Technology and climate crisis. Techno-environmental disruptions and restoration exercises.

Abstract

The present issue of Cuadernos de Teoría Social advances in the reflection on the concerns raised by the profound transformations that we can observe in the world when considering technology and the climate crisis in tandem. On the one hand, we propose that techno-environmental disruptions affect the biosphere and territories, demanding uncertain actions (which sometimes turn into dangerous proposals), aggravating the crisis or, on rare occasions, generating small islands of certainty in the midst of constant complication. On the other hand, it opens the need to speculate on practices of care for the world, raising the question of what is recoverable in an environment where sacrifice zones, rivers of leachate and reinforced concrete breaking down are beginning to be the norm. Here we argue that neither technology nor the environment are, per se, morally good or bad; they are means, infrastructures that involve us, act on us and make us act, for better or worse. But, above all, they are mediations that challenge us in relation to the possibility of continuity of the world.