Transforming Power

Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict

John Byrne, Noah Toly, Leigh Glover

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351301305
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Business

In 1934, Lewis Mumford critiqued the industrial energy system as a key source of authoritarian economic and political tendencies in modern life. Recent debate continues to engage issues of energy authoritarianism, focusing on the contest between energy-driven globalization (the spread of energy deregulation and the simultaneous consolidation of the oil, coal, and gas industries) and the so-called "sustainable energy" strategy that celebrates the local and community scale characteristics of renewable energy. Including theoretical inquiries and case studies by distinguished writers, Transforming Power is divided into three parts: Energy, Environment, and Society; The Politics of Conventional Energy; and The Politics of Sustainable Energy. It interrogates current contemporary energy assumptions, exploring the reflexive relationship between energy, environment, and society, and examining energy as a social project. Some of these have promised a prosperous future founded upon technological advances that further modernize the modern energy system, such as "inherently safe" nuclear power, environmentally friendly coal gasification, and the advent of a wealthier, cleaner world powered by fuel cells; and the "green technologies, " said by advocates to prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a commitment to ecological balance. br This volume offers a timely engagement of the social issues surrounding energy conflicts and contradictions. It will be of interest to policymakers, energy and environmental experts, sociologists, and historians of technology.

1

Energy as a Social Project: Recovering a Discourse

John Byrne and Noah Toly¹

From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury pollution, and biodiversity loss,² the origins of many of our least tractable environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population—experience evening light by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 - 373). And there is the disturbing link between modern energy and war.³ Whether as a mineral whose control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil, see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future.

With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing: instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.⁴

One stream of euphoria has sprung from advocates of conventional energy, perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power who, early on, promised to invent a “magical fire” (Weinberg, 1972) capable of meeting any level of energy demand inexhaustibly in a manner “too cheap to meter” (Lewis Strauss, cited in the New York Times 1954, 1955). In reply to those who fear catastrophic accidents from the “magical fire” or the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize “inherently safe reactors” (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intentionally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimistic, forecasts can be heard from fossil fuel enthusiasts who, likewise, project more energy, at lower cost, and with little ecological harm (see, e.g., Yergin and Stoppard, 2003).

Skeptics of conventional energy, eschewing involvement with dangerously scaled technologies and their ecological consequences, find solace in “sustainable energy alternatives” that constitute a second euphoric stream. Preferring to redirect attention to smaller, and supposedly more democratic, options, “green” energy advocates conceive devices and systems that prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a commitment to ecological balance. Among supporters are those who believe that greening the energy system embodies universal social ideals and, as a result, can overcome current conflicts between energy “haves” and “have-nots.”⁵ In a recent contribution to this perspective, Vaitheeswaran suggests (2003: 327, 291), “today’s nascent energy revolution will truly deliver power to the people” as “micropower meets village power.” Hermann Scheer echoes the idea of an alternative energy-led social transformation: the shift to a “solar global economy… can satisfy the material needs of all mankind and grant us the freedom to guarantee truly universal and equal human rights and to safeguard the world’s cultural diversity” (Scheer, 2002: 34).⁶

The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers nuclear weaponry and risks disruption of the planet’s climate is a product of promises pursued without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and ecological record of the regime’s operations. However, the discursive landscape has occasionally included thoughtful exploration of the broader contours of energy-environment-society relations.

As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the Machine, 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key source of social and ecological alienation (1934: 196):

The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals.

By 1961, Mumford despaired that modernity had retrogressed into a life-harming dead end (1961: 263, 248):

…an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: machine fodder and cannon fodder: surplus values and surplus populations…

The dirty crowded houses, the dank airless courts and alleys, the bleak pavements, the sulphurous atmosphere, the over-routinized and dehumanized factory, the drill schools, the second-hand experiences, the starvation of the senses, the remoteness from nature and animal activity—here are the enemies. The living organism demands a life-sustaining environment.

Modernity’s formula for two centuries had been to increase energy in order to produce overwhelming economic growth. While diagnosing the inevitable failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity’s supporters would seek to derail present-tense⁷ evaluations of the era’s social and ecological performance with forecasts of a bountiful future in which, finally, the perennial social conflicts over resources would end. Contrary to traditional notions of democratic governance, Mumford observed that the modern ideal actually issues from a pseudomorph that he named the “democraticauthoritarian bargain” (1964: 6) in which the modern energy regime and capitalist political economy join in a promise to produce “every material advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus [one] may desire, in quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority” on the condition that society demands only what the regime is capable and willing to offer. An authoritarian energy order thereby constructs an aspirational democracy while facilitating the abstraction of production and consumption from non-economic social values.

The premises of the current energy paradigms are in need of critical study in the manner of Mumford’s work if a world measurably different from the present order is to be organized. Interrogating modern energy assumptions, this chapter examines the social projects of both conventional and sustainable energy as a beginning effort in this direction. The critique explores the neglected issue of the political economy of energy, underscores the pattern of democratic failure in the evolution of modern energy, and considers the discursive continuities between the premises of conventional and sustainable energy futures.

The Abundant Energy Machine⁸

Proposals by its stakeholders to fix the modern energy system abound. Advocates envision bigger, more expensive, and more complex machines to spur and sate an endlessly increasing world energy demand. From clean coal to a revived nuclear energy strategy, such developments promise a worldwide movement to a cleaner and more socially benign energy regime that retains its modern ambitions of bigger, more, and better. Proponents even suggest that we might have our cake and eat it too, promoting patterns of energy production, distribution, and consumption consistent with an unconstrained ideology of quantification while also banishing environmental threats and taming social risks that energy critics cite in their challenges to the mainstream. Consistent with a program of ecological modernization, the conventional energy regime’s architects are now exploring new technologies and strategies that offer what are regarded as permanent solutions to our energy troubles without harming our ecological future or disturbing the goal of endless economic growth and its attendant social relations.

