Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in Houston, Texas, to explore how the perceived risks of, and responsibilities for, climate change are entangled with a kind of temporally-oriented ‘energy ethics’ that dovetail with the industry’s prevailing financial and accounting practices.

Paper long abstract:

Tom asked me:

“Are you really willing to change your entire life and your economy and impoverish the planet over a concern that's generated from a computer model that says temperatures, 50 years from now, are going to be two degrees different? Are you willing to do that?... Why would you change your entire life on what the weatherman says the temperature is going to be when he's not even right next week?

Tom is a respected reservoir engineer turned influential hydrocarbon financier, and a prominent member of Houston’s oil and gas community. His responsibility for the impact of climate change is to his current investors and the broader welfare of people today, he suggests, and his perspective is representative of an ethos that runs through this community.

In this paper, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in Houston, Texas, to explore how the perceived risks of, and responsibilities for, climate change are entangled with a kind of temporally-oriented ‘energy ethics’. Attributing climate change to ‘natural’ causes and casting doubt on climate change risk predictions vacates human responsibility for its anthropogenic causes, its current manifestations, and what should be done about it. This vacation, I show, provides an opportunity to posit a capitalist-oriented ethics of what is ‘right’ and ‘good’ with a presentist sense of humanist responsibility when it comes to the exploration and production of oil and gas, which dovetail with the prevailing temporal horizons of the industry’s financial and accounting practices.