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Science‐state alliances and climate engineering: A ‘longue durée’ picture
Author(s) -
Schubert Julia
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
wiley interdisciplinary reviews: climate change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.678
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1757-7799
pISSN - 1757-7780
DOI - 10.1002/wcc.801
Subject(s) - mainstream , climate change , scholarship , political economy of climate change , politics , perspective (graphical) , state (computer science) , climate science , global warming , environmental ethics , political science , sociology , social science , political economy , ecology , law , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , biology , algorithm
Since the early 2000s, proposals to deliberately modify the Earth's climate have gained political traction as a controversial last resort measure against dangerous global warming. The article provides a ‘longue durée’ picture of such climate engineering proposals. It traces their historical trajectory from the late 1950s to their most recent arrival on mainstream climate policy agendas. This perspective suggests that the history of climate engineering unfolds not only along historically specific modes of understanding climatic change. It also corresponds to changing alliances between climate science and the state. By bringing together historical scholarship with contributions from sociology and science policy studies, the article sheds new light on the rise of climate engineering proposals. It recontextualizes these proposals within the bigger history of the political cultivation of climate science. This perspective highlights how deeply entwined efforts to understand and efforts to govern climatic change have always been. This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice