Electric Mountains : : Climate, Power, and Justice in an Energy Transition / / Shaun A. Golding.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English
• VerfasserIn: Golding, Shaun A.,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Nature, Society, and Culture
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (266 p.) :; 11 b-w images, 1 table

Climate change has shifted from future menace to current event. As eco-conscious electricity consumers, we want to do our part in weening from fossil fuels, but what are we actually a part of? Committed environmentalists in one of North America’s most progressive regions desperately wanted energy policies that address the climate crisis. For many of them, wind turbines on Northern New England’s iconic ridgelines symbolize the energy transition that they have long hoped to see. For others, however, ridgeline wind takes on a very different meaning. When weighing its costs and benefits locally and globally, some wind opponents now see the graceful structures as symbols of corrupted energy politics. This book derives from several years of research to make sense of how wind turbines have so starkly split a community of environmentalists, as well as several communities. In doing so, it casts a critical light on the roadmap for energy transition that Northern New England’s ridgeline wind projects demarcate. It outlines how ridgeline wind conforms to antiquated social structures propping up corporate energy interests, to the detriment of the swift de-carbonizing and equitable transformation that climate predictions warrant. It suggests, therefore, that the energy transition of which most of us are a part, is probably not the transition we would have designed ourselves, if we had been asked.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Windy Ridgelines, Social Fault Line -- 3 For the Love of Mountains. The Green Politics of Place -- 4 But What If . . . ? Wind and the Discourse of Risk -- 5 Following Power Lines A Regional Political Economy of Renewables -- 6 Scripted in Chaos -- 7 Why We Follow the Slow Transition Road Map -- 8 Ecological Modernizations or Capitalist Treadmills? -- 9 Energy and “Justice” in the Mountains -- 10 Reimagining Energy -- Epilogue -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author