'SACRIFICE ZONES' IN THE GREEN ENERGY ECONOMY: TOWARD AN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE FRAMEWORK.

• Author: Scott, Dayna Nadine

The environmental justice movement validates the grassroots struggles of residents of places which Steve Lerner refers to as "sacrifice zones": low-income and racialized communities shouldering more than their fair share of environmental harms related to pollution, contamination, toxic waste, and heavy industry. On this account, disparities in wealth and power, often inscribed and re-inscribed through social processes of racialization, are understood to produce disparities in environmental burdens. Here, we attempt to understand how these dynamics are shifting in the green energy economy under settler colonial capitalism. We consider the possibility that the political economy of green energy contains its own sacrifice zones. Drawing on preliminary empirical research undertaken in southwestern Ontario in 2015, we document local resistance to renewable energy projects. Residents mounted campaigns against wind turbines based on suspected health effects and against solar farms based on arable land and food justice concerns, and in both cases, grounded their resistance in a generalized claim, which might be termed a "right to landscape". We conclude that this resistance, contrary to typical framings which dismiss it as NIMBYism, has resonances with broader claims about environmental justice and may signal larger structural shifts worth devoting scholarly attention to. In the end, however, we do not wholly accept the sacrifice zone characterization of this resistance either, as our analysis reveals it to be far more complex and ambiguous than such a framing allows. But we maintain that taking this resistance seriously, rather than treating it as merely obstructionist to a transition away from fossil capitalism, reveals a counter-hegemonic potential at its core. There are seeds in this resistance with the power to push back on the deepening of capitalist relations that would otherwise be ushered in by an uncritical embrace of "green energy" enthusiasm.

Le mouvement de justice environnementale confirme les luttes populaires des residents des lieux que Steve Lerner qualifie de << zones sacrifiees >> : communautes racisees a faibles revenus qui assument plus de leur juste part de prejudices environnementaux associes a la pollution, la contamination, les dechets toxiques et l'industrie lourde. A ce propos, les ecarts de richesse et de pouvoir, souvent inscrits et reinscrits a travers les processus sociaux de racialisation, sont compris comme produisant des disparites au niveau des charges environnementales. Cet article tente de comprendre la facon dont ces dynamiques changent au sein de l'economie de l'energie verte sous le capitalisme colonial. Nous considerons la possibilite que l'economie politique de l'energie verte contienne ses propres zones sacrifiees. En nous basant sur une recherche empirique preliminaire menee dans le Sud-Ouest de l'Ontario en 2015, nous documentons l'opposition locale aux projets d'energie renouvelable. Des residents ont mene des campagnes contre des eoliennes, suspectant des effets nefastes sur la sante, et contre des panneaux solaires installes sur des terres arables, sur la base de preoccupations de justice alimentaire, fondant leur opposition dans les deux cas sur une revendication generale, qu'on pourrait definir comme un << droit au paysage >>. Nous concluons que cette opposition, contrairement aux representations typiques l'associant au phenomene de << pas dans ma cour >>, fait echo aux revendications plus larges de justice environnementale et peut signifier un changement structurel plus global valant la peine d'etre etudie par les chercheurs. Toutefois, au final, nous n'acceptons non plus entierement la caracterisation de << zone sacrifiee >> employee par ce mouvement de resistance, puisque notre analyse revele qu'elle est bien plus complexe et ambigue que ne le permet une telle representation. Mais nous maintenons que le fait de prendre ce mouvement de resistance au serieux, plutot que de ' le traiter comme s'opposant simplement a une transition vers des alternatives au capitalisme fossile, revele en soi un potentiel antihegemonique. Cette opposition seme des graines ayant le pouvoir de repousser l'intensification des relations capitalistes qui seraient autrement etablies par l'adhesion sans reserve de l'enthousiasme de << l'energie verte >>.

