“Geo-Engineering” As Futurological Greenwashing

“Geo-engineering” is one of the latest thrilling contributions of futurology to the ongoing derangement of sensible deliberation about ongoing technoscientific change in the world.

In a recent piece capturing this derangement rather nicely the usually more sensible Chris Mooney bemoans “the incredible gap between the importance of geoengineering as a possibility on the one hand, and the complete lack of public awareness that it’s even on the table on the other.” Not only is the public unaware of “geo-engineering’s” manifold promises, but Mooney declares that “only about 1 percent of Americans currently know what geoengineering even is.”

I personally believe that the reason so many people are unaware of “geo-engineering” is probably because there is no such thing as “geo-engineering” for them to be aware of, and that a very good reason that so few people can say “what geo-engineering even is” is because there is no such thing as “geo-engineering” that actually is anything in particular to say something about.

Let me be plain at the outset that I am not making the rather conventional claim that some gee-whiz notion of the futurological fantasists like rocket-cars or meals-in-a-pill or sexy-slavebots hasn’t materialized yet, in “answer” to which the futurologists will then of course dismiss my lack of imagination or can-do spirit or hard-nosed scientific grasp of the inevitabilities spilling forth from their meretricious maths the better to indulge yet another round of groundless self-congratulation.

No, I am saying that the futurological discourse of “geo-engineering” actually functions to create the appearance of a phenomenon where there is none, it functions as futurological frames tend to do as a derangement of sense, a distraction from substance onto non-substance, a substitute of frivolous over-generalities and hyperbolic promises for deliberation about actually complex, actually contingent technodevelopmental problems with a diversity of stakeholders.

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