Digital Commons Network^™

An Environmental Justice Critique Of Biofuels, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

The Abstract Subject Of The Climate Migrant: Displaced By The Rising Tides Of The Green Energy Economy, Dayna Scott, Adrian A. Smith

Dayna N. Scott

A controversial proposal to build the mammoth ‘Site C’ dam on the Peace River in northwestern Canada offers an opportunity to explore the intersections of climate and migration issues under debate in international environmental governance circles. Site C threatens to flood traditional fishing spots and traplines of Indigenous peoples in the name of the ‘green energy’ economy. We consider how people displaced by renewable energy projects justified as climate mitigation policies might constitute a different kind of ‘climate refugee’ in that they are ‘displaced without moving’ – the connections between the land and the people are severed to the extent …

“Sacrifice Zones” In The Green Energy Economy: Toward An Environmental Justice Framework, Dayna Scott, Adrian A. Smith

Dayna N. Scott

The environmental justice movement validates the grassroots struggles of residents of places which Steve Lerner refers to as “sacrifice zones”: low-income and racialized communities shouldering more than their fair share of environmental harms related to pollution, contamination, toxic waste, and heavy industry. On this account, disparities in wealth and power, often inscribed and re-inscribed through social processes of racialization, are understood to produce disparities in environmental burdens. Here, we attempt to understand how these dynamics are shifting in the green energy economy under settler colonial capitalism. We consider the possibility that the political economy of green energy contains its own …