ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to analyse an emergent outlook on nature and human agency. The outlook pivots on contingency or indeterminacy, claiming that this is a constitutive condition of the biophysical world which does not hamper, but on the contrary enhances, human capacities of purposeful action, and that in this regard distinguishing between an epistemic or ontological dimension of indeterminacy bears no relevance. In an influential report, the Royal Society defines geoengineering as the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change. There are two main families of geoengineering approaches: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM). To conclude, with carbon trading and weather derivatives we are in a sense confronted with classic processes of commodification of previously unaffected fields of material reality; processes which, again classically, are enabled by technical knowledge and regulatory intervention.
