Insurance and geoengineering 15
interest in two main classes of geoengineering as a kind of insurance strategy: Solar Radiation Management, which acts directly on the Earth’s radiation balance to try to alleviate global heating; and NETs/Carbon Removal/
Terrestrial Carbon Management, which seeks to draw carbon down out of
the atmosphere and to store it in the terrestrial sphere (‘sequestration’) to
reduce climatic change. Such strategies offer what advocates call a Plan B
to the increasingly fallible Plan A of reducing emissions quickly (Fragniere
& Gardiner 2016, p. 15). The narrative logic is that if emissions continue to
rise, then we will need geoengineering to slow the pace of global warming
to help us cope. Scientists who are pessimistic about mitigation and foresee
severe climate change impacts in their home country tend to be most supportive of geoengineering (Dannenberg & Zitzelsberger 2019).
Alongside scientific experimentation and modelling of various geoengineering options – from mirrors in space to Carbon Capture and Storage
(geosequestration) – vehement criticisms of geoengineering as a planetary
insurance policy have emerged (Anshelm & Hansson 2016). Three stand
out. First is that at a fundamental level the very idea of geoengineering is
inherently fatalistic (Anshelm & Hansson 2014). Just as insurance has long
been resisted as revelling in doom (Ewald 2019), geoengineering’s defeatism
about greenhouse gas mitigation is angrily rejected by critics as ‘treating
the symptom over the cause’ (Kiehl 2006) and condoning not fighting the
deep and unnecessary injustices and harms of climate change. Indeed, some
argue that – as with other abuses of emergency rhetoric in response to climate change – geoengineering does not just shrug off but actively worsens
climate injustice by opening up a new frontier for profit and geopolitical
gain (Markusson et al. 2014).
Those defending geoengineering and insurance in general counter that
they are simply being realistic; that it is those denying the inevitability of
future disruptions and disasters that are deluded. Drawing on Sigmund
Freud, Ewald (2019, p. 138) suggests that ‘insurance is merciless’ towards
‘negation,’ by which he means ‘a certain manner of relating to reality that
consists of denying it at the same moment of its recognition’ in order ‘to
diminish its importance, both individually and collectively.’ The insurantial
imaginary, in other words, is open to the truth of future risk and promotes
proactive and rationally protection. It performs a version of human civilisation in which ‘recognizing risk [is] a moral imperative, a principle of
rational conduct […] a civilization that refuses the comfort of ignorance,
even shared’ (Ewald 2019, p. 140). Such a civilisation is quintessentially
Modern, manfully striding towards what Latour (2018) describes as the
unreachable Global horizon of complete knowledge, leaving behind those
who are wilfully irrational.
Another realm of climate change response shaped by the same rationalist,
insurantial imaginary, though only in its dominant risk management guise,
is climate change adaptation. Just as insurance pushes against negation,
adaptation pushes against ‘climate impact denial’ (the denial – not of the
interest in two main classes of geoengineering as a kind of insurance strategy: Solar Radiation Management, which acts directly on the Earth’s radiation balance to try to alleviate global heating; and NETs/Carbon Removal/
Terrestrial Carbon Management, which seeks to draw carbon down out of
the atmosphere and to store it in the terrestrial sphere (‘sequestration’) to
reduce climatic change. Such strategies offer what advocates call a Plan B
to the increasingly fallible Plan A of reducing emissions quickly (Fragniere
& Gardiner 2016, p. 15). The narrative logic is that if emissions continue to
rise, then we will need geoengineering to slow the pace of global warming
to help us cope. Scientists who are pessimistic about mitigation and foresee
severe climate change impacts in their home country tend to be most supportive of geoengineering (Dannenberg & Zitzelsberger 2019).
Alongside scientific experimentation and modelling of various geoengineering options – from mirrors in space to Carbon Capture and Storage
(geosequestration) – vehement criticisms of geoengineering as a planetary
insurance policy have emerged (Anshelm & Hansson 2016). Three stand
out. First is that at a fundamental level the very idea of geoengineering is
inherently fatalistic (Anshelm & Hansson 2014). Just as insurance has long
been resisted as revelling in doom (Ewald 2019), geoengineering’s defeatism
about greenhouse gas mitigation is angrily rejected by critics as ‘treating
the symptom over the cause’ (Kiehl 2006) and condoning not fighting the
deep and unnecessary injustices and harms of climate change. Indeed, some
argue that – as with other abuses of emergency rhetoric in response to climate change – geoengineering does not just shrug off but actively worsens
climate injustice by opening up a new frontier for profit and geopolitical
gain (Markusson et al. 2014).
Those defending geoengineering and insurance in general counter that
they are simply being realistic; that it is those denying the inevitability of
future disruptions and disasters that are deluded. Drawing on Sigmund
Freud, Ewald (2019, p. 138) suggests that ‘insurance is merciless’ towards
‘negation,’ by which he means ‘a certain manner of relating to reality that
consists of denying it at the same moment of its recognition’ in order ‘to
diminish its importance, both individually and collectively.’ The insurantial
imaginary, in other words, is open to the truth of future risk and promotes
proactive and rationally protection. It performs a version of human civilisation in which ‘recognizing risk [is] a moral imperative, a principle of
rational conduct […] a civilization that refuses the comfort of ignorance,
even shared’ (Ewald 2019, p. 140). Such a civilisation is quintessentially
Modern, manfully striding towards what Latour (2018) describes as the
unreachable Global horizon of complete knowledge, leaving behind those
who are wilfully irrational.
Another realm of climate change response shaped by the same rationalist,
insurantial imaginary, though only in its dominant risk management guise,
is climate change adaptation. Just as insurance pushes against negation,
adaptation pushes against ‘climate impact denial’ (the denial – not of the