Understanding humans in the Anthropocene: Finding answers in geoengineering and Transition Towns

Abstract

This paper argues that the approaches to global environmental change engendered by conventional environmental discourse have undermined the radical connotations of the Anthropocene. Taking direction from Clark's (2013, Geoengineering and geologic politics. Environment and Planning A 45(12): 2825-2832; 2014, Geo-politics and the disaster of the Anthropocene. The Sociological Review 62: 19-37) concept of geological politics, this paper attempts to rescue the discourses surrounding geoengineering and Transition Towns from dated environmental understandings. By demonstrating how our understanding of a human being-in-the-world can change in the Anthropocene, this paper argues that an experimental and material form of politics needs to shape the agenda of social scientists. Using this experimental perspective, this paper offers the creative example of how Transition Towns may become concordant with local geoengineering practices. Using this example to highlight how environmental discourse in the Anthropocene needs to encompass cross-societal formation with the more-than-human elements of our planet, this paper argues for material experimentation that concerns community participation and socio-technical innovation.

In a broken world: Towards an ethics of repair in the Anthropocene

“…In the context of the climate, this implies seeking interventions that work to deliver corrective and restorative forms of climate justice, and moreover, ones that help tackle economic and social inequalities and injustices too. It is hard but not impossible to consider ways in which climate geoengineering interventions could help do this (Buck, 2012; Martindale, 2015) – particularly in some forms of CDR, such as soil or ecosystem restoration, but all too easy to see approaches – especially to SRM – that reflect a paternalist and technocratic hubris, in which geoengineering ‘solutions’ sustain existing injustice (McLaren, 2016b).…”

The World We (Re)Build: An Ethnography of the Future

“…Second, by encouraging simple, material responses to monumental geopolitical problems, Transition crosses scales to make positive change appear tangible and feasible (Martindale 2015). Participants find it unironic that Transition is an interconnected international movement that encourages relocalization and emplacement (Mason and Whitehead 2011;Nicolosi and Feola 2016).…”

The political economy of technical fixes: The (mis)alignment of clean fossil and political regimes

“…This would require a radical re-articulation of both geoengineering and the climate change problem, and a focus on relatively low-tech and small-scale technologies. Martindale [82] analyses Transition Town practices as potential democratic geoengineering, and here we have moved beyond what would currently be labelled technical fixes as such practices are typically not readily quantified and commodified [35]. But beyond these academic exercises, there is little direct evidence for a link being forged between the geoengineering term and grassroots practices, and even these do not seriously discuss how such 'democratic' GE could, and would have to, co-evolve with a change of political regime.…”