Pipeline Politics and the Future of Environmental Justice Struggles in North America

Abstract

Resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure has gained remarkable momentum, reshaping the climate movement in the United States, Canada, and beyond. The rampant and persistent development of fossil fuel infrastructure has prompted diverse concerns associated with climate change, resolving Indigenous land claims, habitat fragmentation, oil spill risks, land-based livelihood impacts, and community disruption (Janzwood et al. 2023). The result is increased demands on regulatory processes, the formation of new coalitions, the emergence of social movements and new repertoires of contention, and state violence. These complex dynamics, which we are only beginning to understand, have far-reaching impacts and implications for environmentally and socially just energy transitions. How have affected communities responded to proposals related to fossil fuel export? Has place-based resistance to fossil fuel development effectively promoted climate action? Does this strategy risk the unintended consequence of feeding place-based resistance to the clean energy transition? How does “pipeline populism” emerge from and transform contemporary environmentalism? These three books seek to answer these questions and more.