From Carbon Democracy to Carbon Rebellion: Countering Petro-Hegemony on the Frontlines of Climate Justice

Authors

  • Theo LeQuesne University of California, Santa Barbara

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2019.905

Keywords:

Petro-Hegemony, Carbon Democracy, Climate Justice, Blockadia, Social Movements

Abstract

This essay combines salient instances of climate justice activism in key battlegrounds against the fossil fuel industry in the United States and Canada with theoretical interventions in studies of corporate power, grassroots democracy, and counter hegemony. It explores Timothy Mitchell's Carbon Democracy and the term’s relevance to understanding the conditions in which climate justice activists must combat the entrenched interests of fossil fuel companies.  It suggests that Carbon Democracy is a helpful concept for understanding how fossil fuel dependency both shapes and distorts democratic governance. Drawing upon insights in three case studies - activism against Chevron in Richmond California, the Water Protectors and the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, and the First Nations-led fight against the Trans Mountain Pipeline in British Columbia - the essay supplements Carbon Democracy with two more terms: Petro-Hegemony and Carbon Rebellion. These reveal three power relations, namely consent, compliance, and coercion, upon which fossil fuel companies depend and in which climate justice activists must strategically intervene to move beyond conditions of Carbon Democracy. I show that dual power is a logic of strategic intervention that climate justice activists are successfully using to intervene in all three of these relations to reign in corporate power and assert their own sovereignty. 

Author Biography

Theo LeQuesne, University of California, Santa Barbara

PhD Student, Global Studies

References

Adkin, Laurie, and Brittney J. Stares. 2016. “Turning up the Heat: Hegemonic Politics in a First World Petro-State.” In First World Petro-Politics: The Political Ecology and Governance

of Alberta, edited by L. Adkin. 1st ed. 190-241. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Appel, Hannah, Arthur Mason, and Michael Watts. 2015. Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas. 1st ed. New York: Cornell University Press.

Austen, Ian. 2018. “Canadian Government to Buy Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline.” The New York Times, May 29. At: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/world/canada/canada-oil-pipeline.html.

Awâsis, Sâkihitowin. 2013. “Pipelines and Resistance Across Turtle Island.” In A Line in the Tar Sands. Oakland: PM Press.

Barrett, Ross, and Daniel Worden. 2014. Oil Culture. 1st ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Brecher, Jeremy. 2017. Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual. Oakland: PM Press.

Breines, Wini. 1980. “Community and Organization: The New Left and Michels' ‘Iron Law.’” Social Problems, 27 (4): 419–429.

Bridge, Gavin. and Philippe LeBillon 2017. Oil. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Coulthard, Glen. 2014. Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Choy, Ellen, and Ana Orozco. 2009. “Chevron in Richmond: Community-Based Strategies for

Climate Justice.” Race, Poverty & the Environment 16 (2): 43-46.

Climate Justice Alliance 2019. Just Transition. Climate Justice Alliance. At: https://climatejusticealliance.org/just-transition/.

Cryderman, Kelly, and Ian. Baily.2018. “Kinder Morgan issues ultimatum, suspends ‘non-essential’ spending on Trans Mountain pipeline.” The Globe and Mail, April 8. At: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-kinder-morgan-cites-bc-opposition-as-it-suspends-non-essential/.

Day, Richard. 2016. “Hegemony.” In Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of

Late- Capitalist Struggle, edited by K. Fritsch and C. O’Connor. 1st ed. 183-191. Chico: AK Press.

Dhillon, Jaskiran, and Nick. Estes. 2016. “Introduction: Standing Rock, #Nodapl, and Mni Wiconi.” Cultural Anthropology, Fieldsights, December 22. At: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/standing-rock-nodapl-and-mni-wiconi.

Early, Steve. 2017. Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. 1st ed.

New York: International Publishers.

Hall, Chris. 2018. “Trudeau gives his definition of 'national interest.’” CBC News Apr 16. At: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pipeline-kinder-morgan-analysis-chris-hall-1.4620823.

Haluza-DeLay, Randolph, and Angela Carter. 2016. “Social Movements Scaling Up: Strategies

and Opportunities in Opposing the Oil Sands Status Quo.” In First World Petro-Politics:

The Political Ecology and Governance of Alberta, edited by Laurie Adkin. 1st ed. 456-

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Huber, Matt. 2014. “Refined Politics: Petroleum Products, Neoliberalism, And The Ecology Of Entrepreneurial Life.” In Oil Culture, edited by Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden. 1st ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

The Intercept. 2017. “Oil and Water: 13 Part Series.” The Intercept. https://theintercept.com/series/oil-and-water/.

Kane, Laura. 2017. “B.C. NDP vows to fight Trans Mountain pipeline, but won't say how.” The Vancouver Sun, May 4. https://vancouversun.com/business/bc-ndp-vows-to-fight-pipeline-but-wont-say-how/wcm/2d7024f1-a6dd-4b75-9d9d-306aa8cec888.

Klein, Naomi. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate. New York: Simon

and Schuster.

LeQuesne, Theo. 2018. “Petro-hegemony and the Matrix of Resistance: What Can Standing Rock’s Water Protectors Teach Us About Organizing for Climate Justice in the United States?” Environmental Sociology. Published Online.

Levin, Sam. 2017. “Police Make Arrests at Standing Rock in Push to Evict Remaining Activists.” The Guardian, February 22. At: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/22/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-evacuation-police.

Manski, Ben. 2015. “The Democratic Turn of the Century: Learning from the U.S. Democracy

Movement.” Socialism and Democracy. 29(1): 2-16.

Marxists Internet Archive. 2005. “Lenin: The Dual Power.” Marxists Internet Archive. At: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/09.htm.

McKee, Yates. 2014. “Art After Occupy.” Open Democracy, August 15. At: https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/yates-mckee/art-after-occupy.

McLaughlin, Gayle. 2018. Winning Richmond: How a Progressive Alliance Won City Hall. Hard Ball Press.

Mitchell, Timothy. 2011. Carbon Democracy: Political Power In The Age of Oil. 1st ed. New York: Verso.

Nickel, Rod. 2018. “Court quashes Canadian approval of Trans Mountain oil pipeline.” Reuters, August 30. At: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kinder-morgan-cn-pipeline/court-quashes-canadian-approval-of-trans-mountain-oil-pipeline-idUSKCN1LF1U6.

Reinsborough, Patrick, and Doyle Canning. 2017. RE: Imagining Change: How to Use Story-

based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World. 2nd ed. Oakland: PM Press.

Sacred Trust. 2018. Read the Kinder Morgan Assessment Report. TWN Sacred Trust. At: https://twnsacredtrust.ca/assessment-report-download/.

Smucker, Jonathan. 2017. Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. Oakland: PM Press.

Downloads

Published

2019-03-25

How to Cite

LeQuesne, T. (2019). From Carbon Democracy to Carbon Rebellion: Countering Petro-Hegemony on the Frontlines of Climate Justice. Journal of World-Systems Research, 25(1), 15–27. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2019.905

Issue

Vol. 25 No. 1 (2019): Volume 25, Issue 1: Winter/Spring 2019

Section

Symposium: Corporate Power and Local Democracy

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.