SFTP Magazine: Geoengineering and Environmental Capitalism

Geoengineering and Environmental Capitalism

Extractive Industries in the Era of Climate Change

by Linda Schneider

Special Issue, Summer 2018

“If, as history shows, fantasies of weather and climate control have chiefly served commercial and military interests, why should we expect the future to be different?”
—James Fleming, Fixing the Sky¹

"After decades of lurking in the shadows of secretive military research, geoengineering has recently resurfaced in conversations about climate change and crept into the mainstream of international climate policy.² A small group of climate scientists, elite policy advisers and industry representatives from high-polluting countries in the Global North are increasingly vocal about their support for geoengineering—large-scale technological interventions in the climate system—as a means to weaken or suppress some of the symptoms of climate change."

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"A Climate “Technofix”

Geoengineering is an attempt to solve the problem of climate change—a social, political, and ecological crisis—through large-scale technological projects. This “technofix“ mentality lends itself to a systematic disregard of risk, adverse impacts, and unintended side-effects associated with unproven technologies. Side effects are particularly threatening to strained natural ecosystems and economically or ecologically vulnerable populations."

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"The world does not need more technological quick fixes. We need a rapid phaseout of global coal, oil, and gas production and a rapid deconstruction of fossil fuel infrastructure. We need a shift to one hundred percent decentralised renewable energy production and supply from solar and wind. We have exciting, sustainable alternatives to the current status quo: a global transition towards peasant agroecology would produce significantly lower emissions than conventional industrial agriculture and simultaneously pave the way for food sovereignty.¹⁹"
  
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