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Energy as a Social Project: Recovering a Discourse

From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury pollution, and biodiversity loss, the origins of many of our least tractable environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population—experience evening light by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 373). And there is the disturbing link between modern energy and war. Whether as a mineral whose control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil, see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing: instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices. One stream of euphoria has sprung from advocates of conventional energy, perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power