14 L Rickards
grasp if we are agile and creative enough; and the Ecotopian Solution that is
possible if only we change direction and return to grounded, simple living.
Latour (2018, p. 52) offers another triad of utopias with his description of
the Local, the Global, and the Out-of-This-World attractors that he suggests
orient modernisation. The classic modernisation front is from the Local
(the traditional) to the Global (the advanced), while the Out-of-This-World
option has emerged as a form of radical climate change denial by those who
fantasise that they are ‘explicitly outside of all worldly constraints, literally offshore, like a tax haven’ (p. 36). There is a resemblance here with the
triad of utopian narratives above. The Local’s focus on securing a refuge
resonates with the downbeat ‘If this continues, then…’; the Global’s focus
on endless solutions and upwards progress resonates with the more upbeat
‘What if…?’; and the Out-of-This-World’s focus on escape resonates with the
longing of ‘If only…’ (even as it differs radically from Crumb’s Ecotopian
Solution). Latour argues that none of these utopias are sufficient for our
current times. Thus, the fact that they arguably structure much current
thinking about insurance – and, as we will discuss, geoengineering – is a
concern. At the same time, elements of geoengineering – notably soil carbon
sequestration – offer glimpses of what Latour posits as a way out: a turn to
a different attractor, ‘the Terrestrial,’ which sidesteps modernisation’s blind
pursuit of human progress by returning to e/Earth, grounding us in the reality of the need to respect and work with, not exploit or retreat from, the
planet we are part of.
In this chapter, I explore the relationships between insurance and geoengineering to better understand their shared logics, entanglements, and
stance on the future. As much as insurance is a formal, commercial product
and political technology (one increasingly promoted as a climate change
tool), I am interested in insurance as a mindset – what Ewald (1991) calls
an ‘insurantial imaginary.’ As an imaginary, insurance absorbs and reflects
narratives of the sort above, often in problematic ways. Yet, like geoengineering, it contains seeds of progressive potential. In what follows, I examine the geoengineering-insurance relationship in general and then in terms
of terrestrial carbon sequestration, the most earthly of which holds the
promise of helping us rewrite our narratives about the future.
Geoengineering as insurance and insurance market
Greenhouse gas mitigation strategies across the world are yet to successfully reduce global heating, throwing the Paris Climate Agreement’s call to
try to contain average global heating to 1.5°C into question. With modelled
pathways to 1.5°C signalling a massive role for NETs (Masson-Delmotte
et al. 2018), the growing urgency has triggered a turn to geoengineering as
a kind of insurance strategy, as a World Bank blog – Geoengineering: a possible climate change insurance policy (McCracken 2009) – illustrates. Since
then, the urgency of abating climate change has only increased. So too has
grasp if we are agile and creative enough; and the Ecotopian Solution that is
possible if only we change direction and return to grounded, simple living.
Latour (2018, p. 52) offers another triad of utopias with his description of
the Local, the Global, and the Out-of-This-World attractors that he suggests
orient modernisation. The classic modernisation front is from the Local
(the traditional) to the Global (the advanced), while the Out-of-This-World
option has emerged as a form of radical climate change denial by those who
fantasise that they are ‘explicitly outside of all worldly constraints, literally offshore, like a tax haven’ (p. 36). There is a resemblance here with the
triad of utopian narratives above. The Local’s focus on securing a refuge
resonates with the downbeat ‘If this continues, then…’; the Global’s focus
on endless solutions and upwards progress resonates with the more upbeat
‘What if…?’; and the Out-of-This-World’s focus on escape resonates with the
longing of ‘If only…’ (even as it differs radically from Crumb’s Ecotopian
Solution). Latour argues that none of these utopias are sufficient for our
current times. Thus, the fact that they arguably structure much current
thinking about insurance – and, as we will discuss, geoengineering – is a
concern. At the same time, elements of geoengineering – notably soil carbon
sequestration – offer glimpses of what Latour posits as a way out: a turn to
a different attractor, ‘the Terrestrial,’ which sidesteps modernisation’s blind
pursuit of human progress by returning to e/Earth, grounding us in the reality of the need to respect and work with, not exploit or retreat from, the
planet we are part of.
In this chapter, I explore the relationships between insurance and geoengineering to better understand their shared logics, entanglements, and
stance on the future. As much as insurance is a formal, commercial product
and political technology (one increasingly promoted as a climate change
tool), I am interested in insurance as a mindset – what Ewald (1991) calls
an ‘insurantial imaginary.’ As an imaginary, insurance absorbs and reflects
narratives of the sort above, often in problematic ways. Yet, like geoengineering, it contains seeds of progressive potential. In what follows, I examine the geoengineering-insurance relationship in general and then in terms
of terrestrial carbon sequestration, the most earthly of which holds the
promise of helping us rewrite our narratives about the future.
Geoengineering as insurance and insurance market
Greenhouse gas mitigation strategies across the world are yet to successfully reduce global heating, throwing the Paris Climate Agreement’s call to
try to contain average global heating to 1.5°C into question. With modelled
pathways to 1.5°C signalling a massive role for NETs (Masson-Delmotte
et al. 2018), the growing urgency has triggered a turn to geoengineering as
a kind of insurance strategy, as a World Bank blog – Geoengineering: a possible climate change insurance policy (McCracken 2009) – illustrates. Since
then, the urgency of abating climate change has only increased. So too has