify the framing of geoengineering as an ‘insurance policy’ in case of insufficient mitigation as a counterargument to the ‘moral hazard’ allegations, as clear in the 2009 Royal Society report (see note 1) which incorporates other ‘metaphors’ such as the one describing geoengineering as the ‘last resort’, a ‘plan B’ etc (ibid).
Although reluctant in advocating for the global implementation of their findings (Corry, 2017), scientists researching geoengineering found the legitimacy of their research on the typical ecomodernist assumption by which environmentalism aiming at changing our development model has failed and new ‘technological’ solutions are desirable in order to preserve the conditions that characterized the Holocene and, in turn, allowed the establishment of the capitalist industrial modernity (McLaren and Corry, 2021; Peoples, 2021). Indeed, uncertainty might become the distinctive feature of the Anthropocene, the ‘new’ geologic epoch defined by the heavy impact of human activities on Earth, as stated in the seminal work of Crutzen (2006b). While the Holocene has ensured a sufficient climatic stability for humans to thrive in the capitalist industrial modernity, the Anthropocene, a true realm of the unknown, might disrupt climatic conditions to the point that modernity as we know it might become unsustainable (Dalby, 2020). Uncertainty is, therefore, the threat identified in the security framing of the climate crisis (Svensson and Pasgaard, 2019) and the referent object must be, in turn, ‘our very way of life’, the objectified development model that humans deem too difficult to change without global catastrophic consequences (for whom?) (Latour, 2017). The securitization of the climate, therefore, aims at saving what the Holocene has made possible, i.e. modern capitalism, rather than promoting extraordinary measures to enhance planetary security (Peoples, 2021). At the same time, the threat of uncertainty contributes to the ‘reluctancy’ of scientists in advocating for the use of geoengineering technologies: both the unknown side effects of geoengineering (ibid) and the risk of reducing the incentives for mitigation (Corry, 2017) make such technologies ‘insecure’ just like the unfolding of the Anthropocene. As a consequence of the perception of uncertainty as a threat, the need for predictive modelling technologies also shapes the actor-network (Hamilton, 2014; McLaren and Corry, 2021), empowering those who possess such technologies.
The ‘reluctancy’ of geoengineering scientists is coherent with the attempt of neutralizing arguments against research in SRM and CDR through a discursive framing implying the differentiation between research and deployment (Jacobson, 2018), thus normalizing geoengineering as “natural science research” (McLaren and Corry, 2021) and presenting scientists as clearly distinguished from their findings (Svensson and Pasgaard, 2019). An associated discursive strategy of legitimacy is the presentation of such results in the “objective tone of the ‘voice of science’”, a common feature across different science policy reports (Jacobson, 2018). Geoengineering, however, is presented as a means for ‘fixing’ and ‘reparing’ the planet (Nerlich and Jaspal, 2012), stabilizing our framing of the current planetary crisis as a pathological condition of the planet which is threatening humanity as we currently know it (Peoples, 2021). Presenting humans as those who ‘fix’ through technology assumes an idea of “control and mastery” over the planet, a passive object whose future humanity has to control in order to ensure the conditions for itself to thrive (Hulme, 2008; Nerlich and Jaspal, 2012; Corry, 2017). Such paradigm of human-nature relationship as inherently hierarchical coincides with a strand of US technological thinking that became hegemonic at the global level through the establishment of US hegemony itself (Hamilton, 2014), a 21st century version of the Genesis line “Replenish the Earth, and subdue it”.
The machina of geoengineering
Such narratives, which frame geoengineering research as a ‘natural’ activity and imply a particular conception of humans’ relationship with nature, are an essential component of the ‘technology’ of geoengineering since they are the anticipation of the artifacts embedded in this heterogeneous actor-network (Selin, 2007). Above, I have tried to identify some key features of such ‘script’ (Akrich and Latour, 1992): now I argue that its social significance cannot be separated from the political materiality sustaining it (Latour, 2005; Pilo’ and Jaffe, 2020). The process of ‘coproduction’ of the reality of geoengineering involves a whole actor-network that is impossible to trace exhaustively (Law, 2004; Salter and Mutlu, 2012), therefore I will consider two specific technological infrastructures I deem helpful to reveal the hegemonic nature of knowledge production and its being inherently situated, the Earth Observation (EO) orbital infrastructure and global climate predictive modelling technology.
EO satellites are, indeed, particularly important in the security framing of the climate crisis (Lövbrand, Stripple and Wiman, 2009; Gorman, 2014; Peoples and Stevens, 2020; Peoples, 2021). The EO infrastructure, which include also computers capable of processing data obtained by satellites (Lövbrand, Stripple and Wiman, 2009), has been essential for the framing of the new climatic regime as part of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and its designation as ‘uncertain’ and, therefore, insecure (Gorman, 2014). EO satellites have mediated, for instance, our conception of ‘Earth System’ through the contemporary acquisition of physical, chemical and biological data (Lövbrand, Stripple and Wiman, 2009), thus allowing a comprehensive understanding of Earth functioning and the shift from a notion of plural climatic regions to the one of a singular ‘climate’ (Livingston, Lövbrand and Alkan Olsson, 2018). In this sense, the EO space-based infrastructure can be understood as a ‘technology of world politics’ (Peoples and Stevens, 2020), coproducing visions of security and insecurity and, along with them, peculiar framing of climatic change, crisis, and uncertainty.
