Authors
Nicholas Shapiro
Publication date
2021/8/17
Description
180 NICHOLAS SHAPIRO world that has been built around fossil fuel extraction will not veer into benevolence by, for example, plugging our current infrastructures for energy production and consumption into a different source. The problem of hydrocarbons does not end with hydrocarbons because, as Matthew Huber has argued,“Oil is better understood as a social relation”; it is a product of both “the materiality of petroleum and the social projects that channel its biophysical capacities in particular ways”(2013, 4). Decarbonizing the grid without grappling with the assumptions, imaginaries, extractive logics, asymmetrical financial benefits, regimes of consumption, and traditions of ecological mastery that were honed in tandem with hydrocarbon engineering allows these social practices and infrastructures to churn on with new “green” lifeblood. If only the material and not its social relations are terminated, the problems …
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