A Machine for Making Planets: Environmental Media in the Anthropocene—Thesis

[Geoengineering News]

https://search.proquest.com/openview/67f3a289560a9600b87818053dcdec13/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

Authors

Doron Darnov

The University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2025

Abstract

This dissertation shows how various forms of geoengineering (broadly defined as planetary-scale attempts to mitigate or reverse the effects of climate change) have shaped the emergence of what I call an “alien Earth”—that is, an Earth that I argue can no longer be understood through conventional forms of environmental thought. Through this approach, I challenge the narrow limits that have traditionally circumscribed environmental debates on planetary engineering. I show that even while geoengineering continues to garner increasing scientific and popular attention, discussions on its cultural and political implications remain largely confined to a narrow set of processes for reflecting atmospheric sunlight (especially “solar radiation management”). Because this focus tells a limited story, I explore how desires to remake planet Earth activate technological imaginations that extend both far below and beyond Earth’s atmosphere. I develop this argument through two subtending claims. The first is that both climate scientists and environmental scholars ought to radically expand their existing conceptions of what it might mean to “geoengineer” planet Earth. The second is that geoengineering necessitates the development of what I call “planetary humanities”—that is, an analytic approach which understands planet Earth as a multi-scalar entity that binds together the materialities of solid ground, a shifting atmosphere, and an alien cosmos. Building a method of “planetary humanities” that incorporates perspectives from science fiction, media studies, and ecocriticism, I demonstrate that geoengineering has already produced not only a planet with a new atmosphere, but an Earth reimagined across several converging registers of geomorphic, biological, digital, and cultural remaking.

Source: ProQuest