Who authors future environments? Public engagement with emerging environmental technologies in the Anthropocene

• Main Author: Buck, Holly Jean
• Other Authors: Geisler, Charles C., MacMartin, Douglas Graham, Hilgartner, Stephen H., Power, Alison G.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Geography; environmental justice; Anthropocene; carbon removal; climate engineering; future studies; negative emissions; sociology of the future; Climate change; Arctic; Lapland
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1813/56938; http://dissertations.umi.com/cornellgrad:10402; https://doi.org/10.7298/X4833Q5V

The Anthropocene, the geological epoch where human activity is visible in geologic strata, is often framed with a coming-of-age story: Society must use its new knowledge about earth systems to play an active role in earth stewardship. In some versions, this extends to taking responsibility for designing or managing ecological processes. However, designing or managing ecosystems increasingly involves using emerging technologies for environmental modification that may require specialist expertise or high capital, provoking questions of who has the ability to choose, use, or design these technologies. This dissertation explores four “ecotechnical imaginaries” on varying scales: (1) “negative emissions technologies” such as bioenergy with carbon capture, which are included in climate models; (2) the “blue revolution”, or new forms of ocean-based food and energy production; (3) restoration or management of California’s Salton Sea; and (4) solar geoengineering in the Arctic. The key question addressed in this dissertation is: By what means or processes can citizens have more agency in intentional environment-making? Fifty-five extended interviews were conducted, primarily in Finnish Lapland and California’s Imperial Valley, to explore citizen and stakeholder perceptions of opportunities for public participation in environmental decisions and design. From looking at these four imaginaries together, three major themes emerge. First, public engagement with environmental futures often takes the form of rationally selecting between ready-made options. This “selectability” fits with familiar forms of participation in contemporary life, such as shopping, clicking, and representative democracy. Agency construed as an ability to choose is a very limited form of agency, and actors are generally constrained from shaping environmental technologies themselves. However, civil society actors do work on generating compelling narratives and metrics to improve the selectability of particular futures. Following on work by STS scholars, ...