Nuclear energy is haunted by a legacy of fear and toxicity that fossil fuels seem to escape. In this piece, Jackson Ainsworth asks why. While nuclear disasters dominate cultural memory, fossil fuels—despite their clear environmental destruction—rarely provoke the same visceral reactions. Ainsworth dissects how media and history have cemented nuclear’s toxic image and challenges why fossil fuel pollution isn’t met with the same alarm. Why has toxicity discourse attached so strongly to nuclear power, but not to fossil fuels?
Recent reports reveal that Google's greenhouse gas emissions surged by 48% from 2019 to 2023, attributing the increase to the energy demands of AI technology. Despite promises of future decarbonization, AI currently consumes vast amounts of energy and water, with significant ecological impacts. Thomas Davis and Scott Stoneman critique AI's resource-intensive nature, emphasizing its role in perpetuating capitalist exploitation and environmental degradation. They argue for a critical examination of AI's material needs and its socio-economic impacts, urging a move towards more equitable and environmentally-conscious AI practices within a post-capitalist framework.
In a surprising turn, Canada’s oil and gas industry has gone silent following the passage of Bill C-59 on June 20, 2024. This new legislation, amending the Competition Act to penalize misleading environmental claims, has prompted major industry players like the Pathways Alliance and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to curtail their online presence. For a decade, Jordan B. Kinder, a scholar in media studies and environmental humanities, has studied the cultural politics of energy, infrastructure, media, and environment, coining the term "petroturfing" to describe the oil industry's fake grassroots advocacy. In his commentary on the oil industry's response to the bill, Kinder notes the benefits of the bill but also warns against putting too much stock in discursive struggles over the oil sands when what is needed is more immediate action.
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.
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.
Every day, up to 540,000 barrels of natural gas liquids and crude oil flow under the Great Lakes in the Enbridge Line 5 pipline connecting Western Canada to Eastern Canada. Jeffrey Insko--energy humanities scholar and Michigan resident--explains why a grassroots coalition of indigenous groups, politicians, environmentalists, and other concerned citizens wants the pipeline shut down, as well as what makes this pipline battle different.
Brent Ryan Bellamy explores what it means to do fieldwork in the energy humanities classroom and reflects on how an "oil inventory" assignment can reorient how students see literature, themselves, and the world.
Taste the Waste argues that the Russian government's vision of the energy future will harm both the planet and many groups living on the margins of Russian society.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education in the United States. Millions of students and faculty have been forced to meet online using digital platforms like Zoom. Literature professor Stacey Balkan argues that Zoom education should not be considered a new normal for the sake of students, faculty, and the planet.
In 2019, the Government of Alberta launched a Public Inquiry into "anti-Alberta energy campaigns that are supported by foreign organizations." Independent researcher László Németh warns that the inquiry's latest report is flirting with dangerous forms of populist rhetoric.
Political scientist Amy Janzwood argues that the Biden administration's attempts to curb U.S. demand for oil will likely accelerate the downfall of Alberta's oil sands. The Canadian oil industry faces a choice: either manage that decline or transform.
Deepthi Swamy of the World Resources Institute, India, highlights some of the challenges and complexities of energy transition on the ground in India. If India is to achieve its renewable energy goals, the country must take a democratic, bottom-up view of transition.
The shipping of goods around the world keeps economies going. But it comes at an enormous environmental cost – producing more CO₂ than the aviation industry. This problem should be getting urgent international attention and action, but, as Christiaan De Beukelaer explains, it’s not.
In the recent U.S. elections, Louisianians voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and against subsizing polluting industries. Casey Williams explains how to understand this result and what it could mean for the future of fossil fuels.
COVID-19 may be fueling flight from urban density that will undercut a green recovery. Caleb Wellum questions technocentric approaches to green recovery and explores the TVO series "The Life-Sized City" as a resource for thinking about how to renew city life.
The Liberal government's recent Throne Speech made grand environmental policy pronouncements. Imre Szeman finds fault with the Liberal's haphazard approach and questions their continued commitment to resource extraction.
