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.
In this author's note, Sibo Chen introduces his new book, Energy Politics and Discourse in Canada, and its argument about the rise of "progressive extractivism" in Canada. By exploring the conflicting narratives that have shaped the politics of natural gas extraction in British Columbia, Chen shows how progressive rhetoric often masks resource extraction and underscores the multifaceted challenges inherent in balancing the economy, the environment, and Indigenous rights in a fraught energy landscape.
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.
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.
In this author's note on his new book, Who Owns the Wind?, anthropologist David Hughes offers a tantalizing glimpse of what energy justice could look like, and why it matters.
What does religion have to do with climate change? For writer and artist Darren Fleet, the wildfires raging across Western Canada evoke the shared vocabulary of religion and climate change politics, and the urgent need to think seriously about the 'spiritual work' of energy transition and energy justice.
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.
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.
Claire Ravenscroft warns that mere belief in "the science" of climate change is no longer good enough, and that the Democratic Party will only make progess if pushed by a well-organized and insistent grassroots movement.
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.
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.
