Skip to main content

Events

Gas Guzzling Gaia

Thursday Lecture Series

dateOctober 15, 2020 timeThursday, 12:45pm–2:00pm EDT locationVirtual Event
Notes
  • Free and open to the public
  • Registration required. See details.
Advertisement for Shell Oil Company research titled "Climate in a Cage" with illustration of large globe in a laboratory

In the 1970s, US scientists began sounding the alarm about a new kind of environmental problem: manmade chemical products that threatened to permanently damage the atmosphere and the climate. In response, chemical companies ranging from Royal Dutch Shell to Dupont began inventing new strategies for contesting this science and forestalling regulatory intervention. One especially salient strategy concerned a claim about the nature of the environment itself. It claimed that the environment was a fundamentally stable, self-regulating system and, as such, would eventually restore itself in the face of anthropogenic pollutants. This talk examines one iteration of this claim—the Gaia hypothesis, the theory that life controls and maintains the environmental conditions for life to exist—and reconstructs its epistemic life in the world of industry. In so doing, I show how the theories scientists use to produce environmental knowledge have historically been wielded to undermine efforts to link environmental problems with industrial operations.

Click here to register via Zoom. Please note that registering for this event will sign you up for the entire Thursday Lecture Series for the Fall 2020 semester.

Talks in this series will be followed by discussion, including a Q&A session with the audience.

Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.