Cenizas del Antropoceno: omisiones de carbón y estratigrafía tóxica en Tocopilla (Chile)

Cenizas del Antropoceno: omisiones de carbón y estratigrafía tóxica en Tocopilla (Chile)
Ashes of the Anthropocene: carbon omissions and toxic stratigraphy in Tocopilla (Chile)

This article offers a transdisciplinary critique of the capitalist abstraction of “carbon neutrality” based on a situated analysis of energy production for large-scale copper and, more recently, lithium mining in the city of Tocopilla (northern Chile). By examining the social and material transformations triggered by energy production for large-scale mining during the twentieth century, this paper problematizes such neutrality by demonstrating how corporate emissions reduction from large-scale mining in Chile operates through the production of carbon omissions, namely through the omission of toxic sediments produced by the combustion of various fuels that have generated what we call Anthropocene ash. To visualize these sediments, we propose to experiment with a situated toxic stratigraphy that reveals the historical processes that preceded the accumulation of ash on the Quaternary sediments of the coastal cliff, and that also explores the current and future effects of the interaction between these layers. Ultimately, our analysis situated in Tocopilla shows how mining carbon neutrality functions as an abstraction with capitalist aspirations that, by discursively proposing the development of energy transitions, omits the material and toxic transformations triggered by mining transitions.