Andreas Folkers (Marie Curie Fellow Columbia and ISR) will give a talk titled “The making of an indebted planet. An ecological critique of capital beyond the limit” on Tuesday April 14th at Barnard’s Campus in Milstein 914 at 6 p.m. with dinner to follow off campus. If you would like to attend the talk or the dinner, please let me know as soon as possible.
————————————————————————-
Andreas Folkers (Columbia), April 14
The making of an indebted planet. An ecological critique of capital beyond the limit
Ecological critics of capital usually argue that a finite planet is incompatible with infinite capitalist growth. But what happens to this critique once ecological limits and thresholds have been crossed without neither capitalism nor the world simply ending? The talk proposes a new ecological critique of capital beyond ecological finitude and capitalist infinitude; a critique that stresses the haunting, recurring, and indebting qualities of capital as a planetary force. It will argue that capital’s return is bound to return as ecological destruction. Global heating is the eternal return of capitalist return as collective ecological debt. With reference to projects to remove carbon from the atmosphere, the talk shows a) how in times of carbon overshoot what environmental economists call “natural capital” turns from asset into liability, and b) that carbon removal is not, as it is often cast, a return to the climatic status quo ante. Instead, it inaugurates an open-ended, potentially infinite project of planetary repair without redemption and return.
