Poster's note : there are other geoengineering abstracts at this event. I
won't tweet them all.

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2016/webprogram/Paper81299.html

Promises of Technical Fixes: Geoengineering Justifications of Defensive
Spatio-Temporal Fixes

Sunday, 10 July 2016: 14:30

Location: Hörsaal II (Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG))

Oral Presentation

Nils MARKUSSON, Lancaster University, United Kingdom

Mads DAHL-GJEFSEN, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Jennie STEPHENS, University of Vermont, USA

David TYFIELD, Lancaster University, United Kingdom

The term ‘technical fix’ is frequently used by academics and activists to
describe the application of a technological solution to a social problem,
where a reductive problem definition leads to only a partial and
superficial solution. However, the term is often used without much
analytical precision. This paper uses the case of geoengineering to develop
a critical, theoretically grounded conceptualisation of the term. We draw
on notions of technological promises and black boxing from Science and
Technology Studies, and spatio-temporal fixes and innovation regimes from
Marxian political economy.

We map the promises of geoengineering as proposed solutions to the problem
of climate change since the 1960s, including notably the rapid rise and
subsequent slow-down of interest and investment in CCS in the 1990s and
2000s, and the more recent growth of interest in technologies like sulphate
aerosol injection and ocean fertilisation – and their uptake, or lack of
it, in climate policy over time. To analyse the fit with innovation
regimes, this historical review pays particular attention to articulations
of the role of markets and the state in delivering and implementing these
innovations, as well as the time-horizons envisaged. Geoengineering
promises are compared with ideal-typical neoliberal and liberal innovation
regimes, and the fit with the evolving actual political regimes is
discussed.

The analysis suggests that geoengineering has fit badly with the neoliberal
innovation regime of the last few decades. Moreover, the recent relative
weakening of neoliberal framings of geoengineering might indicate a limit
of the neoliberal political regime.

Technical fixes correspond to defensive spatio-temporal fixes, which,
whilst creating new opportunities for investment and entrepreneurship, aim
primarily to defend investments already undertaken. Defining the use of
technical fix promises as attempted justifications of new defensive
spatio-temporal fixes, provides a theoretical foundation for the concept,
and gives it a stronger critical edge.

See more of: Climate Change, Capitalism, Geoengineering
See more of: RC02 Economy and Society
See more of: Research Committees

July 10 - 14, 2016
Vienna, Austria

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