Insurance and geoengineering
Geoeng Info
Insurance and geoengineering
ABSTRACT
Insurance can be understood as an imaginary that is not only highly entangled with geoengineering in direct, empirical ways, but shares with it particular logics and stances on the future. This chapter examines the knotty geoengineering-insurance relationship, first in general and then in terms of terrestrial carbon sequestration. It argues that, like geoengineering, insurance absorbs and reflects utopian narratives, often in highly problematic, conservative ways. Yet both also hold some progressive potential. In particular, soil carbon sequestration – the most earthly of geoengineering techniques – is not only being pursued as a new capital fix; it has potential to reorient attention to ‘the elementality of soil’ and help challenge the modernist habits of insurance, call out the delusional character of much geoengineering and help us rewrite our narratives about the future.