Insurance and geoengineering 21
Capitalism. In linking the molecular with the Global in this way, and seizing
upon carbon and farmland as new assets, they are perpetuating the standard model of capitalist expansion and its never-ending refrain of ‘what if?’.
It is worth considering, however, whether insurers’ acute interest in not only
expansion and gain, but limits and threats, gives them some inkling of the
unsustainability of this model and the profound insecurities that now characterise human futures. Like geoengineering, insurance is two-faced, both
celebrating human capacities to work with nature in the form of solar radiation and geochemical flows, while emphasising the likelihood of rupture
and harm of the sort the planet’s recalcitrant inhuman agency is increasingly demonstrating through blows against insurance itself. Even at the
farm scale, insurers need (like and as farmers) to be alert to the potential
for ‘soil refusal’ (Tironi 2020) – situations in which soil fails to perform as
expected or needed, regardless of whether the intent was crop yield, carbon sequestration, or caring entanglement. A growing reality under climate
change, soil refusal includes the possible rejection of vast amounts of carbon out of the terrestrial sphere, rendering it less lively and repudiating the
modernist dream that soil will provide us with a reliable escape from the
streams of greenhouse gases flowing unabated behind capitalism’s ascent.
Insurance’s focus on ‘If…, then…’ warnings about the future reminds us of
the limits to merely romanticising soil or trying to capitalise increasingly
violent Anthropocene feedbacks. It forces us to ask: ‘how are we to think
about soil-human relationality when soil does not render itself relational?’
(Tironi 2020, p. 184). ‘How are we to act if the territory itself begins to participate’ in the world (Latour 2018, p. 41)? How are we to assist others when
our own very future existence is in question? In its commercial form, insurance offers only an orthodox modernist ‘what if?’ solution. But what if the
broader insurantial imaginary – or at least its undercurrents of reciprocity
and solidarity – could help reorient us to another future, another narrative
mode? An ‘if only…’ mode of storying that dismisses the escapist fantasy
of the Out-of-This-World utopia and asks instead what it would mean if
only we knew how to relate to or at least live with this new Earth. Perhaps
a new insurantial imaginary, grounded in ‘the elementality of soil’ (Tironi
et al. 2020, p. 27), could break its modernist habits, call out the negations
of delusional forms of geoengineering, take up the climate justice fight, and
help turn us towards ‘the Terrestrial’ (Latour 2018), compelling us to negotiate the violence and promise of the inseparability of earth, Earth, and us
earthlings.
Notes
1 This typology is discussed by the late science fiction writer Octavia Butler,
who attributes its origin to Robert A. Heinlein. See Butler, Octavia. “‘Devil
Girl From Mars’: Why I Write Science Fiction.” Lecture, MIT, February 19,
1998. http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/articles/butler_talk_index.html. Thank you to
Mathias Thaler for pointing me to Octavia’s lecture.
Capitalism. In linking the molecular with the Global in this way, and seizing
upon carbon and farmland as new assets, they are perpetuating the standard model of capitalist expansion and its never-ending refrain of ‘what if?’.
It is worth considering, however, whether insurers’ acute interest in not only
expansion and gain, but limits and threats, gives them some inkling of the
unsustainability of this model and the profound insecurities that now characterise human futures. Like geoengineering, insurance is two-faced, both
celebrating human capacities to work with nature in the form of solar radiation and geochemical flows, while emphasising the likelihood of rupture
and harm of the sort the planet’s recalcitrant inhuman agency is increasingly demonstrating through blows against insurance itself. Even at the
farm scale, insurers need (like and as farmers) to be alert to the potential
for ‘soil refusal’ (Tironi 2020) – situations in which soil fails to perform as
expected or needed, regardless of whether the intent was crop yield, carbon sequestration, or caring entanglement. A growing reality under climate
change, soil refusal includes the possible rejection of vast amounts of carbon out of the terrestrial sphere, rendering it less lively and repudiating the
modernist dream that soil will provide us with a reliable escape from the
streams of greenhouse gases flowing unabated behind capitalism’s ascent.
Insurance’s focus on ‘If…, then…’ warnings about the future reminds us of
the limits to merely romanticising soil or trying to capitalise increasingly
violent Anthropocene feedbacks. It forces us to ask: ‘how are we to think
about soil-human relationality when soil does not render itself relational?’
(Tironi 2020, p. 184). ‘How are we to act if the territory itself begins to participate’ in the world (Latour 2018, p. 41)? How are we to assist others when
our own very future existence is in question? In its commercial form, insurance offers only an orthodox modernist ‘what if?’ solution. But what if the
broader insurantial imaginary – or at least its undercurrents of reciprocity
and solidarity – could help reorient us to another future, another narrative
mode? An ‘if only…’ mode of storying that dismisses the escapist fantasy
of the Out-of-This-World utopia and asks instead what it would mean if
only we knew how to relate to or at least live with this new Earth. Perhaps
a new insurantial imaginary, grounded in ‘the elementality of soil’ (Tironi
et al. 2020, p. 27), could break its modernist habits, call out the negations
of delusional forms of geoengineering, take up the climate justice fight, and
help turn us towards ‘the Terrestrial’ (Latour 2018), compelling us to negotiate the violence and promise of the inseparability of earth, Earth, and us
earthlings.
Notes
1 This typology is discussed by the late science fiction writer Octavia Butler,
who attributes its origin to Robert A. Heinlein. See Butler, Octavia. “‘Devil
Girl From Mars’: Why I Write Science Fiction.” Lecture, MIT, February 19,
1998. http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/articles/butler_talk_index.html. Thank you to
Mathias Thaler for pointing me to Octavia’s lecture.