Energy without Conscience : Oil, Climate Change, and Complicity / David McDermott Hughes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hughes, David McDermott, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social sciences.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (206 p.)

Place of Publication:

Durham NC : Duke University Press, 2017.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In Energy without Conscience David McDermott Hughes investigates why climate change has yet to be seen as a moral issue. He examines the forces that render the use of fossil fuels ordinary and therefore exempt from ethical evaluation. Hughes centers his analysis on Trinidad and Tobago, which is the world's oldest petro-state, having drilled the first continuously producing oil well in 1866. Marrying historical research with interviews with Trinidadian petroleum scientists, policymakers, technicians, and managers, he draws parallels between Trinidad's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave labor energy economy and its contemporary oil industry. Hughes shows how both forms of energy rely upon a complicity that absolves producers and consumers from acknowledging the immoral nature of each. He passionately argues that like slavery, producing oil is a moral choice and that oil is at its most dangerous when it is accepted as an ordinary part of everyday life.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART I ENERGY WITH CONSCIENCE

CHAPTER 1 Plantation Slaves, the First Fuel

CHAPTER 2 How Oil Missed Its Utopian Moment

PART II ORDINARY OIL

Introduction

CHAPTER 3 The Myth of Inevitability

CHAPTER 4 Lakeside, or the Petro-pastoral Sensibility

CHAPTER 5 Climate Change and the Victim Slot

CONCLUSION

NOTES

REFERENCES

INDEX

Notes:

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781478091059

1478091053

OCLC:

956775679

Publisher Number:

https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373360