EO satellites have contributed to identifying the threat to global capitalist modernity, making it credible and influencing the technopolitics of the climate crisis. In doing so, EO infrastructure has also made possible for certain human actors of the network to speak for other silent actors in the act of ‘translation’, thus allowing them to enroll such actors and mobilize discursive resources necessary to frame the problem and its solution. In the case of geoengineering, observing the agency and distribution of the EO technologies helps reveal uneven capacities of translation among human actors. Indeed, the prevalent countries of origin of the satellites – the US are top ranked - reflect global distributions of power among governments and private actors (see note 2) : this influences the degree of inclusion of scientists and policymakers from the Global South in the debate around the threat of climate uncertainty and the potential solution, geoengineering (Peoples, 2021). It also contributes to the designation of certain actors, in this case mostly environmental scientists from the Global North, as the ‘speakers’ for the actors they have mobilized (Callon, 1986), or, in strictly security terms, as the securitizing actors now capable of speech acts (Buzan et al., 1998; Balzacq, 2005). By unevenly empowering only but a portion of the scientific community, defined by Kintisch (2010) as the ‘Geoclique’, i.e. “a group of predominantly male, middle aged and Caucasian earth systems scientists” (Porter and Hulme, 2013), EO technologies shape an actor-network within which values peculiar to the ‘Geoclique’ are the ones incorporated in the interpretation of gathered data, with clear consequences on the definition of the threat, the referent object and the policy response. As a consequence, the hegemonic nature of the global capitalist model of development, the referent object of security, is strengthened as part of the technological imaginary of geoengineering: as pointed out by McLaren and Corry (2021), it assumes corresponding climatic interest of all people, hegemonically naturalizing Global North’s perceived needs as the object of security, an issue all but new to environmental science (Bravo, 2009).
Similar points can be made on modelling technology, an essential component of the predictive capacity of scientists involved in assessing the risks of deploying and not deploying geoengineering technologies. Constituted as such by the aversion to uncertainty, climate modelling mathematically describes the patterns of behaviour of the Earth’s climate system (see note 3) and is used in making predictions about the effects of SRM and CDR deployment. The technological complexity of modelling software, directly related to its ‘resolution’ and reliability, might make governments “highly dependent on a technocratic elite” (Hamilton, 2014), thus ‘de-politicizing’ the climate crisis management arena (Keith, 2013) and shifting the balance between sovereignty and expertise. The making of such elites is mediated by the allocation of technological artifacts and prior knowledge about global-scale predictive methods, such as the ones employed by nuclear weapons researchers to evaluate the effects of a nuclear exchange (Hamilton, 2014). A case in point is the one of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a laboratory established in California in 1952 known for the contribution to the technological advancement of the US nuclear apparatus during the ‘Cold War’. In the 1990s, senior scientists of the laboratory published two papers arguing for technological intervention to limit global warming (Teller, Wood and Hyde, 1997; 2002). In 2010 LLNL also started a project funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), a governmental agency of the US Department of Energy, researching carbon storage techniques (a type of CDR) in order to “enable continued use of domestic coal for electricity generation” (see note 4). The early leadership gained by the LLNL in the field of geoengineering not only depends on the possession of the artifacts needed to measure risks related to its deployment, but also to the enrolment, in turn mediated by such artifacts, of the Laboratory itself in the governmental network as an authoritative source of research, which shares the fundamental values of the US ruling apparatus and is established as such by more-than-human systems of social relations granting them authority (Selin, 2007).
2 For a complete database of orbiting satellites see: https://www.ucsusa.org/media/11492.
4 Source: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/synthetic-catalysts-co2-storage.
Climate modelling further influences the actor-network by sustaining several narratives employed by scientists and advocates to legitimize geoengineering research, as I have sketched above. In particular, by allowing the placement of Earth on an in vitro experimental stage (Asayama, Sugiyama and Ishii, 2017; Peoples, 2021), modelling enables the differentiation between research and implementation (Wiertz, 2016; Jacobson, 2018) and the establishment of geoengineering as a field of research without direct risks for global and regional ecosystems (Corry, 2017). At the same time, anticipating the effects of deployment might make geoengineering a credible ‘plan B’ and an integral component of the comprehensive policy response to the climate crisis (Flegal et al., 2019). Observing the functioning of modelling software can also expose the embedded hegemonic nature of such technology. Indeed, they not only incorporate the values of certain scientists by naturalizing them. They also assume that human communities are, despite their differences, similarly functioning entities with a shared interest in the survival of the global capitalist modernity (Wiertz, 2016; McLaren, 2018).
Conclusions
While the literature on the Deus, geoengineering as a practice, widely accounts for its features and related narratives, observing what makes them possible, the machina, while not revealing entirely new asymmetric relations, makes them clearer and highlights the non-neutrality of scientific claims often presented as objective and ‘natural’. Understanding the discursive strategies employed to legitimize geoengineering research as detached from the political materiality underlying them means overlooking the agency of a wide array of actors and, furthermore, adopting an anthropocentric approach to observe a security process that is far from being the straightforward product of human intentionality. While not determining the nature and features of the actor-network, technologies as EO satellites and modelling software mediate relations among human and non-human actors, whether they are planetary systems or anthropogenic artifacts and systems of authority. The analysis of the technopolitics of geoengineering not only reveals the contingency and partiality of related discourses and practices but can also help in elaborating more solid and comprehensive normative stances on the Deus some think can save humanity from the uncertainty of its near future.
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