Climate Science – The White Review

McKenzie Wark  August 2014

The problem with the traditional humanist
disdain for science and technology is that it is now a line of thought
pursued most vigorously again by reactionaries and fascists. If you want
to accept the reality of climate change, that most awkward rift in the
planet’s metabolism, then that means accepting the science on which it
is based. Accepting the science, it turns out, means relying on a
particular kind of infrastructure that produces it.

Perhaps it is time then to turn to a kind of critical theory that was
particularly interested in infrastructures, in technologies, and in
sciences. For example: let’s talk about Alexander Bogdanov. Lenin’s
rival for the leadership of the Bolshevik party, he was an early
theorist of the biosphere, and founder of Proletkult, the movement for
worker’s knowledge. Let’s talk about Andrey Platonov, the finest product
of Proletkult, who gave up writing during the Russian Civil War to
become an engineer and fight famine in the countryside. Those seem to me
the kinds of writers we might have need of again.