Over the course of the years 2021 and 2022, we created several artistic research settings to explore concrete’s role in the Capitalocene. They were different types of scholarly and artistic collaborations: some were substantial events like the GC Conference and the Posthuman Rocks exhibition, while others were smaller components adding to the larger whole displayed in this exposition. We started off with a deep-time investigation for the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021, but our conversations with builders, material scientists, economists, and philosophers always seem to have been influenced by a geologist’s point of view — a central perspective in the understanding of the Anthropocene. Intrinsic to this project was the gradual change of the artistic research, supported by a growing body of knowledge, both from reading the recommendations of our scholarly collaborators and from reflections on our settings. The further we explored concrete’s role in the climate crisis, the more we realised how quickly current trends are escalating the ecological situation. This, in turn, influenced elements of the subsequent research settings. It also made ‘industry’ a welcome antagonist — but this research is actually directed against those parts of ourselves that are content with the comfort zones we have been growing up in, which are integral parts of our cementing societies (Cao et al. 2017).

The cement-producing industries might be disappointed by the following conclusions and claim that concrete is unjustifiably blamed, as has happened before (Michael 2019). They seem to perceive concrete and their efforts to make it more sustainable as part of the solution to the climate crisis. From the point of view of industry, its advertising is not greenwashing, but image-rebuilding campaigns, peppered with positive facts from contemporary research. Although they keep investing in spreading misinformation about the sustainability of their product, it is obvious that humankind needs to drastically change its relation with this material. If societies continue with business as usual, it is projected that in less than twenty years the anthropogenic mass will be three times the mass of all living organisms on the planet (Elhacham et al. 2020).

The following slide, presented by Fridolin Krausmann at the GC Conference, shows the global per capita cement stock in use and an estimation of the progressive stages of cement use in different world regions.

It is estimated that most European countries and most of North America have almost reached a state of saturation in terms of in-use cement. [11] The graphic shows that China is approaching a flattening curve, while the stock in the Global South is expected to drastically rise if a building culture based on concrete continues to spread globally and at the current growth rates. While it is important to stress that all humans have the right to functional housing and infrastructure, it is also important to keep in mind that the cement-producing companies are major global players, whose main interest is still the maximisation of their profits, not true sustainability and good living conditions. They are bound to the given economic paradigm of Growthism, which favours the highest growth of GDP for its own sake. It is likely that the cement-producing companies of the Global North and China will keep pushing into the markets of the Global South with disputable promises of improving living standards. It is also likely that they will keep pushing a green growth agenda in the Global North, by promoting high-efficiency concrete, its necessity for alternative energy power stations, and all kinds of CO₂-reduced products.

The ‘Accumulation’ section depicts the direct alignment of anthropogenic mass accumulation and GDP growth. Because green growth follows the same GDP-oriented logic, however, it is not a viable solution, since ‘there is no evidence of long-term absolute decoupling of economic growth from resource use occurring either in historical data or in modeled projections, even under high-efficiency scenarios’ (Hickel 2022: e347).

Promoting concrete as a sustainable material is hindering an urgently needed socio-ecological transformation. As described in the sections ‘The Functional Time’ and ‘The Time of Human Intervention and Prevention’, the time for successfully executing this transformation is getting scarcer, since the technosphere ‘races ahead like a forest fire without much concern for its own longevity’ (Haff 2014: 143). Meanwhile, local cultures and perspectives relating to what housing and living could look and feel like are diminishing. Humankind’s task is not only to halt the technosphere but also to figure out how to reclaim a scope of action based on pluralistic mentalities.

During the GC Conference, Lukas Allner presented several contemporary ideas for creating a sustainable building culture that could be implemented right away. The ideas that directly relate to the use of concrete are robust massive concrete construction, to radically prolong the functional time, by increasing the thickness of all concrete elements; skeleton construction, to decrease the in-use material stocks per new building; reuse and circular construction, to implement reusable and prefabricated concrete elements; and transformation, of existing large concrete buildings. The two latter options both avoid demolition and reduce the pouring of virgin concrete.

We strongly advise against the first option of robust massive concrete construction. For the time being, and until the 2050 road maps are implemented, the use of concrete is still emitting drastic amounts of CO₂. It seems very wrong to distribute the high CO₂ emissions that are caused by construction today over an increased functional time — a diagnosed life cycle of 200 years, for example, when the goal should be to avoid unnecessary emissions right now. We also assume that carbon pricing will exponentially rise, therefore the high levels of emissions today are not being correctly accounted for, especially in relation to such long future time spans.

Additionally, the mining of the necessary construction minerals is still seriously endangering thousands of species. In a near-future scenario after 2050 — when industry will supposedly have fixed the CO₂ problem and established a ‘circular’ economy of downcycling to avoid the mining of sand and gravel — the impacts of limestone rock quarrying, to produce cement, will still remain. Even if industry succeeds in implementing its road maps, this would not solve the problems of the sealing of soils, overheated cities, toxic dust, the diminishment of local building cultures, the impossibilities of individual adaptation and caring, and the accumulation of anthropogenic mass.

To overcome Growthism and short-sighted concepts of sustainability, degrowth and post-growth approaches need to be considered. Concepts of how to achieve a good life for everybody while staying within planetary boundaries need to be discussed not only by a small number of scientists and activists but also by whole societies. It might be necessary to define an ethical range within which concrete’s use is legitimate.

Until this discourse leads to significant changes in the way societies and economies function, the Global North and China need to stop continuing ‘business as usual’ and instantly change the way they are building.

In order to accelerate this social process, we therefore propose:

STOP USING CONCRETE

[11] It is important to note that this does not include the accumulation of concrete in landfills but only concrete in use.↩︎