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Accepted Paper
To fix or not to fix: Scales, survival units, and infra-decarbonisation in Northern Chile
Cristobal Bonelli
(University of Amsterdam)
The paper examines how the replacement of fossil fuel transport with electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries is triggering the non-scalability of microbial carbon fixation in the places from which lithium is being extracted.
Paper long abstract
In this work we explore divergent decarbonising practices and logics taking place in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The paper examines a paradigmatic climate 'strategy' aimed to stabilize the planet's temperature, emissions reductions, particularly by exploring how the replacement of fossil fuel transport with electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries is triggering the non-scalability of microbial carbon fixation in the places from which lithium is being extracted. Building upon ethnographic work with microbiologists and indigenous peoples in Atacama, we discuss how infra-decarbonisation in microbiology -a fundamental immanent process of biotic and abiotic 'becoming with'- clashes with the modern territory of the infra-decarbonisation of the capitalist economy at stake in low-carbon transitions concerned with the decarbonisation of transport. Crafting contrasts between these divergent decarbonizing techniques, we wonder how to better conceptualize a unit of survival which is always changing, enacting and disrupting scales and temporalities while the temperature of the Earth continues to raise.