articles and News
September 8, 2022
Low Carbon Justice in Canada's Net-Zero TransitionTemitope Onifade
Achieving net-zero is a complex process beset by many challenges. Writing about the Canadian context, Temitope Onifade, a legal scholar and instructor in climate law and policy at the University of British Columbia, explains the need to develop and apply a "low carbon justice" approach to the actions that Canada takes to reduce its carbon emissions. If it doesn't prioritize justice, Onifade argues, Canada will once again fail its most vulnerable populations.
August 11, 2022
Author's Note: A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American EnvironmentalismMelissa Aronczyk
In this author's note on her new co-authored book, A Strategic Nature, Melissa Aronczyk explores the connection between public relations and carbon democracy. Aronczyk also details her surprising relationship with E. Bruce Harrison, the PR pioneer who dedicated his career to crafting messages for chemical and energy companies and whose contributions to our contemporary "culture of publicity" continue to shape political struggles over the environment.
August 2, 2022
Author's Note: Pipeline Populism: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First CenturyKai Bosworth
In this author's note on his new book, Pipeline Populism, geographer Kai Bosworth explores the challenges of forging the kinds of broad and effective political coalitions required to achieve a just and sustainable future.
May 3, 2022
Feature: The Carbon Convoy: The Climate Emergency Fueling the Far Right’s Big RigsTanner Mirrlees
In late January 2022, hundreds of big rigs bannered with Canadian flags rolled across the nation’s highways in “The Freedom Convoy,” a movement of purportedly ordinary truckers opposed to COVID-19 mandates. Throughout the whole ordeal, however, surprisingly little was said in the news media about the convoy’s energy politics. In this feature essay, Tanner Mirrlees, an Associate Professor in Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University, peels back the layers of energy politics at the heart of the convoy, revealing its alignment with carbon elites.
April 11, 2022
The Mitchell EffectTroy Vettese
In the final installment in our series on the impact of Timothy Mitchell's "Carbon Democracy," historian Troy Vettese explores Mitchell's unique scholarly method. Vettese argues that the power and originality of Mitchell's books, including "Carbon Democracy," stems from his adoption of approaches from postcolonial studies and Actor Network Theory (ANT). Mitchell has avoided ANT’s tendency to conservatism and has instead practised a radical critique of the economic, environmental, and political structures that he studies.
April 7, 2022
Maintaining the Rule of Experts? Interrogating the Contradictions of EnergyAyesha Vemuri
In the third installment in our series on the impact of Timothy Mitchell's "Carbon Democracy," communication studies researcher Ayesha Vemuri explores Mitchell's larger oeuvre to argue that mainstream responses to address the climate crisis can be understood as extensions of what he calls “the rule of experts.” By maintaining a global hegemony of elite expertise over that of local and indigenous knowledges, efforts to address the ecological crisis uphold structures of power that undergird the ecological crisis. If we want to develop just responses to climate change, we will need a new approach to expertise.
April 5, 2022
Carbon Democracy: Unfinished BusinessBob Johnson
In the second installment in our series of essays on the impact of Timothy Mitchell's "Carbon Democracy," historian and cultural critic Bob Johnson assesses the book's intellectual contributions to the study of energy and society. In so doing, Johnson argues that the book's two main insights have too often been neglected and calls on scholars to consider anew how we might engage more deeply with the implications of Mitchell's work.
April 4, 2022
Why I Love Teaching Carbon DemocracyCara Daggett
In the first installment in our series of essays on the impact of Timothy Mitchell's "Carbon Democracy," political scientist Cara Daggett explores why the book works so well in the classroom. Carbon Democracy, Daggett notes, upends influential American mythologies using a writing and analytical style that helps readers see that what we took to be natural fact is indeed contingent and contestable. Students find these moments just as intellectually invigorating as their professors do.
March 14, 2022
Putin’s War in Ukraine and Europe’s Carbon Democracies: Paying the Price of Half-Hearted Climate PoliticsKatja Bruisch and Benjamin Beuerle
Russia and the European Union are substantially linked by trade in energy resources. Katja Bruisch and Benjamin Beuerle argue that these links have put European leaders, who are ostensibly committed to decarbonization, in the difficult position of backtracking on their goals to minimize energy insecurity and economic chaos--a position they could have mitigated or even avoided by more decisive action on fossil fuels. Russia’s brutal, largely oil- and gas-financed invasion of Ukraine brings home in the darkest of ways the dangers of basing international relations, institutions, economies, and lifestyles on fossil fuels.
March 2, 2022
Denaturalizing Gas and War: On Energy Humanities and the Cyprus Gas ConflictZeynep Oguz
Anthropologist Zeynep Oguz examines the entanglement of militarization and ecological destruction in the new natural gas frontier of the Eastern Mediterranean. Oguz argues that energy humanities perspectives can intervene in such cases by undermining the conventional worldviews upon which geopolitics, security, and extractivism rely to open up new forms of politics and possible futures.
February 16, 2022
Canadian Oil and Soil: Romantic Nationalism and Eco-FascismAdam Carlson
Adam Carlson teases out how the framing of resource development in Canada often supports authoritarian resource rhetoric and policies. The way we talk about "Canadian oil", it turns out, is deeply political and cannot be separated from ongoing histories of resource extraction and dispossession.