Wim Carton dissects the gore, gaslighting and chaotic consequences of fossil capitalism

About this episode

Wim Carton discusses the implications of fossil capitalism and the challenges of climate adaptation.

Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden. He's the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics. His work has appeared in top journals such as Nature Climate Change, WIRES Climate Change and Antipode. His book with Andreas Malm, The Long Heat: Climate Action When It's Too Late, is a study of the science and politics of geoengineering, carbon capture and "muscular" climate adaptation. The book offers what Wim calls an "event ethnography" of the people and organizations adopting tactics to fix the climate crisis, and the ways they end up fixing the status quo of climate breakdown through capitalist accumulation firmly in place. Carton and Malm learned in their research that functionaries are "very aware of the flaws and the problems" with their approach, but can't or won't abandon the assumption that the "solutions they've always believed in" will succeed, despite so much evidence that markets, private capital and the pursuit of profit are leading us into the slow violence of escalating disaster. One of the core problems is technological optimism, or the dangerous…

People in this episode

Guest: Wim Carton

Topics covered

• fossil capitalism
• climate politics
• geoengineering
• carbon capture
• climate adaptation
• technological optimism

Keywords

• fossil capitalism
• climate crisis
• sustainability science
• climate adaptation
• technological optimism
• geoengineering
• carbon capture

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Lund University, Nature Climate Change, WIRES Climate Change, Antipode

Books & works: The Long Heat: Climate Action When It's Too Late

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