BY LEAH ARONOWSKY JACOBIN 9-23 2022
"The carbon removal industry is coming, whether we like it or not. The Left should seize it as an opportunity to articulate and realize a progressive vision for the future — one completely rid of fossil fuels.
For years, commentators on the Left spurned all talk of geoengineering… But in one particular corner of leftist climate politics, several figures think it’s time to move beyond a knee-jerk suspicion of large-scale climate tech. Chief among them is Holly Jean Buck. For the past several years, Buck... has argued (including in the pages of Jacobin) that geoengineering should sit at the heart of a progressive climate agenda...
To this end, Ending Fossil Fuels might be read as an effort to appeal to the red-scare sensibilities of these technocrats. Nowhere will you find Buck railing, Naomi Klein-style, against the evils of capitalism...
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| DON'T WORRY ABOUT CARBON CAPTURE — NATIONALIZE IT ! |
Buck wants to use the project of dismantling a fossil fuel-based society as a Trojan horse for bringing about something that looks like a postcapitalist society.
What will it take to ensure that control over carbon removal technologies rests in the hands of the people?
Nationalize the fossil fuel industry and reinvent it as a publicly owned, worker-centered carbon management industry... Social media platforms too need to be made into public utilities to combat climate disinformation campaigns.
In other words, fossil fuels are terrible: tools of oppression, exploitation, corruption, and injustice. It’s just that we as a culture haven’t insisted on perceiving them in this way."
