Climate, Technology, and Society

Reinhold Martin

ARCH A4411

Spring 2021

How do we understand the “change” in “climate change”?

This course locates that change at the intersection of nature, technology, and society.
We take as our historical baseline the famous “Keeling curve” (above), begun by Charles
Keeling in 1958, which charts the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Correlating this sharp upward curve with other anthropogenic proxies, climate
scientists sometimes refer to the period it covers as the Great Acceleration. This course
will use the global built environment as one such proxy, considering what has changed
and what has not during this period, to more clearly understand the corresponding
crisis.

In particular, we will consider the mediating role of technology and technological

systems, from building systems to infrastructure, in contributing to and potentially
mitigating planetary warming and its unequal effects. While necessary, strategies for
adaptation tend to favor those with greater resources. We will therefore focus on the
sources of atmospheric change itself. Recognizing that all technology is socially
produced, we will specify those sources as technologically mediated human activities.
With history—the science of change—as our guide, we will consider what else must
change for society to decarbonize.

To do so, we will follow two simultaneous tracks. Weekly mini-lectures will sketch a
“global” or planetary history of the built environment during the period described by
the Keeling curve—the Great Acceleration—with a focus on technological systems.
Case studies from around the world—from architecture to engineering to city
planning—will reconstruct the scale and scope of carbon-intensive development and
the belated response to warning signs, even as these disciplines developed a
sophisticated discourse of their own on “climate” and “environment.”

Parallel weekly readings highlight broad themes and offer diverse contexts for thinking
through the contradictions we will encounter in the lectures. Through the work of
scholars, activists, and public intellectuals, we will consider situations—South and
North—where the technopolitics of climate change are especially apparent, tracing the
“front lines,” “fence lines,” and “color lines” that divide vulnerable communities from
global elites. Each week, lectures and readings will be the basis for seminar-style
discussion. Examining technological, social, and metabolic processes at all scales,
students will thereby encounter ways of thinking and acting historically in
unprecedented times, with material drawn—like the Earth’s atmosphere—from around
the planet.

Schedule

NOTE: All required readings are available on Canvas, online, or as e-books through
CLIO.

1. Introduction: What do we mean by “technology”?

12 January 2021

Lecture: Nature, Technology, Society

Readings

Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 121-
136.

Cornelia Vismann, "Cultural Techniques and Sovereignty," Theory, Culture &

Society 30, no. 6 (2013): 83-93.

Andreas Malm, The Progress of this Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming
World (New York: Verso, 2018), Chap. 1, “On the Building of Nature: Against
Constructivism,” 21-43.

https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/14984477?counter=1Links to an external site.

For Reference
Vaclav Smil, Transforming the Twentieth Century, Vol. 2: Technical Innovations and
Their Consequences (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), Chap. 5,
“Transportation, Communication, Information: Mass and Speed,” 198-252.

https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195168755.001.0001/acpr
of-9780195168754-chapter-5 (Links to an external site.)

Vaclav Smil, Energy and Civilization: A History (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2017),
Chap. 5, “Fossil Fuels, Primary Electricity, and Renewables,” 225-293.

https://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/ZTAyNXhuYV9fMTUxOTYwN
l9fQU41?sid=2bec0f60-2ba8-4fec-98bd-fc863ac8bb6b@sdc-v-
sessmgr01&vid=0&format=EB&lpid=lp_228&rid=0 (Links to an external site.)

2. Anthropocene, Great Acceleration, Planetary Boundaries

19 January 2021

Lecture: Rates of Change

Readings

Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of
Global Warming(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), Chap. 13, “Parametrics and the
Limits of Knowledge,” 337-355.

https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/13302060Links to an external site.

J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of

the Anthropocene since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), Chap.
4, “Cold War and Environmental Culture,” 155-205.

https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/14089814?counter=1Links to an external site.

For Reference

Svante Arrhenius, “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature
of the Ground [1896],” in Bill McKibben, ed., The Global Warming Reader: A Century
of Writing about Climate Change (New York: Penguin, 2011), 19-30.

Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene,’” IGBP Global Change
Newsletter 41 (May 2000): 17-18.

Will Steffen et al, “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great
Forces of Nature?” Ambio 36, no. 8 (2007): 614-621.

Will Steffen et al., “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical

Perspectives,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 842–67.

Johann Rockström et al., “Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for
Humanity,” Ecology and Society 14, no. 2
(2009), http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/ (Links to an external site.).

3. Global Warming: From Denial to Adaptation

26 January 2021

Lecture: Postwar, c. 1950 (C02 = 310ppm, est.)

Readings
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists
Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change (New York:
Bloomsbury, 2010), Chap. 6, “The Denial of Global Warming,” 169-215.

Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright, Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our
Planetary Future (New York: Verso, 2018), Chap. 3, “The Politics of Adaptation,” 53-78.

