Low-carbon cows: From microbial metabolism to the symbiotic planet

Abstract

This article focuses on two projects – one at a large chemical company and the other at a small start-up – to intervene in the relations between cows and ruminal microbes to reduce bovine methane emissions. It describes these interventions as ‘symbiotic engineering’: a biopolitical technique targeting holobionts and becoming effective by working on interlaced sets of living things. Based on the analysis of these cases, the article elucidates a planetary symbiopolitics (Helmreich) that connects ‘molecular biopolitics’ (Rose) and ‘microbiopolitics’ (Paxson) to ‘bovine biopolitics’ (Lorimer, Driessen) and the politics of climate change. We critically investigate the spatial imaginaries of symbiotic engineering practices that single out the microbial realm as an Archimedean point to address planetary problems. This technoscientific vision resonates with the notion of the ‘symbiotic planet’ advanced by Lynn Margulis that depicts the Earth System, or Gaia, as a vast set of relations among living things down to the tiniest microbes. Margulis’ concept, as well as the ‘symbiotic view of life’ (Gilbert, Scott, Sapp) has been embraced in recent debates in STS as a way to think of multispecies worldings. The article contributes critically to these debates by showing what happens when the topology of the symbiotic Earth becomes the operating space for symbiotic engineering practices.

Green rebranding: Regenerative agriculture, future‐pasts, and the naturalisation of livestock

“…Herds of cattle become agents for the modulation of planetary metabolism, while at the same time finding their own internal metabolisms subject to further genetic and ecological modulation (Ormond, 2020 ). As trans‐scalar agents of this ‘metabo‐politics’ (Folkers & Opitz, 2022 ; Turnbull & Oliver, 2020 ), regenerative cattle come to sit somewhat uneasily between the logics of modern agriculture and of rewilding. While they are granted more autonomy than those kept in the feedlot, their individual and aggregate anatomies, behaviours and metabolisms are optimised for the provision of low‐carbon meat and dairy.…”

When you wish upon a (GWP) star: Environmental governance and the reflexive performativity of global warming metrics

“…GWP* navigates this issue by comparing pulses (in tonnes) of long-lived climate pollutants with rates of emission (in tonnes-per-year) of short-lived climate pollutants. With this ‘pulse-step comparison’, GWP* can identify instances in which herds of cattle, like closed power stations, have negligible warming impact: when the herd remains the same size, or where their methane emissions are otherwise maintained at a constant rate (see Folkers & Opitz, 2022 for discussion on methane-reduction bovine bioengineering projects). The metric also articulates how a reduced rate of emissions will confer cooling , as emissions are removed from the atmosphere faster than they are replenished ( Cain et al, 2019 ).…”

Import and export of ideas: Georg Simmel in Chicago, George M. Beard in Berlin

“…This distinction becomes particularly evident in a concept that he increasingly references from the 1930s onwards: the concept of symbiosis (Park, 1936, 1938, 1939). Park’s conceptual proposal is captivating as it highlights the intertwinements between the social and the biological realms (Folkers and Opitz, 2022; Müller, 2020).…”