The idea that climate geoengineering could be used in conjunction to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change has gained credence in both scientific and policy circles. Because of the inherent uncertainty about the risks involved, debates on the topic abound. Scientists agree that more research is needed on both the potential impacts of geoengineering on humans and ecosystems, and the governance mechanisms that would be the most appropriate for conducting field research and for eventual deployment. Despite an explosion of publications in the last decade or so, properly sociological analysis is still lacking. In this paper, we develop an approach to geoengineering based on metabolic rift theory to consider the broad political economic context in which geoengineering technologies are being developed. We argue first that the eventual recourse to such last resort approaches is a consequence of the ever expanding carbon rift created by capitalism and the growth imperative it entails. Second, we discuss how geoengineering technologies would likely be deployed within the context of the neoliberal climate policy regime that is currently in place and that relies heavily on carbon markets. We outline some of the foreseeable consequences of tying geoengineering to carbon markets on greenhouse gas emissions reduction and on the possibility of exerting democratic control over the technologies themselves.

Once a fringe notion, solar geoengineering via Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is gaining traction as a climate management tactic within mainstream institutions and factions of the climate justice movement. Cautious considerations of SAI are driven by the layered realities of climate urgency, political inaction, and the potential for climate impacts to harm the most vulnerable. This narrative is difficult to dispute, yet it originates from leading centers of SAI research-particularly the Harvard Solar Geoengineering Research Program (HSGRP)-that construct the ''necessity'' of research, experimentation, and potential deployment under ideological pretenses aimed at maintaining the hegemony of liberal-capitalism. Hence, advanced under the auspices of HSGRP, SAI would constitute a form of imperialism rather than a tool for climate justice. I link SAI to theories of capitalist imperialism, and situate HSGRP within Harvard's legacy shaping U.S. imperialism and position as a nodal point of liberal-capitalist power. In this context, I identify three dominant ideologies undergirding SAI research at Harvard-ecomodernism, Realist International Relations theory, and Keynesianism-that construct a specific narrative whereby established climate solutions (liberal-capitalist ecomodernism) are frustrated by ''anarchical'' international politics, leaving the poor vulnerable to near-term climate impacts. SAI is thus positioned as a mechanism capable of buying time for market-driven policy and reducing near-term climate risk. HSGRP directly counter poses this approach to radical elements of the climate justice movement that address capitalism as the root cause of both climate change and global poverty.

The main objective of this course is to understand the role fossil fuels play in mediating the metabolic relationship between human society and the other elements of the biosphere. Since the late 18th century, a new way of producing commodities has emerged at the heart of the British Empire, mediated by the energy embodied in fossilized plants, and with it a new mode of relating to the biosphere. After providing some basic concepts to discuss how human groups relate to the biosphere, the course will trace back the origins of the use of fossil fuel energy in industrial production, and assess the key role this form of energy has played in the development of the capitalist economy. We will discuss in-depth how fossil fuel extraction and consumption have since then organized capitalist society in all its aspects, with special emphasis on the multiple ways individual and corporate agency inserts itself within broad scale economic, political and ecological structural processes. The second half of the course will address current issues of fossil fuel expansion, and the political and cultural influence of the sector in Canada and elsewhere. In counterpoint to corporate agency, we will also examine the growing movements of resistance and opposition to fossil fuel expansion, as well as the varied and contending proposals for a transition away from fossil fuels and toward an economy based on renewable energy.

This study investigates the relationship between the carbon extractive sector in Canada and renewable energy development. Specifically, it examines the strategies employed by Canadian carbon-capital firms to shape and control alternative energy and considers if we are witnessing signs of “transition capture” as some oil, gas, and coal firms invest in a gradual shift toward “climate capitalism.” I investigate first, investments by large Canada-based fossil fuel companies in renewable energy and second, interlocking directorate relations between the fossil fuel sector and the renewables industry. Findings suggest the possibility of a long-term strategic orientation toward a climate capitalist model of development by some carbon-capital firms; however, this alignment remains highly tentative, with evidence pointing to an industry that is largely without plans for energy transition.

The “Four Theses” has become a primary text for understanding the problematic nature of the Anthropocene as a cultural category, one that describes a collective, if unintended, human project whose implications extend far beyond geological inquiries about stratigraphic dating. Even as geologists continue to debate whether the Earth has indeed departed the Holocene, and if so, when, Chakrabarty has articulated what is at stake for our perception of human agency as a species when the timescales of human history become entangled in geological epochs. Reflecting on his “Four Theses” involves re-casting if not radically transforming the meaning of history and the purpose of humanities research in the age of global warming.

Addressing the current upswing of attention in the sciences, arts, and humanities to the new proposal that we are in a human-driven epoch called the Anthropocene, this book critically surveys that thesis and points to its limitations. It analyzes contemporary visual culture—popular science websites, remote sensing and SatNav imagery, eco-activist mobilizations, and experimental artistic projects—to consider how the term proposes more than merely a description of objective geological periodization. This book argues that the Anthropocene terminology works ideologically in support of a neoliberal financialization of nature, anthropocentric political economy, and endorsement of geoengineering as the preferred—but likely disastrous—method of approaching climate change. To democratize decisions about the world’s near future, we urgently need to subject the Anthropocene thesis to critical scrutiny and develop creative alternatives in the present. https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/against-the-anthropocene-visual-culture-and-environment-today/