Higher Seminar with Andreas Malm & Wim Carton on April 14: “Seize the Means of Carbon Removal: The Political Economy of Direct Air Capture”.

Organised by Seedbox and Jonas Anshelm, within the project “Understanding negotiations: Opening the black box of conceptualizing and uncertainties in climate sciences”.

The climate movement, its allies and other progressives need to engage more closely with the politics of removing carbon from the atmosphere – a topic rapidly making its way to the top of the climate agenda. We here examine the technology of direct air capture, tracing its intellectual origins and laying bare the political economy of its current manifestations. We find a space crowded with ideology-laden metaphors, ample fossil-capital entanglements and bold visions for a new, ethereal frontier of capital accumulation. These diversions must be cut short if a technology with the capacity to help repair at least some climate damage is to be of any use. Only socialising the means of removal will allow this to happen.