“Why nature won’t save us from climate change but technology will”: Creating a New Heaven and a New Earth Through Carbon Capture Technologies

Ornella, Alexander

Abstract

Warnings about climate change often come wrapped in apocalyptic language and scenarios, often as a rhetorical strategy to convey the sense of urgency with which action is required. Similarly, technologies that promise to deliver us from the impending climate apocalypse often come shrouded as savior-technologies. Once such example are carbon capture and storage solutions. Language and imagery on websites and in marketing material presents these technologies as transformative technologies: they promise to transform something harmful in the atmosphere (CO2) into paradisiacal plentitude: carbon as infinite energy resource. This paper will discuss and explore the underlying ideas behind carbon capture and storage technologies and discuss how language used to talk about the climate opportunities they offer transcends the everyday and the ordinary. Based on David Chidester’s understanding of religion, this paper argues that the power of carbon capture narratives is grounded in religious tropes and ideas.

Citation

Ornella, A. (2021). “Why nature won’t save us from climate change but technology will”: Creating a New Heaven and a New Earth Through Carbon Capture Technologies. In S. Maasen, & D. Atwood (Eds.), Immanente Religion - Transzendente Technologie : Technologiediskurse und gesellschaftliche Grenzüberschreitungen (193-223). Verlag Barbara Budrich

• Publication Date: 2021
• Deposit Date: Dec 12, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 1, 2024
• Pages: 193-223
• Book Title: Immanente Religion - Transzendente Technologie : Technologiediskurse und gesellschaftliche Grenzüberschreitungen
• ISBN: 9783847424048
• Keywords: technology, carbon capture, climate change, religion, transcendence
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4151922
• Publisher URL: https://shop.budrich.de/en/product/immanente-religion-transzendente-technologie/