Necrocracy in America: American Studies Begins to Address Fossil Fuels and Climate Change (original) (raw)
Related papers
In Carbon Nation, the historian Bob Johnson provides a novel history of energy use in America that takes media and the human body as its twin sites of analysis. In doing so, Johnson productively employs both social and media theory to uncover a rich cultural history of America’s energy use. Recent histories of energy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have tended to take a resource-centered approach: Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy (2011) traces the political transformations made possible by shifting from a predominantly coal-based social system to one of oil; Peter Shulman’s more recent Coal and Empire (2015) offers an account of the role of coal as both a source of power and commodity to be fought over, in American foreign policy; and Shellen Xiao Wu’s Empires of Coal (2015) tells the history of the Qing dynasty’s appropriation of the Western art of coal-powered industrialization. Most recently, and perhaps most congruently with Johnson’s text, Andreas Malm, in Fossil Capital (2016), describes how the shift to fossil fuels created a new ecology of labor, more conducive to the growth of capitalism than that of organic and water-powered economies. Like Malm, Johnson focuses on the physiological and social significance of fossil fuel use, but with an emphasis more on how this reception inspired myriad forms of art, film, theater, and literature.
Energy Humanities and the Petroleumscape
Oil Spaces, 2021
Recent debates around fossil fuels in Canada have brought home the importance of energy resources to the life of the country. They have also shown the importance of space to disputes over how, why, and whether fossil fuels should be used. The contentious function of oil in linking space and governance has been made clear in the extended struggle over the construction of pipelines from northeastern Alberta (close to the extraction site of the Athabasca tar sands) to the coasts, especially to the West Coast. For the Alberta provincial government and the Canadian federal government, pipelines have the potential to expand markets for Canadian oil, most of which goes to the US 1 ; for the provincial government of British Columbia, through whose territory they must pass, and for many First Nations in the region, the structures pose more threat than opportunity. Some of the disputes over energy in Canada are based on environmental principles and the argument that oil must be left in the ground. In the case of the pipelines and in the case of recent challenges by conservative governments in Saskatchewan and Ontario to the federal carbon tax, the struggle is over politics rather than principles, and it often plays out in the construction and representation of space. Conservative governments want the business of fossil fuels to continue unabated, even as British Columbia's current left-of-center government seems intent on mitigating the outcomes of fossil fuel use, including the fires that have plagued its forests over the past several years. Despite the fact that Canada's history and the space of its political sovereignty have been shaped in relation to resource extraction, it is safe to say that such practices have only recently animated vigorous public debate about their short-and long-term viability as well as their environmental implications. Yet these debates have only scratched the surface of the social and cultural commitments Canadians have made to their resource culture. This isn't to say that there aren't politically committed environmentalists in Canada, such as author Naomi Klein, whose contributions include her involvement in the 2015 Leap Manifesto, a document that demands restructuring Canada's economy to end fossil fuel use. Instead, it is to say, even as environmentalists push Canada to change its sources of energy, there has been less of a demand for an accompanying social transition. All too often, ending the use of
Fossil Fuels, the Ruling Class, and Prospects for the Climate Movement
Political Power and Social Theory, 2023
The US fossil fuel industry is vulnerable to opposition from other sectors of the ruling class. Non-fossil fuel capitalists might conclude that climate breakdown jeopardizes their interests. State actors such as judges, regulators, and politicians may come to the same conclusion. However, these other elite actors are unlikely to take concerted collective action against fossil fuels in the absence of growing disruption by grassroots activists. Drawing from the history of the Obama, Trump, and Biden presidencies, I analyze the forces determining government climate policies and private-sector investments. I focus on how the climate and Indigenous movements have begun to force changes in the behavior of certain ruling-class interests. Of particular importance is these movements' progress in two areas: eroding the financial sector's willingness to fund and insure fossil fuels, and influencing judges and regulators to take actions that further undermine investors' confidence in fossil fuels. Our future hinges largely on whether the movements can build on these victories while expanding their base within labor unions and other strategically positioned sectors.
Snake Oil and Gaslight: How the Petroleum Industry Got in Touch with Nature
Environmental Humanities, 2023
This article seeks to sidestep the dilemma of restricted access to oil company archives through a close examination of a heretofore underutilized source base: the fossil fuel industry’s own trade journals and magazines. These oil and gas industry trade publications have served to envelop their readership in what we would now call an information bubble. Still, it is important to highlight the contradictory tactics that trade industry publications effectively test-marketed in the 1960s and 1970s to nullify a perception of petroleum as hazardous to public health and the natural environment. Most paradoxical was how trade publications reinvented their industry both as not a problem for the natural environment and as the solution to all and any future problems faced by that environment. Unlike any other currently available source base, Big Oil’s trade publications offer insights into the timing and triggering motivations of the industry’s shift to self-representation as stewards of nature, as well as the rapidity and multidimensional comprehensiveness of the industry’s mobilization to develop counternarratives to potential critics. And not least of all, these publications reveal the fantastical lengths to which Big Oil was willing to go in its efforts to preemptively block the research and development of electric vehicles, principally by diverting to the imaginary prospect of a gasoline-powered but nonetheless “smogless” car. This history represents an early and previously unexplored chapter in the evolution of what we have come to recognize as corporate “greenwashing.”
Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture
University of Chicago Press, 2015
In recent years, the concept of “peak oil”—the moment when global oil production peaks and a train of economic, social, and political catastrophes accompany its subsequent decline—has captured the imagination of a surprisingly large number of Americans as well as scholars and created a quiet, yet intense underground movement. In Peak Oil, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson takes readers deep inside the world of “peakists,” showing how their hopes and fears about the postcarbon future led them to prepare for the social breakdown they foresaw—all of which are fervently discussed and debated via websites, online forums, videos, and novels. By exploring the worldview of peakists, and the unexpected way that the fear of peak oil and climate change transformed many members of this left-leaning group into survivalists, Schneider-Mayerson builds a larger analysis of the rise of libertarianism, the role of oil in modern life, the political impact of digital technologies, the racial and gender dynamics of post-apocalyptic fantasies, and the social organization of environmental denial. “This is a highly significant, original, and engaging book. Schneider-Mayerson provides a sophisticated analysis of the rise of libertarianism in the United States and articulates well how the struggle to form a collective response reflects a decline of trust in social institutions and the rise of individualism. Peak Oil is well-written, compelling, and very timely. It will no doubt be of interest to readers both inside and outside of the academy.” -- Kari Marie Norgaard, author of Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life “Schneider-Mayerson’s inventive and illuminating study of the peak oil movement is just the kind of scholarly intervention we need now to help us grapple fully with the social and political challenges we face. If his exploration of the practices and beliefs of the ‘Peakists’ is cause for worry, it isn’t because of how they view fossil fuels or its environmental impact. It’s in the largely individual response of peak oil advocates to what is of necessity a collective problem. This mainstreaming of a libertarian ethos in the United States and elsewhere—on both right and left—should ring alarm bells. As much an analysis of contemporary US political culture as it is about the politics of climate change, Peak Oil makes for a stellar addition to debates in which we all have a stake today.” -- Imre Szeman, author of Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture “From Mad Max to Mad Men, this dead-on critique of long held beliefs about masculinity and traditions of American individualism and techno-optimism—all steadily becoming associated with a ‘shift towards libertarianism’—is by turns entertaining, insightful, and troubling. The book clearly outlines how these traditions and beliefs present daunting challenges to communities interested in organizing and implementing effective and timely responses to accelerating global climate change.” -- Joni Adamson, coeditor of American Studies, Ecocriticism, and Citizenship "Matthew Schneider-Mayerson’s Peak Oil (2015) is a compelling and nuanced account of the peak oil movement in the era of climate crisis. Organized online between 2004 and 2011, the peak oil movement, Schneider-Mayerson argues, can also be thought of as a phenomenon or community of individuals sharing information, but mostly acting alone. In this timely, engaging, well-written, and accessible book, Schneider-Mayerson argues that a libertarian shift in culture within the context of environmental crisis explains the individualistic behavior of peakists even as they, in line with their overwhelmingly liberal political ideologies, recognize the need for collective action. Peak Oil pushes readers to recognize the urgent need for political action on climate change while simultaneously providing a thoughtful and sympathetic explanation for why so many people respond to environmental crisis in individualistic ways. Readers alarmed by climate crisis will connect with peakist impulses toward self-sufficiency while gaining a deeper understanding of the political and cultural milieu that informs political inaction on climate change. Peak Oil offers an in-depth portrait of peakists—who they are, how they compare to the general population, how they became “peak aware,” and what they do with their knowledge. Yet, it also does much more. Through detailed analysis of the history of beliefs about abundance and scarcity, oil production and prices, the libertarian shift, the development of the internet, and American apocalyptic thought, it uses a story about peakists to shed light on broad trends at the intersection of energy, technology, cultural imaginations, masculinity, and political economy. For this reason, it is a useful text for readers in these diverse fields and for those interested in how historical and contemporary trends inform collective capacity for imagining a future within and beyond climate crisis." -- Corrie Gross, Energy Research & Social Science (2017) "The strength of Peak Oil resides in its judicious, even-handed approach. Schneider-Mayerson neither idealizes nor vilifies his subjects.He commends them for their insights about petro-capitalist constraints, yet he does not hesitate to call out their limitations. For example, in a fascinating final chapter on the racial and gender dynamics of peak oil, he reveals that peakists often imagined a post-oil future as a reversion to a rugged, pioneer, white masculinity that aimed to “make men hard again” (142). This reversion to white patriarchy—what Schneider-Mayerson calls “retrosexuality”—registered cultural anxieties about masculinity and whiteness in an era of feminism, deindustrialization, multiculturalism, and a late capitalist economy dominated by automation and service work. Ultimately, however, Schneider-Mayerson correctly points out that whatever their biases, peakists were attempting to do something extraordinarily difficult: imagine life after petroleum while living in a society fully saturated by it. And today the political fatalism of peakists is unnerving, he concludes, not because it is so rare but because it is so pervasive. The powerful message is that within late petro-capitalism, hope and imagination are in short—but desperately needed—supply." -- Natasha Zaretsky, Environment and Society (2016) "The intricacy of Peak Oil... makes the book a fascinating window into an American subculture often parodied but rarely studied. With preternatural care, Schneider-Mayerson displays an ability to connect the words of his interlocutors with their broader political and social context that makes the book as a whole an enjoyable reading experience recommended for scholars, undergraduate students, and the public at large." -- Kai Bosworth, Cultural Geographies (2017) "A demonstration of the ability of American studies to illuminate broader cultural trends beyond self-conscious political ideology... a fascinating look into the development of a left subculture that grew in adherents largely during the Iraq War... the book reaches beyond a small coterie of intellectual influencers to explain how a group of believers can be a microcosm to understand broader currents of individualism and apocalypticism in American culture.” -- Rebecca Hill, American Quarterly (2018)