Experimental economy of geoengineering

[Andrew Lockley]

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17530350.2015.1039459#_=_

The Experimental Economy of Geoengineering

Simon Factor
Journal of Cultural Economy

Published online: 03 Jul 2015

DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2015.1039459

Will the practical application of geoengineering technologies inadvertently bring about the catastrophic futures they are meant to pre-empt? And is such elicitation of unpredictability as unintended as it might appear – the accidental consequence of the extension of a modernist attitude to control and domesticate nature? To grasp what is at stake in such questions, this paper traces out the marginal history of ocean geoengineering, its correlative ‘green’ economy, and through the deployment of algae as an inventive world-remaking device, their co-formation of the earth as a site of unbounded experimentation – of what I call experiment earth. My argument here is that such methods of geoengineering inject disturbances into the algae-ocean-earth system that do not seek control, but to elicit surprise and explicate the mechanisms of the complex permutations of their unpredictability, where new forms of knowledge and value are created not through the application of preconceived ideas or a process of commensuration, but through the harnessing of anticipation and the generation of surprise. How, I ask, are we to understand the lineaments of a pre-emptive ‘green’ economy that is premised on not just managing, but speculatively materially recomposing the non-linear chemical and ecological constitution of the earth’s metabolism? And what, from this vantage point, is the earth becoming?

keywords : geoengineering; experiment; green capitalism; pre-emption; inventive methods

[Greg Rau]

"My argument here is that such methods of geoengineering inject disturbances into the algae-ocean-earth system that do not seek control, but to elicit surprise and explicate the mechanisms of the complex permutations of their unpredictability, where new forms of knowledge and value are created not through the application of preconceived ideas or a process of commensuration, but through the harnessing of anticipation and the generation of surprise."

Who knew?  As for injecting disturbances, surprise, unpredictbility into the algae-ocean-earth system, it would seem that our unabated injection of CO2 into the atmosphere and, hence, the ocean is doing a pretty good job.  What then are the better remedies should our current behavior continue, and doesn't science and research on such remedies reduce surprise and unpredictability of their application e.g. as demonstrated in our treatment of disease and medicine, etc?

Anyway, the article is paywalled.

For a contrasting view of the potentialities, I recommend: http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/lawreview/vol54/iss1/5/

Greg

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[Ronal W. Larson]

Greg: cc list (not keeping Simon Factor as this relates only to the new article by Michael Branson - whose email address I could not find)

Thanks for alerting us to Mr. Branson’s extensive recent legal paper. I agree with your recommendation to this lengthy, well referenced (>200 cites) article relating mostly to a need for a CDR (mostly ocean-based) experimental program.

Like most everyone, Mr. Branson briefly (cite #8b) references biochar - but does not see that biochar is quite different from the other ocean CDR approaches. Rather than adding a new material (descending new iron-caused biomass), biochar (necessarily going ashore) will benificiaily remove, not add, biomass. And that biomass formed via ocean photosynthesis will have removed harmful excess ocean CO2.

I believe that all of Mr. Branson’s legal citations refer to harmful additions to the ocean. And most of the CDR ocean technologies do that. But it make no sense for biochar.

I look forward to further discussion on how to initiate the proposed experimental CDR program. And again thank Greg for his “contrasting” persistence on this topic.

Ron