This book examines the discourse around the intricate economic, political, and ideological struggles underlying Canadian fuel extractivism. Focusing on the two contending discourse coalitions formed by supporters and opponents of British Columbia’s liquefied natural gas (LNC) industry, the book explores the ongoing debates around the issue. The book’s in-depth investigation of the BC LNG controversy identifies progressive extractivism as an increasingly popular policy/discursive paradigm adopted by fossil fuel advocates to legitimize unconventional fossil fuels in an era of intensifying climate crisis. It also highlights the importance of debunking the misleading “jobs versus the environment” dichotomy in mobilizing public opposition to carbon-intensive economic growth. This deeply nuanced look at energy discourse in public policy will have resonance for scholars and students working in the areas of environmental communication, rhetoric, discourse analysis, public policy, and climate change rhetoric.

This book examines the discourse around the intricate economic, political, and ideological struggles underlying Canadian fuel extractivism. Focusing on the two contending discourse coalitions formed by supporters and opponents of British Columbia's liquefied natural gas (LNC) industry, the book explores the ongoing debates around the issue. The book's in-depth investigation of the BC LNG controversy identifies progressive extractivism as an increasingly popular policy/discursive paradigm adopted by fossil fuel advocates to legitimize unconventional fossil fuels in an era of intensifying climate crisis. It also highlights the importance of debunking the misleading "jobs versus the environment" dichotomy in mobilizing public opposition to carbon-intensive economic growth. This deeply nuanced look at energy discourse in public policy will have resonance for scholars and students working in the areas of environmental communication, rhetoric, discourse analysis, public policy, and climate change rhetoric.

Contemporary life is founded on oil – a cheap, accessible, and rich source of energy that has shaped cities and manufacturing economies at the same time that it has increased mobility, global trade, and environmental devastation. Despite oil’s essential role, full recognition of its social and cultural significance has only become a prominent feature of everyday debate and discussion in the early twenty-first century. Presenting a multifaceted analysis of the cultural, social, and political claims and assumptions that guide how we think and talk about oil, Petrocultures maps the complex and often contradictory ways in which oil has influenced the public’s imagination around the world. This collection of essays shows that oil’s vast network of social and historical narratives and the processes that enable its extraction are what characterize its importance, and that its circulation through this immense web of relations forms worldwide experiences and expectations. Contributors’ essays investigate the discourses surrounding oil in contemporary culture while advancing and configuring new ways to discuss the cultural ecosystem that it has created. A window into the social role of oil, Petrocultures also contemplates what it would mean if human life were no longer deeply shaped by the consumption of fossil fuels.

Taking a comparative case study approach between Canada and Germany, this book investigates the contrasting response of governments to anti-wind movements. Environmental social movements have been critical players for encouraging the shift towards increased use of renewable energy. However, social movements mobilizing against the installation of wind turbines have now become a major obstacle to their increased deployment. Andrea Bues draws on a cross-Atlantic comparative analysis to investigate the different contexts of contentious energy policy. Focusing on two sub-national forerunner regions in installed wind power capacity – Brandenburg and Ontario – Bues draws on social movement theory to explore the concept of discursive energy space and propose explanations as to why governments respond differently to social movements. Overall, Social Movements against Wind Power in Canada and Germany offers a novel conceptualization of discursive-institutional contexts of contentious energy politics and helps better understand protest against renewable energy policy. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of renewable energy policy, sustainability and climate change politics, social movement studies and environmental sociology.

"... these fields of scholarship are ones that demonstrate how the scale and complexity of the issues being explored demand insights and approaches that transcend old school disciplinary boundaries. This book offers a selection of the most influential work in energy humanities that has appeared over the past decade. Selections range from anthropology and geography to philosophy, history, and cultural studies to recent energy-focused interventions in art and literature..."--Provided by publisher.

This book examines the development of bilateral energy relations between China and the two oil-rich countries, Kazakhstan and Russia. Challenging conventional assumptions about energy politics and China’s global quest for oil, this book examines the interplay of politics and sociocultural contexts. It shows how energy resources become ideas and how these ideas are mobilized in the realm of international relations. China’s relations with Kazakhstan and Russia are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the discursive politics of oil. It is argued that to build collaborative and constructive energy relations with China, its partners in Kazakhstan, Russia, and elsewhere must consider not only the material realities of China’s energy industry and the institutional settings of China’s energy policy but also the multiple symbolic meanings that energy resources and, particularly, oil acquire in China. China’s Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates offers a nuanced understanding of China’s bilateral energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, raising essential questions about the social logic of international energy politics. It will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, energy security, Chinese and post-Soviet studies, along with researchers working in the fields of energy policy and environmental sustainability.

Discourse of Reciprocity reveals patterns of press behavior in the US-Canada alliance at points where the nature of the alliance itself was under stress. Drawing on journalism studies, discourse analysis, political communication, and international relations, the book explores examples of international policymaking in national security, agriculture, and energy issues. Drawing on coverage in The New York Times and The Globe and Mail, the book articulates concepts of news as providing positive symbolic presence, exhibiting forbearance, and exhibiting cooperation. This trio of press behaviors—evident in the structure of the news coverage itself—matches the definition of reciprocity used in fields such as international relations and game theory. The book gives equal consideration to the coverage in The New York Times and The Globe and Mail, articulating country-specific examples of how press coverage enacts reciprocity. Five cases cover the period from 1980 to the present, including the Keystone pipeline proposal and the discovery of mad cow disease in North America. The cases include Liberal and Conservative governments in Canada and Republican and Democratic administrations in the United States. This binational study sheds light on an understudied dynamic contributing to the reciprocity that sustains the alliance. The book adds to the relatively limited literature on news coverage of alliances. The book also illustrates how to implement discourse analysis in news framing research in a much more extensive way than previous political communication or international relations literature.

Energy consumption is at the core of the way Canadians live. Yet recent research indicates that North America's supply of oil--our most consumed source of primary energy--may only last until 2025. In this introduction, the author examines the history of energy production and consumption leading to the impending energy "crisis."

Written at the height of the OPEC oil crisis of the 1970s, Canada's Energy Crisis brings into focus issues that remain relevant to Canada's national and international politics today. Framing the debate with a discussion of the United States' oil strategy as it relates to that country's national security, Laxer analyzes Canada's energy requirements, the state of its largely foreign-owned oil industry, the emergence of a continental energy policy and its implications for Federal-Provincial relations. Concluding with a discussion of the possibilities for development of Western oil sands projects and Northern oil pipelines, Laxer suggests an alternative energy and industrial strategy for Canada, one that counters the continentalist orthodoxy. Canada's Energy Crisis considers questions of economic development and national independence that remain relevant today.