It took only a couple of months in 2020 in the beginning of the pandemic to realise how the planet would be safer without us. As the human world stood still and people were invited to stay safe at home, traces of environmental restoration became obvious. With lockdowns around the globe, greenhouse gas emissions were reduced, air quality was improved, while water and noise pollution were lessened . The effect, unfortunately, was only temporary. Usual standards of pollution were quickly regained after the end of lockdowns, when people returned to their usual obligations and habits . The specific time period was not long enough to provoke substantial change in terms of, for instance, affecting the atmosphere and reducing global warming. It was, though, enough to realise that if the same will that humanity showed to confront the pandemic was shown to combat the environmental catastrophe, a lot would change.
The safety of humanity seems to often be understood as irrelevant to the safety of the earth with its habitats and ecosystems. Soil degradation, ocean acidification and atmospheric pollution are some of the examples that manifest the impact of anthropogenic activity on the living environment and respectively the sovereignty of culture and growth over so called ‘nature’. In relation to this, Jason Moore uses the term ‘cheap nature’ to specifically address how the interests of the market allow forms of exploitation and deterioration to prevail, and asymmetries to emerge between lands, populations and territories.
Technology has played an important role in keeping the human world safe. During the pandemic, it was thanks to communication technologies that individuals, communities, states and different forms of organisation stayed connected, and a breakage of social but also economical bonds was avoided. Technological infrastructures of different scale and scope kept and keep running for us, also with reference to the monitoring, support but also restoration of the environment. Sensing technologies are, for instance, used for capturing information in the air, the soil or the water; big climate data and machine learning assist in predicting and preventing further changes; interventions of planetary scale are being developed to engineer and optimise the climate by reducing the levels of carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
Humans have always been interested in understanding, predicting and if possible controlling natural phenomena. Strategies like the ones of geoengineering show how the earth has been approached especially by the western world as an object to control, to program (Gabrys), and even to reprogram. The planet has been seen as a pilotable machine, as Frédéric Neyrat writes, manifesting a tendency for a ‘geoconstructivism’, a fantasy that ‘the Earth and everything contained on it, the ecosystems and the organisms, humans and non-humans can and must be reconstructed and entirely remade.’ Geoengineering is introduced as a strategy that can restore the climate and repair the damage caused by global warming on the planet.
Geongineering constitutes an interesting example of how the notion and understanding of safety depends not only on the subjects that it refers to, but also to the interests that might be involved. Solar geoengineering –what the term mostly is associated with– is a “stratospheric aerosol injection ” which can send a small fraction of the sunlight back to space. Geongineering promises to cool down the planet but it is mostly a technofixthat hardly addresses the root of the problem –that is the continuous release of CO2 emissions–, nor does it discuss what will be its impact. Among other complications, an intervention on the stratosphere can lead to ozone depletion, further ocean acidification, and affect plants’ photosynthesis. When all this is at stake, one might wonder: Can’t a carbon emissions removal be succeeded rather by governmental decisions and efforts? Can’t the recent experience of the pandemic point to changing habits and acting collectively towards a common goal? Shouldn’t the impact on the more-than-human world taken in mind when planetary interventions are discussed? Some artists have been addressing these questions with their works in the last few years
Tega Brain, Julian Oliver and Bengt, for instance, created Asunder (2019) , a work that calls into question geoengineering and invite people to approach planet’s restoration from a different perspective. Using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), satellite imagery and real climate data, they proceeded in creative a system with a speculative character that makes forecasts and proposes specific improvements and modifications. Within this context, unexpected scenarios and images occur as cities are relocated and rewilding takes over. The work playfully and provocatively imagines which worlds might proliferate when agendas in play are ‘weighted’ differently. This comes in accordance with Tega Brain’s overall work and thinking, and her call for the development ‘eccentric engineering’ where existing technologies would be repurposed to address a wider diversity of needs and perspectives keeping in mind different life forms.
The Design Earth duo developed the project The Planet After Geoengineering (2021) in order to specifically discuss the controversies and dangers of geoengineering. Through a cluster of drawings, a video and a book, five ‘geostories’ are told which present the genealogy of related projects with their different proposals, technologies and visions. Just like in Asunder, in this case also, different life forms are brought to the foreground to discuss questions of agency when scenaria are made without calculating all costs. How safe is at the end the planet and for whom, the work seems to be asking, bringing also to mind the work of theorist Holly Jean Buck who underlines that “the hard thing isn’t beginning the project, but ending it: ensuring that what comes after geoengineering is livable.” One needs to continuously be asking how the atmosphere will change and how the planet will breathe after such interventions.
Any remaking, reprogramming or repairing of the planet cannot be safe unless the interconnectedness of all forms of life is taken into consideration and the impact of planetary interventions is carefully studied. The Covid-19 pandemic proved that habits and priorities can change and possibly have an impact when people’s lives are at stake. The current planetary emergency, similarly, demands action which cannot be based on proposed planetary interventions, but rather on the realisation of the threat of climate change to the health of all species. Then, perhaps, one can speak not yet of a safe planet, but at least of a healthy approach to the safety of living worlds.
Daphne Dragona
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