Vanguard for a Blue Sky - Analysing Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and London's Climate Movement: An Ecological Leninist Strategy
Year: 2024
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The world continues to boil due to capital’s incapacity to resolve its climatic contradictions. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), a technological process theorised to instantly reduce global temperatures, has piqued the interest of a now desperate ruling class. Given its worldwide impacts, enormous risks, and capitalist- imperialist reproductive capacities, it is crucial to engage with SAI while it is still in early development. Troublingly, there has thus far been little public consultation. In the UK, an emergent site of SAI development, the climate movement intersects at this critical juncture. The concern is that a historically depoliticised climate movement may uncritically accept SAI as a symptomatic fix to the crisis. Grounded in Marxist theory and departing from the conception of SAI as a spatiotemporal fix, this thesis addresses three primary objectives: assessing current perceptions of SAI among London’s climate movement; evaluating the impact of political education in fostering a critical perspective of the technology, connecting this educational intervention to the Leninist concept of the vanguard layer; and considering how the vanguard layer can assist in counter-hegemonic struggle. The research involved a mixed-method qualitative experiment with members of London’s climate movement. Findings reveal that while there is awareness of SAI’s functionality, participants exhibited technological neutralism and misplaced optimism in liberal governance structures. This underscores the need for more critical education to challenge these perspectives. It likewise highlights the potential benefits of an ecological-Leninist approach to building a counter-hegemonic coalition of forces, capable of addressing the root cause of the ecological crisis.
Author: Mace-Moore, James
Institution: Lund University
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6987851870