Renaturing or creating brownfields in the sky: Confronting the unforeseeable and the inconveniently foreseeable

Gross has argued convincingly that, when faced with brownfields, ignorance and surprises should be welcomed rather than feared so that knowledge can be developed and action taken to renature the brownfields.  When in a cesspool, risk-averse approaches lead to stagnation therein.  Hence he proposes real-world experimentation prompted by non-knowledge that expects surprises as a third-way alternative to the precautionary principle and to business as usual.  His provocative analysis raises many intriguing questions.  What possibilities and limitations does this perspective have for the broader problem of the creation of brownfields?  This paper argues that hyper-carbon societies are emerging and a hyper-carbon world, thereby brownfielding the atmosphere and the oceans.  Carbon hitherto locked in deep ocean water, shale, tar sands, permafrost, and the Arctic Ocean is being transferred into the atmosphere and subsequently into water on the surface of the planet.  Moreover as knowledge increases, ignorance does not decrease as commonly assumed.  This is because of the emergence through technological innovation of novel social and biophysical dynamics, particularly the unleashing of hazardous new constructions of nature by social constructions.  When generalized beyond the social problem of cleaning up existing brownfields, does real-world experimentation hold potential to analyze and deal with the creation of brownfields, or is it likely to become a gloss legitimating current trial-and-error approaches of emerging hyper-carbon societies?  Are claims of unforeseeability a refuge for those who do not want to foresee and seek to evade responsibility?  Does the difference between genuine surprises and what was known but denied or pushed to the back of the mind have to be central in social theory?  To explore such issues empirically, this paper will compare North America and Northern Europe in the ways they are dealing with the creation of brownfields in the sky.