3. Lamina

Introduction

Modern soil is targeted livability. The beings that exist there are encouraged or destroyed by human efforts in an escalating form of capitalist environment-making. In Lamina, strata of Texas soils are encased in semi-solid resin, producing an altered human stratigraphy of livability in a variety of biosystems. The soil and its inhabitants thus mummified are unavailable to the atmosphere, and therefore unavailable for gas exchange; their carbon is permanently sequestered.

Encased in the nose and mouth is sand from East Beach, Galveston, still containing residues from BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, the nation’s worst offshore oil spill ever, and the annual average 285 other spills[1]. The toxins in the oil now subside in the living beings of the Gulf, lessening plankton and concentrating in the high trophic level predators consumed by human residents[2]. Just 1ppm1 oil in seawater is enough to kill half of the fish and shrimp larvae that serves as the normally stable base of a vast number of marine trophic pathways.

Soil from Rice University is next, containing insecticides to reduce mosquito presence on campus and encourage the success of its cultivated populations: students and academics. The plants that dwell within its created biome were chosen for their aesthetic and practical value, reducing standing water and resisting decimation by kitty-corner footpaths. Behind it is soil from the side of a highway and some of its residents: pink evening primrose, fleabane, stiffstem flax, and the Texas dandelion, all planted by TxDOT to reduce labor and maintenance cost by controlling erosion and eliminating the need for mowing[3].

The second-to-last layer is from Buffalo Bayou, a forgotten corner of Moody Park oft-flooded and covered in trash. Here livability is the least intentional, and native grackles and horseflies feast undisturbed on refuse and bits in the muck.

The back panel of the mask contains soil from a plot of industrially grown feed corn, a monoculture[4] enriched with commercial fertilizer containing nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus meant to restore the depleted soil annually. This creates an unsustainable[5] system that permits the temporary survival and production of crops and simultaneous soil-based ecological devastation for all other community members: the manifestation of a form of environment-making inextricably linked to capitalist modes of production and the modern climate crisis.

Soil Ecosystems and Climate Change

Throughout the Earth’s history, soil ecosystems have served as a site for carbon sequestration. The rate of sequestration depends on the agricultural technologies used, soil texture and structure, rainfall, temperature, and soil management strategies. As a result of human activity, the carbon sink capacity of agricultural and otherwise degraded soil is currently around half of historic values, a loss of 42-78 gigatons of carbon[6] and a major issue for both human and non-human beings, as the release of carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide contributes to global climate change, a massive and prolonged disturbance to communities and individuals. The world’s oceans have had to pick up the slack, and absorption of atmospheric carbon into their waters have led to ocean acidification[7] and mass death of their inhabitants. Attempts are being made to increase the soil carbon pool with soil restoration and woodland regeneration, no-till farming, cover crops, nutrient management, improved grazing practices, water conservation and harvesting, and utilizing spare lands to grow energy crops in order to simultaneously offset this damage and increase crop yield and enhance food security. Efforts that align with continued high production are not the most successful, but they are almost always the most supported. In both degraded cropland soils and less affected soil ecosystems, artificial increase of carbon sequestration has been proposed as a method to mitigate the damages of climate change, buying time until fossil fuel alternatives are fully developed. There are a number of obstacles to overcome for this plan to be feasible: the use of monoculture crops4, agricultural chemicals, unbalanced required nutrients, extractive farming practices, soil erosion and deposition all act to release carbon back into the atmosphere via mineralization or methanogenesis[8].

The use of nitrogenous fertilizers to allow the widespread application of plantation logic has had powerful effects on the relationship between soil ecology and climate change. Anthropogenic atmospheric N₂O, a greenhouse gas that also contributes to ozone destruction, is produced by aerobic nitrification and anaerobic denitrification by soil microbes[9] in agricultural fields, affected by the type and quality of fertilizer used[10].

Climate change in turn has deeply affected soil ecology. Since temperature is the primary rate determinant of the microbial reactions that form, digest, and make soil available for use by other beings, the modern general increase has resulted in heightened mineralization, a reduced pool of organic carbon, and a subsequent decline in soil structure, increase in erodibility and susceptibility to crusting, compaction, runoff, and erosion8. Soils that are currently net carbon sinks may soon become net carbon sources, snowballing with climate change in an ever-escalating decline, an irregular catastrophe. This change is happening at a pace intolerable to soil organisms, which are usually ill-accommodated to disturbance. The community reorganization required by powerful, sustained or frequent disturbance is a slow process involving numerous interspecies interactions and is likely to result in reduced soil heterogeneity due to loss of undisturbed foci for regeneration and re-selected successful dispersers5.

This ecological crisis defies an apocalypse narrative[11]; the ends faced are not universal, and there is some form of post-collapse aftermath. Profound land, climate, and water system shifts are paired with the racialized division of nature and humanity[12] innately linked to imperial capital expansion and modes of production that enable guilt-free heavy tilling, multiple harvests, and heavy use of agrochemicals that mask the effects of massive land degradation. Ecological crises can not be separated from systemic social problems; frontline communities that live alongside pollution and traumatic resource extraction are the most deeply affected, and have been facing the effects of climate change for decades. Indigenous, Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, working class, and poor communities are hit first and worst by toxic waste dumping, health and livelihood consequences, and extreme weather events10. It is critical to examine and realign not only the strategies used to achieve a capitalist means to an end but also the end itself if modern destructive climate shifts are to be slowed and stopped. Until livability is not a commodity or the lack thereof a consequence of the allocation of space and resources, ‘green’ movements and campaigns promote the preservation of a system that is tolerable for few and livable for even fewer.