Disaster Making in the Capitalocene

We live in a new normal of increasing, crosscutting, and shifting patterns of disasters fueled by large-scale environmental change, from floods to wildfires to pandemics. Our intervention in this forum piece makes the case that disasters, and responses to disasters, must be understood within the context of the global political-economic system of capitalism. We situate disasters, their making, and their politics within the Capitalocene and argue that disasters and the physical processes that underpin them are not natural: they are unevenly produced through, and exacerbated by, processes inherent in the capitalist system, with uneven consequences. We suggest that the predominantly technomanagerial approaches to disasters pursued within the neoliberal state and multilateral governance institution system reveal the tensions in addressing the causes of environmental change and the new normal of disasters under capitalism. We argue that through an engagement with the Capitalocene, environmental politics could further contribute to nuanced, critical understandings of disasters and their making in ways that foreground their in/justice implications

Environmental Geopolitics of Climate Engineering Proposals in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report

Environmental geopolitics offers an analytical approach that considers how environmental themes are brought into the service of geopolitical agendas. Of particular concern are claims about environment-related security and risk and the justification of actions (or inactions) proposed to deal with those claims. Environmental geopolitical analysis focuses on geographical knowledge and how that knowledge is generated and applied to stabilize specific understandings of the world. Climate engineering is a realm in which certain kinds of geographical knowledge, in the form of scientific interpretations of environmental interactions, are utilized to support a selective agenda that, despite claims about benefiting people and environments on a global scale, may be shown to reinforce uneven relationships of power as well as patterns of injustice. This paper focuses on how the IPCC AR5 discusses and portrays climate engineering. This particular conversation is significant, since the IPCC is widely recognized as reflecting current, international science and understanding of climate change processes and possible responses. We demonstrate an initial, environmental geopolitical analysis of this portrayal and discussion around climate engineering proposals by observing how the role and meaning of environmental features is limited, how human agency and impact in these scenarios is selective, and how insufficient attention is paid to spatial dimensions and impacts of these proposals. This paper contributes to a larger conversation about why it matters how we engage in discussion about climate impacts and issues; a central argument is that it is vital that we consider these proposed plans in terms of what they aim to secure, for whom, how and where