Greening Fossil Fuels

Among the most prominent techno-fixes for modern energy are those seeking to “green” the fossil fuels (see, e.g., Jaccard, 2005). The substitution of natural gas for other hydrocarbons, the emergence of “clean coal,” the “ecologically sustainable” mining of what are supposed to be vast, untapped oil reserves in heretofore unfriendly terrains,⁹ and the geological sequestration of climate-destabilizing CO₂ the most favored in this category. Each represents an effort to legitimate the conventional energy regime without displacing fossil fuel’s powerful role in rationalizing centralized energy production and distribution.

Natural gas is said to provide efficiencies equal to, or exceeding, the other fossil fuels while generating far fewer environmentally harmful consequences; as a replacement for oil and coal, it would result in decreased acid rain, smog, and mercury pollution. Natural gas emits fewer pollutants—among them greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. In this regard, it is advocated as an effective means by which to mitigate global warming. Low emissions of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter are also benefits of natural gas. Furthermore, the extraction, processing, and consumption of the fuel is said to produce very little solid waste and to have minimal impacts on water quality, unlike coal and oil (Cassedy and Grossman, 1998: 111 – 114).

But while its environmental effects may merit consideration of natural gas as a transitional fuel, the social hazards of bringing this energy source to market are very real. Michael Klare has written of potential armed conflicts to control natural gas reserves and the attendant transportation infrastructure (Klare, 2002b). Bringing natural gas to market will inevitably involve expensive liquefaction of the gas—by cooling it to -259 degrees Fahrenheit (-162 degrees Celsius)—and transportation on potentially vulnerable supertanker ships. And concerns have risen regarding the safety of natural gas receiving terminals in an age of global terrorism (Testa, 2004). A recent study by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories examined the catastrophic potential of explosions, fires, and fireballs caused by ramming, triggered explosion, hijacking, or external terrorist actions such as attack by missile or plane (Hightower et al., 2004). Damage risked by potential explosion, either at a terminal or on a ship, is immense. There are currently five natural gas receiving terminals in the continental United States—one in the highly populated Boston metropolitan area. Forty more are proposed for North American coasts, with nineteen having already received regulatory approval despite the risks of terrorist attack (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (U.S.), 2005).

Coal, on the other hand, is not nearly as combustible as natural gas. Unlike oil and natural gas, many of the world’s largest national energy consumers have significant domestic supplies. It remains plentiful and cheaply extracted, making global conflict over the resource unlikely. For these reasons, coal is enjoying resurgent interest on a scale not seen since the oil embargo of the 1970s. But while the potential for terrorist exploitation and international conflict over coal are low, other social consequences of its extraction and consumption are significant. The polluting effects of coal mining and combustion perpetuate its reputation as a “dirty fuel” contributing to public health problems and significant social inequities.

Truly greening coal would require a great deal of effort from mine to smokestack and beyond. Clean coal proponents advocate use of types of coal lower in sulfur content, gasification of the mineral, and sequestration of its carbon dioxide emissions. While these steps, if successful, would address some of coal’s most pernicious effects—air pollution and increased GHG emissions—they leave many other consequences unattended. The environmental and social effects of mining and washing coal are not addressed by most proposals. Neither are its other social consequences: continued vulnerable centralized production, diversion of water from other purposes, land degradation, and extensive hazards to labor (Diesendorf, 2006).

Proposals for oil differ from those for coal and natural gas. Here, attention is mainly focused on cleaning up its transport and processing and making end-use technology more efficient. Today, enormous vessels move petroleum supplies across oceans in stunning volumes: the amount of oil alone annually carried in cargo holds roughly equals the combined amount consumed annually by the United States, the European Union, and China (Department of the Interior (U.S.), 2002). Interestingly, more than one billion gallons per year fail to reach a market, but nevertheless come ashore (Department of the Interior (U.S.), 2002). The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill illustrates the phenomenon. On March 23, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker hit a reef in the Alaskan Prince William Sound and spilled nearly 10 million gallons of crude, causing well-documented ecological harm.¹⁰ While the spill’s social implications received less attention, they were no less significant. Gill and Picou note that the compromise, and even extinction, of local cultures can accompany oil transport accidents (1996: 167):

Of all the groups negatively impacted by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, in many ways Alaska Natives were the most devastated. The oil spill destroyed more than economic resources, it shook the core cultural foundation of Native life. Alaska Native subsistence culture is based on an intimate relationship with the environment. Not only does the environment have sacred qualities for Alaska Natives, but their survival depends on the well-being of the ecosystem and the maintenance of cultural norms of subsistence. The spill directly threatened the well-being of the environment, disrupted subsistence behavior, and severely disturbed the sociocultural milieu of Alaska Natives.

Of the spill’s impact, Chief Walter Meganack (cited in Gill and Picou, 1996: 167) commented: “the excitement of the season had just begun, and then, we heard the news, oil in the water, lots of oil killing lots of water. It is too shocking to understand. Never in the millennium of our tradition have we thought it possible for the water to die, but it is true.” What for some was an example of the environmental implications of the “normal accident” (Perrow, 1984) associated with the modern energy regime was, in fact, a threat to the very way of life of some Alaskan Natives.

Following such a high profile failure as the grounding of the Exxon Valdez (in fact, only the fifty-third largest oil spill in modern times—Oil Spill Intelligence Report, 2001), one might think that advocates of the conventional energy regime would practice a measure of modesty in their planning for the future. On the contrary, such...