Who Owns the Wind? : Climate Crisis and the Hope of Renewable Energy

Author: Hughes, David McDermott

Economics, finance, business & management

Published on 12 October 2021 by Verso Books in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 256 pages, + 8pp mono plate section
139 x 211 x 19 | 262g

The energy transition has begun. To succeed - to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power - that process must be fair. Otherwise, mounting popular protest against wind farms will prolong carbon pollution and deepen the climate crisis. David Hughes examines that anti-industrial, anti-corporate resistance, drawing insights from a Spanish village surrounded by turbines. In the lives of these neighbours - freighted with centuries of exploitation - clean power and social justice fit together only awkwardly. Proposals for a green economy, the Green New Deal, or Europe's Green Deal require more effort. We must rethink aesthetics, livelihood, property, and, most essentially, the private nature of wind resources. Ultimately, the energy transition will be public and just, or it may not be at all