On Sunday 30th July 2023, from 7.30-9.30pm at The RYSE, 2 Bath St, Stroud Radical Reading Group will discuss After Geoengineering: Climate Trajedy, Repair, and Restoration, by Holly Jean Buck. The book explores how “We are right to fear that geoengineering will be used to maintain the status quo” but asks “is there another possible future after geoengineering?”. On this webpage you can find a link to buy the book at a discount, free resources, and information about the author, the book, how our sessions work, and the venue.

At the time of writing, you can buy a copy of the book from publishers Verso for £11.89 (hardback) or £7 (ebook). Both prices represent a 30% discount on the RRP.

This discussion is part our series on climate change, but you are welcome to join the discussion even if you cannot make the other events. You are also welcome even if you haven’t read the book or the free section of it available below – to listen to the discussion and ask questions.

Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below.

Free resources

Freely available resources related to the book are available below. We like to ensure everyone can attendee our sessions and get something out of them even if they can’t afford to buy a copy of the book or the time to read it. We would encourage people to read/listen to as much as possible, but you are welcome to attend and listen along even if you are unable to engage with any of the below:

• Chapter 1 – pdf download (404kb)
• Read a 2,500 word excerpt from the book: “The desperate race to cool the ocean before it’s too late” (approximately 10 minute read time)
• Read a 3,000 word piece summarising arguments from the book: “How to Decolonize the Atmosphere” (approximately 15 minute read time)
• Read a 6,500 word excerpt from the book: “It’s Time To Talk About Solar Geoengineering” (approximately 30 minute read time)
• 17 minute video interview with Holly Jean Buck from publishers Verso Books (also embedded below)
• 60 minute audio interview with Holly Jean Buck on the Rev Left Radio podcast
• Holly Jean Buck’s website
• Holly Jean Buck on twitter

About the author and the book

Holly Jean Buck is a geographer and environmental social scientist studying rural futures, the politics of platforms, and how emerging technologies can address environmental challenges. She works as an Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York. She is also the author of Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough.

“Climate engineering is a dystopian project. But as the human species hurtles ever faster towards its own extinction, geoengineering as a temporary fix, to buy time for carbon removal, is a seductive idea. We are right to fear that geoengineering will be used to maintain the status quo, but is there another possible future after geoengineering? Can these technologies and practices be used to bring carbon levels back down to pre-industrial levels? Are there possibilities for massive intentional intervention in the climate that are democratic, decentralised, or participatory?

These questions are provocative, because they go against a binary that has become common sense: geoengineering is assumed to be on the side of industrial agriculture, inequality and ecomodernism, in opposition to degrowth, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and climate justice. After Geoengineering rejects this binary, to ask: what if the people seized the means of climate production? Both critical and utopian, the book examines the possible futures after geoengineering. Rejecting the idea that geoengineering is some kind of easy work-around, Holly Buck outlines the kind of social transformation that would be necessary to enact a programme of geoengineering in the first place.”

Endorsements:

“In the face of rapid climate change, how should we think about geoengineering? In this timely and bold book, Holly Jean Buck lays out a case for approaching geoengineering from the Left. Blending journalistic insight with scientific speculation, After Geoenginneeringinspires much-needed thought experiments about the changes coming to our warmer and weirder world.

Joel Wainwright, author of Decolonizing Development, Geopiracy, and Climate Leviathan (with Geoff Mann)

This is the guide to the future. There’s hardly anything scarier than geoengineering, but it is coming towards us, closer for every day of CO2 spewed into the air. It can no longer be wished away – and thankfully, we have Holly Jean Buck to explain what it might look like and how it could be survived, perhaps even used for the good of the planet. Written in graceful prose, combining the latest science with the crystal ball of a sci-fi author, this book shines. Anyone worried about what comes next should read it.

Andreas Malm, author of The Progress of This Storm and Fossil Capital

About Stroud Radical Reading Group events and the venue

Our events are free to attend, though we will collect donations to cover the costs of venue hire on a donate-what-you-can-afford basis. We try to ensure the discussions are welcoming to new people, including people who have never been to a reading group before – and you don’t have to have been to university. You don’t even have to have read any of the book – you can just come along and listen to the discussion. Some free resources including a sample chapter we’ll focus our discussion on are included above, and we’d encourage people to read/listen to as much as they can ahead of the session.

James facilitates the sessions, which we start and finish with everyone having a short time to introduce themselves, and mention something that struck them about the reading or which they’d like to discuss. The conversation then flows, with people using hands to indicate they’d like to speak – and we try to make sure everyone gets a chance. Sometimes we identify particular questions to think about during a session or even before it.

The RYSE is a new venue for us – it is accessed by a staircase. Please contact us if you have any accessibility requirements, or other questions about how the events work.

We will keep windows open for ventilation, hand sanitiser is provided, and we ask people who are ill to stay away (whether they are ill with covid or something else). Attendees do not generally wear masks but we will be respectful to anyone who chooses to and other members may wear masks at request of other attendees – let us know your preferences in advance.