In the summer of 2019, I began doing preliminary fieldwork on popular attitudes toward coal and natural gas in western Pennsylvania. My interest in the subject had originally been piqued by news coverage of the success of Donald Trump’s “Bring back coal” campaign in Pennsylvania in 2016 and overtime, I became increasingly fascinated with the question of how a region with such a long history of exploitation by extractive industries could still support them.
My original understanding of the question was heavily shaped by John Gaventa’s theory of public quiescence in the face of coal industry oppression[i], but that only explained why there could be an absence of resistance to the coal and natural gas industries in western Pennsylvania, not how there could be full-throated support for it. The mystery only thickened when I started delving into contemporary accounts of the damage wrought by the coal and fracking industries in western Pennsylvania: I found stories of stream beds disrupted by subsidence caused by longwall mining and communities living next to a coal ash landfill dying of strange cancers at unusually high rates.[ii] And there was mounting evidence that fracking was causing its own share of problems in the region.[iii] When I began my own fieldwork in 2019, the stories I heard from residents and activists largely confirmed this impression: Within the first ten days I spent in the field, I spoke to a resident who had developed COPD and emphysema after years of living next to a risky energy development and to an environmental activist who told me she filled her aquarium with bottled water to prevent her fish from dying. And I am omitting a few.
There was no shortage of outrage from the people who told me these stories, but at the same time, many of the residents I spoke to (often the self-same people who decried the abuses of the industry) remained sanguine about the contribution of the fossil fuel industry the region. What could be the root of this support in the face of so much devastation?
As I progressed in my research, I began cobbling together a theory that drew from Appalachian studies, environmental social science, and Communication: It was a theory about a conservative region that had become inured to the risks posed by mineral extraction and whose men had learned to tie their sense of self-worth to the idea of a job in heavy industry.[iv] But it was also about a local media system that failed to adequately inform the public of the risk posed by fossil fuel extraction, leaving the field wide open for the industry to control the fossil fuel industry narrative.
While I was pursuing an answer to my initial research question in western Pennsylvania, however, another development closer to home gradually began rewriting my own understanding of the problem: This was the explosion of the old South Philadelphia refinery, then owned by Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), barely one day into my preliminary fieldwork. As I began looking more closely into the incident and its aftermath, I realized that a very similar story was unfolding in Philadelphia to the one I was attempting to document in western Pennsylvania: Fence-line communities were being poisoned by the neighboring energy development while the rest of the population was left largely in the dark about their neighbors’ plight. And after the explosion, the control of the defunct refinery passed to corporate entities that put in place an arcane remediation process designed to turn a profit as cheaply as possible, while at the same time attempting to spin their intervention as an economic boon for the city.[v]
As I confronted what I learned from my research with the developments in Philadelphia, I slowly began to realize that there was a deeper question behind the one I started with: How was it that the fossil fuel industry, with help from the government, had managed to convince us all that the health of the communities and of the environment surrounding fossil fuel developments was a question best left to corporations and unaccountable government agencies?
My research attempts to answer this question by adapting the “growth machine” framework to the western Pennsylvania context. This framework holds that the “growth machine” interests (i.e. the loose coalition of groups with an interest in extracting profits from land through development or speculation) attempt to maintain the upper hand in their conflict with residents over land use by instilling in the public a doctrine of “value-free development” (or growth ethic). This doctrine holds that economic growth is the only valid measuring stick for determining the value of land use. One of its consequences that it essentially ideologically displaces the question from the political arena by placing it in the impersonal and invisible hand of the free market.
My analysis so far provides compelling evidence that the growth ethic structures residents’ attitudes toward the fossil fuel industry in western Pennsylvania and constrains their ability to resist it. Regionality also matters in the sense that the region’s conservatism influences the way in which the residents I spoke to bought into the growth ethic. But the greatest contribution I hope to make is to awaken us to the ways none of us are truly immune to this logic.
For those of you interested in getting a fuller picture of my work, please find a link to my current research paper-in-progress here.
My original understanding of the question was heavily shaped by John Gaventa’s theory of public quiescence in the face of coal industry oppression[i], but that only explained why there could be an absence of resistance to the coal and natural gas industries in western Pennsylvania, not how there could be full-throated support for it. The mystery only thickened when I started delving into contemporary accounts of the damage wrought by the coal and fracking industries in western Pennsylvania: I found stories of stream beds disrupted by subsidence caused by longwall mining and communities living next to a coal ash landfill dying of strange cancers at unusually high rates.[ii] And there was mounting evidence that fracking was causing its own share of problems in the region.[iii] When I began my own fieldwork in 2019, the stories I heard from residents and activists largely confirmed this impression: Within the first ten days I spent in the field, I spoke to a resident who had developed COPD and emphysema after years of living next to a risky energy development and to an environmental activist who told me she filled her aquarium with bottled water to prevent her fish from dying. And I am omitting a few.
There was no shortage of outrage from the people who told me these stories, but at the same time, many of the residents I spoke to (often the self-same people who decried the abuses of the industry) remained sanguine about the contribution of the fossil fuel industry the region. What could be the root of this support in the face of so much devastation?
As I progressed in my research, I began cobbling together a theory that drew from Appalachian studies, environmental social science, and Communication: It was a theory about a conservative region that had become inured to the risks posed by mineral extraction and whose men had learned to tie their sense of self-worth to the idea of a job in heavy industry.[iv] But it was also about a local media system that failed to adequately inform the public of the risk posed by fossil fuel extraction, leaving the field wide open for the industry to control the fossil fuel industry narrative.
