Written with university students in mind…
Target Courses:
Environmental Sociology, Energy and Society, Society and the Environment, and other environmental-interdisciplinary topics overlapping with the social sciences
The Pitch:
The world’s quickening energy transition is heralded by iconic changes to our landscapes and exciting new modes of transit, heating, and cooling. And yet society’s shift away from climate-harming energy is far from the urgent transformation warranted by climate change predictions.
——————
Electric Mountains explores the dissonance between electricity transition and energy transformation through the story of a region’s renewable energy policies and the popular backlash against them.
——————
Contextualizing narratives commonly dismissed as NIMBYism, Electric Mountains engages with the themes of rurality, risk, justice, and Ecological Modernization in predominantly white and ecologically progressive Northern New England. It encourages readers to discern nuance across different regional political economies of energy and to recognize the imprints of energy hegemons, as well as our own biases and privileges, in our energy realities and energy transition roadmaps.
Chapter Descriptions:
Chapter 2, “Windy Ridgelines, Social Fault Lines,” explores how wind projects agitate animosity. The chapter draws contrasts between three types of arguments: those that are superficial and based on aesthetics; those that are based on technical aspects of turbine finance, carbon accounting, and ecological disruption; and those that are based on procedural exclusion from energy planning and regulation. Chapter 2 encourages readers to look for and sift through complex arguments that might otherwise be obscured by labeling wind opposition “NIMBYism.”
——————
Chapter 3, “For the Love of Mountains: The Green Politics of Place,” explains the historical conditions and policy developments that gave rise to Northern New England’s ridgeline wind turbines. The chapter describes how public discussion of renewable electricity has been scripted by the particular way the region’s land, people, and history interact. Chapter 3 provides key background for wind support and wind resistance in showing how the region’s pleasing landscape became a crossroads for tourists, second-home owners, and urban newcomers desiring to build their lives against an unspoiled backdrop, making many sensitive to outside influences.
——————
Chapter 4, “But What If . . . ? Wind and the Discourse of Risk,” explores confusion and uncertainty as tactics that are used to both advance and oppose ridgeline wind turbines. The chapter illustrates how German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theory of the “risk society” is embodied in both pro-and antiwind rhetorics. Illuminating widespread skepticism of scientific expertise and state authority, risk society entails increasing societal orientation around fear and uncertainty about the future. The chapter focuses on electricity pricing and carbon accounting to illustrate how actors mobilize discourses of risk and use conflicting scientific evidence to frighten the public about the uncertainties behind energy decisions.
——————
Chapter 5, “Following Power Lines: A Political Economy of Renewables,” unpacks the social structures and relationships aligning to make Northern New England’s wind turbines profitable. The chapter contains two parts. The first focuses on money—how new policies following neoliberal patterns helped institutions exploit turbines’ financial architecture to the institutions’ advantage, with little emphasis on the environment. The second part focuses on people—situating the region’s wind industry amid a coalition of political and private interests acting in concert to fulfill professional obligations outlined by antiquated, growth-oriented energy policy. Chapter 5 helps contextualize wind opponents’ accusations of corruption and feelings of exclusion from energy planning.
——————
Chapter 6, “Scripted in Chaos,” explores how wind turbines fit into a protracted national energy transition designed with the needs of fossil fuel interests in mind. These interests, with large investments in natural gas and navigating chaotic trends in the energy sector, benefit from the wind’s intermittency because they have positioned natural gas as a clean alternative to coal and oil that can be dispatched quickly when the wind ceases to blow. The chapter describes how natural gas became nationally celebrated as the ideal “bridge fuel” despite the disastrous impacts of fracking and mounting uncertainty about gas’s climate consequences. The chapter then explores how the resultant road map to a slow transition gains traction from rhetoric demanding justice for oil and gas workers while ignoring those workers’ relatively privileged status in the hierarchy of fossil fuel victims.
——————
Chapter 7, “Why We Follow the Slow Transition Road Map,” examines how fossil fuel interests elicit tacit support from the public for their vision of a slow transition. The chapter considers (1) the origins of energy culture in industry propaganda and the creation of docile consumers, (2) the supporting role that wind turbines play as totemic icons of environmentalism obviating critical engagement in energy issues, and (3) the inability of promises of green jobs to fill the important role of sustaining rural communities. This chapter contends that these conditions weaken and distract from meaningful energy engagement and thus deter us from pursuing superior energy alternatives.
——————
Chapter 8, “Ecological Modernizations or Capitalist Treadmills?,” uses two opposing theories to help readers see ridgeline wind’s simultaneous strengths and weaknesses. The chapter situates Northern New England’s experience in ecological modernization theory (EMT) and the treadmill of production (ToP), oppositional theories in environmental sociology. The chapter describes how ridgeline wind can be understood optimistically as environmental progress, and at the same time, pessimistically as a business-as-usual Band-Aid. Chapter 8 considers evidence from Vermont, Northern New England’s most environmentally progressive state, to show the complexity belying popular public narratives of eco-progressivism.
——————
Chapter 9, “Energy and ‘Justice’ in the Mountains,” exposes how global injustices are complexly imprinted in first-world disagreements about renewable energy. The chapter focuses on how wind opponents invoke “justice” to characterize decisions about siting wind turbines and contrasts Northern New England’s wind turbines with more typical cases of environmental injustice. Specifically, the chapter highlights rhetorics of injustice appropriated from others but not actually experienced, addressed, or remedied by those invoking them. Chapter 9 argues that Northern New England’s long history of white environmentalism has endowed it with abundant commitment to ecological causes but little capacity to build bridges to social causes.
——————
Chapter 10, “Reimagining Energy,” reflects on previous chapters to outline strategies for more just energy planning. The chapter argues that prioritizing any energy for its low costs can exacerbate persistent injustices wrought by overconsumption and widening inequality. The chapter emphasizes greater citizen involvement in energy planning as the optimal way to advance energy solutions outside the status quo and works toward an understanding of how alliances across communities and issues might promote inclusivity while advancing opportunities at smaller, more efficient scales.