Extended Carbon Cognition as a Machine

Abstract

Carbon matters. And it is computed. In a culture. Underlying calculations are configured; and they could be configured otherwise. To open a space for conceptual discussion about carbon, this article attempts to reconstruct the extended and distributed practices of knowing carbon emissions with the help of scholarship from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) on heterogeneity and qualculation. To that end, the following pages serve to characterise the machinic quality of a specific technology, one which is often construed as a means for reconciling capitalism with "Nature": the corporate social construction and accounting of carbon dioxide emissions. This allows us to problematise and contextualise the distributed and heterogeneous intelligence assembled by human and non-humans to make intelligible their corporation’s carbon footprint. Politically, engagement with this kind of intelligence is key to a critical understanding of the limits to managing the environment. By engaging empirically with carbon accounting, this article offers a contribution to the analysis of the hegemonic to dealing with environmental issues (ecological modernisation) and illustrates the generative quality of conceptual work on heterogeneous assemblages. These two fields require brief introductions.