While I was pursuing an answer to my initial research question in western Pennsylvania, however, another development closer to home gradually began rewriting my own understanding of the problem: This was the explosion of the old South Philadelphia refinery, then owned by Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), barely one day into my preliminary fieldwork. As I began looking more closely into the incident and its aftermath, I realized that a very similar story was unfolding in Philadelphia to the one I was attempting to document in western Pennsylvania: Fence-line communities were being poisoned by the neighboring energy development while the rest of the population was left largely in the dark about their neighbors’ plight. And after the explosion, the control of the defunct refinery passed to corporate entities that put in place an arcane remediation process designed to turn a profit as cheaply as possible, while at the same time attempting to spin their intervention as an economic boon for the city.[v]
As I confronted what I learned from my research with the developments in Philadelphia, I slowly began to realize that there was a deeper question behind the one I started with: How was it that the fossil fuel industry, with help from the government, had managed to convince us all that the health of the communities and of the environment surrounding fossil fuel developments was a question best left to corporations and unaccountable government agencies?
My research attempts to answer this question by adapting the “growth machine” framework to the western Pennsylvania context. This framework holds that the “growth machine” interests (i.e. the loose coalition of groups with an interest in extracting profits from land through development or speculation) attempt to maintain the upper hand in their conflict with residents over land use by instilling in the public a doctrine of “value-free development” (or growth ethic). This doctrine holds that economic growth is the only valid measuring stick for determining the value of land use. One of its consequences that it essentially ideologically displaces the question from the political arena by placing it in the impersonal and invisible hand of the free market.
My analysis so far provides compelling evidence that the growth ethic structures residents’ attitudes toward the fossil fuel industry in western Pennsylvania and constrains their ability to resist it. Regionality also matters in the sense that the region’s conservatism influences the way in which the residents I spoke to bought into the growth ethic. But the greatest contribution I hope to make is to awaken us to the ways none of us are truly immune to this logic.
For those of you interested in getting a fuller picture of my work, please find a link to my current research paper-in-progress here.
References
1. John Gaventa, Power and powerlessness: Quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian valley. (University of Illinois Press, 1982).
2. Reid Frazier, “Report faults DEP for mine subsidence oversight in western Pa.,” State Impact Pennsylvania, January 22, 2021, https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2021/01/22/report-faults-dep-for-mine-subsidence-oversight-in-western-pa/; Alyssa Choiniere, “Labelle residents say fly ash plagues their town with disease,” Herald-Standard, April 24, 2017, https://www.heraldstandard.com/new_today/labelle-residents-say-fly-ash-plagues-their-town-with-disease/article_7da0b4ed-10db-5dac-a972-1b7657fad7ab.html
3. Eliza Griswold, “When the kids started getting sick,” The New Yorker, March 2, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/when-the-kids-started-getting-sick. See also Griswold’s account of one family’s struggle with the natural gas company Range Resources in Amity and Prosperity (2018).
4. Philip G. Lewin, “ ‘Coal is not just a job, it’s a way of life’: The cultural politics of coal production in Central Appalachia,” Social Problems 66, no. 1 (2017): 51-68; Sally Ward Maggard, “From farm to coal camp to back office at McDonald’s: Living in the midst of Appalachia’s latest transformation. Journal of Appalachian Studies Association 6 (1994): 14-38; Christiana E. Miewald and Eugene J. McCann, “Gender struggle, scale, and the production of place in the Appalachian coalfields. Environment and Planning A 36, no.6 (2004). 1045-1064.
5. See my op-ed on the topic for more information: “Demand responsible cleanup at PES,” Philadelphia Citizen, March 31, 2021. https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/responsible-cleanup-pes/
1. John Gaventa, Power and powerlessness: Quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian valley. (University of Illinois Press, 1982).
2. Reid Frazier, “Report faults DEP for mine subsidence oversight in western Pa.,” State Impact Pennsylvania, January 22, 2021, https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2021/01/22/report-faults-dep-for-mine-subsidence-oversight-in-western-pa/; Alyssa Choiniere, “Labelle residents say fly ash plagues their town with disease,” Herald-Standard, April 24, 2017, https://www.heraldstandard.com/new_today/labelle-residents-say-fly-ash-plagues-their-town-with-disease/article_7da0b4ed-10db-5dac-a972-1b7657fad7ab.html
3. Eliza Griswold, “When the kids started getting sick,” The New Yorker, March 2, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/when-the-kids-started-getting-sick. See also Griswold’s account of one family’s struggle with the natural gas company Range Resources in Amity and Prosperity (2018).
4. Philip G. Lewin, “ ‘Coal is not just a job, it’s a way of life’: The cultural politics of coal production in Central Appalachia,” Social Problems 66, no. 1 (2017): 51-68; Sally Ward Maggard, “From farm to coal camp to back office at McDonald’s: Living in the midst of Appalachia’s latest transformation. Journal of Appalachian Studies Association 6 (1994): 14-38; Christiana E. Miewald and Eugene J. McCann, “Gender struggle, scale, and the production of place in the Appalachian coalfields. Environment and Planning A 36, no.6 (2004). 1045-1064.
5. See my op-ed on the topic for more information: “Demand responsible cleanup at PES,” Philadelphia Citizen, March 31, 2021. https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/responsible-cleanup-pes/
Helene Langlamet is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation research focuses on the power of the coal and natural gas lobbies in Western Pennsylvania to harness public opinion in order toa chieve desired regulatory outcomes at the local and national level.
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