Introduction I. Sacrifice Zones A. The Policy Imperatives Driving the Shift to Renewables II. Resistance to Green Energy Projects in Ontario A. How Should We Receive Environmental Health Concerns? B. How Should We Handle the Competing Claims to Land? C. How Should We Think about the "Right to Landscape"? III. Situating Resistance to Green Energy Conclusion Introduction

In this article, we examine the tensions and conflicts between movements for climate justice, energy justice, and food justice, as they are emerging on the ground in the global North by taking seriously resistance struggles against renewable energy projects. We begin from the premise that climate justice requires consideration not only of whether to tackle climate change by transitioning from a fossil fuel economy, but more profoundly of how to undertake that transition. In other words, there are, and will continue to be, distributional effects related to renewable energy generation. Critical environmental justice scholars need to attend to those effects as they emerge, with a focus on social dynamics, including race, class, gender, and settler colonialism. (1)

The environmental justice movement validates the grassroots struggles of residents of places which Steve Lerner refers to as "sacrifice zones": low-income and racialized communities shouldering more than their fair share of environmental harms related to pollution, contamination, toxic waste and heavy industry. (2) On this account, disparities in wealth and power, often inscribed and re-inscribed through social processes of racialization, are understood to produce disparities in environmental burdens. Here, we attempt to understand how these dynamics are shifting in the green energy economy. In doing so, we join scholars in political ecology who are asking provocative questions "that confound the general understanding of environmental justice" as following a standard formula based on grassroots, "bottom-up" community reactions by people of colour in low-income neighbourhoods. (3) We seek to better understand how critical environmental justice scholars should receive and theorize resistance that breaks this mold. Specifically, how should we react to movements of white, middle-class property owners articulating claims that resonate with the values and aims that have motivated the environmental justice movement? What do we mean by "Environmental Justice for All"? (4) Our study is based on preliminary empirical research employing qualitative methods undertaken in southwestern Ontario from April to August 2015. We conducted comprehensive key-informant interviews and participant observation with local residents and advocates to learn more about their concerns and resistance efforts in relation to renewable energy projects. (5) The data gathered through these methods were supplemented by a thorough review of the publicly available documentary record. We organized our examination of the contours of local resistance to green energy according to the way in which local residents and activists articulated those claims. For wind turbines, the concerns centered primarily on suspected adverse health effects; for solar farms, the concerns were expressed primarily in relation to the loss of arable land and food justice. In both cases, resistance was grounded in a generalized claim which might be termed a "right to landscape".

The question of NIMBYism (6) and environmental justice was very much a part of the energy landscape in southwestern Ontario in the years preceding our study. In an example that culminated in a high profile political controversy, the provincial government reversed a siting decision, which would have placed two new gas plants in the "backyards" of the largely privileged people of Oakville, Ontario. (7) Katie Daubs, a journalist covering the well-organized resistance of the community quipped:

They may have more flat screen televisions than the average person, but the citizens of Oakville are human beings. If you prick them, they will bleed. If you wrong them, they will seek revenge. If you try to build a power plant next to a residential zone, they will fly in Erin Brockovich. (8) Most environmental justice struggles are narratives of solidarity, but occasionally, as in Peter Little's example of IBM's legacy of a toxic "vapor intrusion" in primarily white Endicott, New York, there are stories of "contestation, discomfort, [and] disconnect": contexts in which traditional environmental justice framings chafe. (9) In this study, we confront not only the relative privilege of the affected communities, but the fact that the industry they oppose--renewable energy--is itself promoted and states-anctioned in "climate justice" terms. In other words, this is not merely a situation of relatively privileged residents fighting a proposed energy project that could easily be framed as an environmental burden in the classic "sacrifice zone" sense, but rather one in which the kind of projects being proposed (and opposed) are those meant to assist in the transition away from fossil fuels, momentum towards a destination in which gas plants are "not in anyone's backyard" (NIABY). (10)

1. Sacrifice Zones

   In the sacrifice zones of the industrialized global North, we find the "downwinders": residents of pollution hot spots who live downwind and downstream of large industrial complexes of extraction, refining, and petrochemical production, and who suffer the environmental health effects that go with it. These downwinders are the people whose experiences and resistance has occupied the focus of much of environmental justice...