4. Climate Change and Profit

2 February 2021

Lecture: Monumentality, c.1960 (C02 = 316ppm)

Readings

McKenzie Funk, Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming (New York:
Penguin Books, 2014), Chap. 7, “Farmland Grab: Wall Street Goes to South Sudan,” 139-
160; Chap. 8, “Green Wall, Black Wall: Africa Tries to Keep the Sahara at Bay; Europe
Tries to Keep Africa at Bay,” 161-188.

Steve Coll, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (New York: Penguin
Books, 2012), Chap. 3, “Is the Earth Really Warming?” 67-92.

5. The Technopolitics of Extraction

9 February 2021

Lecture: Institutions, c.1970 (C02 = 325ppm)

Readings

Martín Arboleda, Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism (New
York: Verso, 2020), Chap. 1, “Openings: The Mine as Transnational Infrastructure,” 1-
34.

Thea Riofrancos, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in

Ecuador (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), Introduction, “Resource Radicalisms,”
1-28.

6. Soil and Sovereignty

16 February 2021

Lecture: Agriculture, c.1980 (C02 = 338ppm)

Readings

Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil (New Delhi: Navdanya, 2007), Chap. 1, “Eating Oil,” 1-28.

Vandana Shiva, “Climate Change and Agriculture [2011],” in Bill McKibben, ed., The
Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing about Climate Change (New York:
Penguin, 2011), 365-370.

Hannah Holleman, Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the
injustice of ‘Green’ Capitalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), Chap. 7, “No
Empires, No Dust Bowls: Toward a Deeper Ecological Solidarity,” 148-163.
7. Oil and Power

23 February 2021

Lecture: Oil, c.1990 (C02 = 353ppm)

Readings

Ken Saro-Wiwa, A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary (New York: Penguin, 1995),
Chap. 11, 223-238.
https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/2006745?counter=1Links to an external site.

Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2011), Chap. 3, “Pipedreams: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Environmental
Justice, and Micro-Minority Rights,” 103-127.

https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/14175236Links to an external site.

James Ferguson, “Seeing Like an Oil Company: Space, Security, and Global Capital in
Neoliberal Africa, American Anthropologist 107, no. 3 (September 2005): 377-382.

Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (New York:
Verso, 2011), Chap. 8, “McJihad,” 200-230.

8. Uneven Geographies

9 March 2021

Lecture: Gas, c.2000 (C02 = 368ppm)

Readings

Naomi Klein, “Let Them Drown: The Violence of Othering in a Warming

World,” London Review of Books 38, no. 11 (June 2016). https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-
paper/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown (Links to an external site.)

Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of
Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), Chap. 13, “Rio’s Agony: From Extreme
Weather to ‘Planet of Slums,’” 157-178.

9. Refusing Resilience

16 March 2021

Lecture: Coal, c.2010 (C02 = 388ppm)

Readings

Ashley Dawson, Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of
Climate Change (New York: Verso, 2017), Chap. 4, “The Jargon of Resilience,” 152-187.

Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2014), Chap. 9, “Blockadia: The New Climate Warriors,” 293-336.

https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/14775905Links to an external site.

10. Tragedy of the Commons?

23 March 2021
Lecture: Crisis, c.2020 (C02 = 415ppm)

Readings

Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2014), Chap. 12, “Sharing the Sky: The Atmospheric Commons and the Power
of Paying Our Debts,” 388-418.

https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/14775905Links to an external site.

Oscar Olivera in collaboration with Tom Lewis, ¡Cochabamba! Water War in

Bolivia (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004), “Privatization,” 7-23.

Catherine Coleman Flowers, “Septic Injustice,” testimony before the US House

Committee Transportation Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, 7
March 2019.

https://power.buellcenter.columbia.edu/essays/septic-injusticeLinks to an external site.

11. Decarbonization and The Green New Deal

30 March 2021

Group Presentations: Part 1

Readings

Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos, A Planet
To Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (New York: Verso, 2019), Chap. 1, “Bury the
Fossils,” 35-65.
https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/14978685Links to an external site.

Naomi Klein, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2019), Introduction, “‘We Are the Wildfire,’” 1-53.

Project Drawdown (website)

https://drawdown.org/ (Links to an external site.)

For reference

Herman Daly, interview with Benjamin Kunkel, “Ecologies of Scale,” New Left
Review 109 (Jan-Feb 2018): 80-104.

Robert Pollin, “De-growth versus a Green New Deal,” New Left Review 112 (July-Aug
2018): 5-25.

12. Geoengineering

6 April 2021

Group Presentations: Part 2

Readings

Holly Jean Buck, After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration (New
York: Verso, 2019), Chap. 4, “Capturing,” 119-40.

Andreas Malm, “Planning the Planet: Geoengineering Our Way Out of and Back Into a
Planned Economy,” in J. P. Sapinski, Holly Jean Buck, and Andreas Malm, eds., Has It
Come to This? The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020) PP.

Anne Pasek, “Provisioning Climate: An Infrastructural Approach to Geoengineering,”

in J. P. Sapinski, Holly Jean Buck, and Andreas Malm, eds., Has It Come to This? The
Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2020), 143-162.