Removal, Remediation, Repair: Climate emergencies in third modernity

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Science, Knowledge, and Expertise

Abstract

This paper investigates carbon removal and climate remediation as technologies of climate emergency governance beyond the catastrophe threshold. It will illuminate the role of Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) in climate politics and contrast two framings of removal: a tool to guarantee climate mitigation efficiency and a technology of climate repair in an unfolding emergency. I argue that climate repair is part of a broader set of environmental technologies that act in the aftermath of emergencies like restoration, rewilding, and remediation and systematically differ from anticipatory techniques like precaution, preemption, and preparedness. I argue that this shift from the ‘pre’ to the ‘re’ introduces a third modernity security logic since the prospect to recover from overshoot undermines the ‘second modernity’ (Beck) imperative to prevent irreversible damages.

Author

• Andreas Folkers, Columbia University, New York; Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt