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

by David McDermott Hughes

Overview

Why the wind, and energy it produces, should not be private property

The energy transition has begun. To succeed—to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power—that process must be fair. Otherwise, mounting pop- ular protest against wind farms will prolong carbon pollution and deepen the climate crisis. David McDermott Hughes examines that anti-industrial, anti- corporate resistance, drawing on his time spent conducting field research in a Spanish village surrounded by wind turbines.

In the lives of a community freighted with centuries of exploitation—people whom the author comes to know intimately—clean power and social justice fit together only awkwardly. A green economy will require greater efforts to get ordinary people such as these on board. Aesthetics, livelihood, property, and, most essentially, the private nature of wind resources—all these topics must be examined with fresh eyes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839761133
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	10/12/2021
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,050,000
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.27(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

David Hughes is professor of Anthropology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He has written articles for Boston Review and three previous books, including Energy without Conscience: Oil, Climate Change, and Complicity (2017). As an activist, Hughes has served as president of his faculty union and as a member of the Climate Task Force of the American Federation of Teachers.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Dramatis Personae xi

Introduction: Hope and Uncertain Hope 1

1 Wind on Land 23

2 How Not to Fight a Wind Farm 43

3 The Eden Problem 69

4 Energy without Stories 89

5 Turbine Sublime 106

6 Landscapes of Wheat and War 127

7 Vigilance, the New Mood of Energy 153

8 Latifundios of Air 171

9 Just Sacrifice, an Experiment 193

Conclusion: Wind, Justice, and Compromise 214

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

09/27/2021

Anthropologist Hughes (Energy Without a Conscience) investigates the history, politics, and culture of wind turbines in this eye-opening survey. He situates his study in a small village in Andalusia, Spain, where, in 2006, the locals protested a plan to install wind turbines nearby, claiming the project would destroy the aesthetics of their village and demanding they be compensated with “jobs, income, or both.” The protest wasn’t successful, raising questions for the author about the conflict between social justice, the privatization of natural resources, and ways of addressing climate change. Hughes argues that in order to achieve a sustainable world free of fossil fuels, people must find a compromise that doesn’t just enrich corporations and landowners, and proposes that people can learn to love wind turbines: citizens, he writes, could own the energy they produce, and windmills could be designed with an eye for beauty and an appreciation of the land. At times, the analysis strays into explorations of literary works such as that of Cervantes, who called windmills “the most monstrous objects on the landscape,” making for a fascinating if digressive account. Eloquent and incisive, this is an important contribution to climate change discourse. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"David Hughes it doing some of the most innovative thinking and writing about energy democracy in the world. The movements for climate justice are in his debt."
—Naomi Klein

"No task is more crucial than building out renewable energy around the world—but it can't happen at the speed it must unless communities embrace windmills and solar panels. And as this frank, straightforward and clarifying book makes clear, that will happen if and when we have a real stake in these assets. The author's proposals are ambitious but also modest and logical, and they are deeply grounded in real life observation—this is a book to be reckoned with."
—Bill McKibben, author The End of Nature

"How do we conjure hope in these times of climate breakdown? In Who Owns the Wind? David McDermott Hughes shows that a climate-stabilizing energy revolution must socialize renewables so that wind power comes to be equated with social justice rather than private gain. McDermott Hughes takes readers to a small town in Spain where wind is abundant, and where citizens rose up against privately-owned, corporate wind power, stymieing energy transition. To head off such resistance, McDermott Hughes advocates for a "socialism of the wind." Who Owns the Wind? shows that we will win fossil fuel abolition only if we succeed in transforming renewable power into a common resource, one that tangibly benefits and enfranchises the communities where turbines and other infrastructure is located. McDermott Hughes’s book should be required reading for all energy democracy advocates and environmental justice activists."
—Ashley Dawson

"Until reading David Hughes’ exquisitely written yet hard-hitting and crusading book, I hadn’t realized how much hangs on the wind—and on who will own it. From one angle it is an eco-socialist manifesto, pushing its message with an unswerving passion: build millions of wind turbines, yes, but the people must own the wind. From another, it is a sumptuous volume that sparkles with moments of almost synaesthetic beauty—while reading it you feel the Andalusian wind brush your skin…. Ultimately, the author finds sparks of hope among his ethnographic and literary subjects: the individuals and the picaresque traditions of southern Spain. For those who would like our planet to remain habitable, this is a must-read"
—Gareth Dale

"Eloquent and incisive, this is an important contribution to climate change discourse."
—Publishers Weekly

"As radical as the most ambitious of the green revolution's plans."
—Anna Aslanyan, Times Literary Supplement

"Fascinating, highly revealing and sometimes poetic ... a joy to read."
—Gabriel Carlyle, Peace News

"Who Owns the Wind provides a fantastic account of a tense relationship between a wind farm and a 200-person village...The anthropologist's narration is rich and smooth, carefully untangling the reasons behind the inhabitant's varying postures toward the wind farm and reflecting on where these stances fit in the urgent need for a transition to clean energy."
—Paola Velasco-Herrejón, Journal of Agrarian Change

"David Hughes provides a nuanced and complex assessment of the perils and promises of developing renewable energy. Who Owns the Wind? is a joy to read, connecting large scale global forces with the lives and stories of individuals. This is a work full of insight, critical analysis, and even a modicum of hope."
—Richard York

From the Publisher