The Long Heat - New Book Shows Warming "Solutions" As Unwillingness To Challenge The Death-Grip Of Money [View all]

Last edited Sat Oct 4, 2025, 12:18 PM - Edit history (1)

In 2022, a small group of researchers came up with a bright idea: What if we were to install a network of lamps above tropical forests, flooding them with light at night in order to boost photosynthesis? Doing this in the Amazon alone, they argued, would increase plants’ uptake of CO2 by so much that it could “completely offset” humanity’s carbon emissions. Sure, they admitted in a paper they published on the idea, their plan didn’t factor in how much it would cost to install a network of millions of rainforest lamps, where the clean energy needed for all this additional electricity would come from, or how the light would probably disturb the local fauna. But the proposal certainly was “novel,” as they described it.

It may sound drastic to physically manipulate entire biomes rather than, say, stop extracting fossil fuels, but in recent years, these kinds of ideas have grown more prevalent. Other so-called “climate solutions” have envisioned removing carbon from the atmosphere by planting 1 trillion trees (which would have uncertain climate benefits and require an unrealistic amount of space), cultivating carbon-munching bacteria, or “managing” global sea level rise by building giant underwater curtains. At least one scientist has put forward the idea that we “manipulate the orbit of asteroids,” hitching them to the Earth to nudge the planet to a cooler zone farther away from the sun, despite the risk that this would eject us from the sun’s orbit.

In their new book The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late, the Swedish academics Wim Carton and Andreas Malm attempt to explain what’s going on. As they see it, these complicated ideas have arisen from society’s unwillingness to challenge “fossil capital,” the extensive network of infrastructure, assets, and systems owned by companies intent on preserving business interests associated with fossil fuels. That includes pipeline companies, auto manufacturers, electric utilities, banks, and more. Those seeking to address climate change have imagined fossil capital as an “unassailable background condition,” Carton and Malm write, which means they’ve had to assail something else — anything else, even if it’s the oscillation between day and night.

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In other words, science can’t be swayed by market incentives. The logic is hard to ignore, and yet in the decade since This Changes Everything was published, much of society has done just that. Rather than address the real need — transforming our fossil fuel-based economy — capitalist-oriented climate solutions have either attempted to bend nature, or promoted the idea that economic “tipping points” will eventually allow renewables to overtake oil, gas, and coal. Carton and Malm, in line with the authors of other recent books — including Brett Christophers’ The Price Is Wrong and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s More and More and More — argue that markets won’t bring about a green transition on their own. Instead, they argue, it’s up to humans to bring about the end of the fossil fuel era.

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https://grist.org/culture/climate-capitalism-tech-the-long-heat-malm-carton-book-review/

Ed. - Multiple links at original article.