This project focuses on Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt’s theories of technological catastrophes. Both authors view modernity as an age of crisis, and warn of the impending violent consequences of modern technological warfare. Yet their different standpoints in history set their perspectives and theories apart. The project suggests that the two authors’ texts are uniquely suited to illuminate the role of humans in developing the technologies that brought about the current climate crisis. The project’s scientific objectives are threefold: first, to critically compare Benjamin and Arendt’s theories of technological catastrophes and interrogate the role of their respective theories within the larger tradition of crisis theory; second, to show how Benjamin and Arendt’s theories of technological catastrophes contain important reflections on the destruction of nature by humans that have hitherto remained underexplored, thereby shedding important light on the ways in which Benjamin and Arendt’s theories may contribute to contemporary environmental theory; while the third objective is to intervene in the field of climate justice that addresses the inequitable effects of anthropogenic climate change on different communities and populations. Arendt and Benjamin’s theories view justice in the present as inseparable from historical remembrance [Eingedenken] and reckoning with the past. At the same time, they put forward future-oriented concepts of community and action. This double perspective makes their theories uniquely suitable for engaging with the climate justice debate. The research will thus contribute to Benjamin and Arendt scholarship, as well as the growing fields of climate justice and environmental humanities more generally.