Thinking Decarbonization with Literature

Description

This is the first in a series of Leverhulme lectures by Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Karen Pinkus.  The talk is based on the  book she is currently working on,  Down There: The Subsurface in the Time of Climate Change. The event is free to attend but registration is required.  Please book your place by clicking here or using the online booking  link on this page.

Only a few years ago, “geoengineering”–both the solar side and carbon dioxide removal or negative emissions technologies–was taboo, associated with a “moral hazard.” Yet as various scientific bodies consider pathways to keeping warming below 2 degrees, “geoengineering” is becoming mainstream. A common approach suggests that the technologies exist, and they simply need to be financed or scaled up. My talk takes seriously the probability that such technologies will be implemented, but rather than critique them on ethical grounds, as some humanists do, I attempt to think geoengineering through literature. Drawing on texts from dawn of the fossil fuel era, I ask what narrative (as opposed to scenarios or “story telling” produced by industry) and language brought together can offer to a discussion of climate change mitigation, now, at the time of 410+ ppm of C02 concentration and of the future. 

For queries related to this event please contact Michelle Maciejewska.