Infrastructure and Governing Climate Catastrophe: Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Energy Mobilities in Education Policy Making

• In Event: Interdisciplinary and Critical Conceptualizations of Climate Change Education and Research

Abstract

Our objective is to explore the role of energy in the circulations of policy, and implications for considering climate change in education. Informed by theories of policy mobilities, in this presentation we also draw in ‘apocalyptic thinking’ and post carbon social theorizing (Ghosh, 2016; Urry, 2007), including racialized and colonial aspects of energy infrastructure (Anand et al., 2018; Malm et al., 2021). Our methods include a ‘policy ecology’ approach to considering both policy artifacts and policy ‘ambience,’ and their interrelations (Lea, 2020). We bring these tools to bear in considering climate change and carbon infrastructures in relation to two intertwined concerns: 1. Policy mobilities, and 2. The use of data infrastructures and Artificial Intelligence (AI), both as they affect education policy making.
Research on policy mobilities has centered on the global circulation of policy ideas and initiatives that has accompanied the rise in human and digital mobility since the late 20th century (e.g., Peck & Theodore, 2012). Less in focus has been the climate costs of the mobilities afforded by advances in technology and transportation with their high carbon infrastructures; indeed, increased policy mobilities can be understood as deeply embedded in the infrastructure of carbon modernity (Urry, 2007). This paper will begin to map the carbon infrastructures of policy mobilities, with a focus on a less obvious area of climate change concern for education – the role of data infrastructures and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Digital data are a key part of the rise in the global movement of policy ideas: both in terms of being a medium for the circulation of policy more generally, as well as of policy promoting the increased use of data and AI in education decision making and practice (Gulson & Witzenberger, 2020). What has not been adequately considered in education are the material aspects of the energy mobilities of education policy making associated with digital data, such as Google Classroom, the uses of which have intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic (Perotta et al., 2020). This paper will explore these education policy energy mobilities by mapping out hidden but ubiquitous high carbon data infrastructures in Canada and Australia, such as energy use through pipelines and wireless access (Figures 1-4). Highlighting the links between these and other infrastructures required for EdTech and AI in education, we will discuss the ‘planetary cost’ of AI that depends on ‘natural resources, fuel, human labour and infrastructures’ (Crawford, 2021, p. 8).
While ‘climate change education’ is often considered more narrowly in terms of what is included in the curriculum, the climate footprint of education decision making and practice is much larger (McKenzie & Kwauk, 2021). Sometimes examined in a ‘whole institution’ approach to climate change education, ‘facilities and operations’ considerations also include underlying digital and associated energy infrastructure. With their inherent high carbon costs, Data infrastructure and AI are increasingly driving policy decision-making and affecting student experience. Yet, to date they have received little discussion in relation to the growing pressure to address the climate catastrophe in the governing of education (Selwyn, 2021).
In 2019 two young white men committed mass murder in the name of environmental sustainability. In El Paso, Texas, a gunman opened fire in a Walmart store, killing 23 people and injuring another 23. His manifesto borrowed ideas from the Christchurch, New Zealand massacre where a gunman killed 51 muslims and injured another 40. Both men believed in “replacement theory”, a white power conspiracy theory that posulates the end of white Europeans via immigration and reproduction (Belew, 2018). These killers believed that climate conditions were worsening, causing the increased migration of non-white peoples onto “their” land. Some forms of climate education would label them “climate literate” because they understood the reality of climate change and acted toward environmental sustainability. This is clearly a social problem, and in this paper we argue that climate change education too often assumes that a certain kind of pro-social politics is enough to mobilize climate action. In fact, many politics can have climate concerns and this darker reality is underexamined in educational scholarship. We argue here that what ‘learning’ is, and how it gets used as a tool for ‘good’ in societal projects is something prone to normativity covering over other possible forms and formulations (Swidler, 1986).
While extreme, these two events evidence the violent edge of a broader trend as conservatives begin to engage climate breakdown (Gilman, 2020). This occurs as national governments experience democratic backsliding amidst the ruins of neoliberal globalization (Freedom House, 2021). Neofascist political formations are ascendant, with some expressing explicitly ecofascist platforms (Mudde, 2019). Ecological thinking among fascists has a long history, including as a structuring narrative in Nazi Germany and in American environmentalism (Zimmerman, 1995). It is a mythos that links claims to a natural order with white racial superiority, often via “blood and soil” purity logics that have animated settler colonial educational projects throughout history (Biehl & Staudenmaier, 2011; Sultana, 2021).
Sociologists and anthropologists (e.g., Atran, 2011; Miller-Idris, 2020) have shown that young white men are especially susceptible to radicalization. Alienated from diverse communities, they find community online and learn about climate change and ecofascism (Lavin, 2020). While this paper takes seriously the growing spectre of right wing social movements adopting ecological concerns, the broader education background is not neutral nor without fault. The United States educational system continues to assume a neoliberal capitalist political economy even though such conditions exacerbate racial extremism (Metzl, 2019). Further, climate change education has suffered the problem of existing outside tidy curricular silos. The Next Generation Science Standards, for example, have no clear mechanism for making climate change a centerpiece of state curricula (Hufnagel et al., 2017). Political polarization among and within states makes this a wicked educational problem (Colston & Ivey, 2015). What, then, does it mean when fascistic political movements take up climate change not as a problem to deny, but rather a feature for which they will fight? Our paper grapples with this question to create a more humane world in the face of climate breakdown and rising neofascist movements.

Authors

• Marcia McKenzie, University of Saskatchewan

• Kalervo N. Gulson, The University of Sydney