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- Convenors:
-
Robert Lifset
(University of Oklahoma)
Mogens Rudiger (Aalborg University)
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- Chair:
-
Robert Lifset
(University of Oklahoma)
- Discussant:
-
Mogens Rudiger
(Aalborg University)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Energy and Infrastructure
- Location:
- Linnanmaa Campus, SÄ110
- Sessions:
- Monday 19 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel will explore the relationship between energy and the environment in the 1970s. It is open to a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in seeking to examine both the environmental impacts of energy policies as well as the influence of environmental concerns in energy politics.
Long Abstract:
The energy crisis of the 1970s touched every country on the planet. But the 1970s simultaneously witnessed the emergence of an environmental consciousness and politics in many countries. This panel seeks to explore the connections between these two historical developments.
The energy crisis of the 1970s transformed the energy policies of many countries. Since how we produce and consume energy is among the most environmentally intensive activities we engage in, the energy crisis produced enormous environmental change.
This panel will explore the environmental history of the energy crisis of the 1970s. This might take the form of investigating environmental activism, politics, or policy. It might think about the environmental impacts of different energy policies. It might in turn examine how energy policy and politics were affected (or not) by environmental concerns. It could also extend to examining how energy or environmental culture was formed and transformed in this time. The panel is open to a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and welcomes submissions from scholars working in history, political science, anthropology, geography, biology and the energy and environmental humanities.
In the 1970s the relationship between energy and the environment was transformed in many nations. This panel seeks to examine this transformation for the insight in might provide into understanding both the past and the present.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 19 August, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
When the previous energy transition took place in Finland, the Finnish Parliament served as a forum for public debates on energy. The aim of this presentation is to shed light on the environmental concerns and tensions in the parliamentary debates on energy during the First Oil Crisis.
Paper long abstract:
The energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables is widely considered essential to achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and the European Green Deal. The European Union and many of its member states have committed to phasing out fossil fuels in the near future. As an industrialized welfare state in Northern Europe, Finland has set as its goal to implement the transition by 2035.
The energy transition is not only a technical but also a thoroughly political, social, and cultural issue. Thus, researchers in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) are well equipped to offer novel understandings of the features of energy transitions to the current debate. For example, historical research can provide a long-term perspective and understanding of the influence and significance of context to the discussions on potential energy futures. The need for a temporal lens can also be justified by the fact that energy transitions are understood as phenomena that often take place over several decades or centuries.
Like today, political power, agency, and changes in the historical and geopolitical context have played a pivotal role during past energy transitions. When the previous energy transition took place in Finland, the Finnish Parliament served as a forum for public debates on energy, related technologies, and infrastructure. The aim of this presentation is to shed light on the environmental concerns and tensions in the parliamentary debates on energy during the First Oil Crisis.
Paper short abstract:
The impact of the energy crisis of the 1970s in Ireland has been under examined in energy history discourses. Despite an increased global awareness of the environmental value of wetlands, the crisis prompted a renewed enthusiasm for the large-scale extraction of peat.
Paper long abstract:
Ireland’s peatlands throughout the twentieth century were sites of extraction and energy production. Promoted by political elites as a resource of national importance, peat mined from these landscapes was heavily subsidised with industrial practices justified by the perceived social and economic benefits to communities at the sites of extraction. Increased competition from other fuel sources for the generation of electricity significantly impacted the momentum of peat extraction over time as the energy economy became more complex. Another challenge to the peat industry was the 1971 Ramsar Convention which marked the first international consensus on the value of wetlands for water quality and ecosystems protection. Environmental consciousness was simultaneously emerging in Ireland in the movement to oppose the development of nuclear power.
Given this context, this paper will argue that despite these challenges, the energy crisis of the 1970s facilitated the increased extraction of peat in Ireland. Actors within the industry’s administration utilised the rhetoric of energy security to embed Ireland’s future in peat mining for several more decades. Through a detailed analysis of newspapers, government and scientific reports, and oral histories, this paper will further argue that the energy crisis did not catalyse a shift away from petroleum but rather an overall increase in the use of fossil energy across the island of Ireland. This complicated picture of an increased environmental consciousness emerging alongside a ramping up of the consumption of fossil energy situates Ireland within a globalised energy system based on production, consumption, and resistance.
Paper short abstract:
In France as elsewhere the 1970s energy crisis generated an intensive search for ‘alternatives’ to oil. Among other effects, this search enabled incineration to become the dominant waste treatment method. This led to the exclusion of material recycling of waste and deleterious environmental impacts.
Paper long abstract:
In France, during years following the WW2, the incineration of household waste was limited by the need and the will to maintain agricultural recycling of organic residues. In some areas, such as the Paris region, recycling was even enjoying a revival through the industrialisation of traditional uses (composting). Up until the end of the 1960s, this material recycling, which was undoubtedly ecological regarding biogeochemical flows and planetary boundaries, was encouraged by local authorities because of these environmental benefits. In the 1970s, the energy crisis suddenly reversed this situation. Waste incineration in large plants, until then regarded as an expensive technique that was confined to very dense urban areas, was given a big boost allowing it to spread and conquer new territories (the periurban and rural areas) : the energy crisis meant that recovering the energy from destruction by fire became profitable almost everywhere. District heating systems or electricity production based on waste are then encouraged. Public authorities, planners, private companies producing furnaces or plastic waste gathered to structure a huge and powerful 'waste-to-energy' sector. Public subsidies, accommodating legislation and 'ecological' rhetoric and falsifications were produced to support this technical choice. This dynamic had a major adverse effect on environment : it marginalized material recycling, which is just as interesting, if not more so, in terms of energy savings (it avoids the high and expensive energy costs of synthetic fertilizer production or mining, for example). Nevertheless, waste incineration is still praised for this type of energetic "virtues" acquired during this period.
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the socio-ecological dimensions of the everyday life, experiences, and practices of British households living in “fuel poverty” and locates their daily lives within the broader framework of environmental consciousness formation in the 1970s.
Paper long abstract:
Under the impression of two energy crises and a deep recession, a new public awareness of the social costs of energy consumption emerged in Western industrialised societies in the 1970s. In Britain and other parts of Western Europe, the massive, albeit temporary, increase in energy prices meant that an increasing number of British households could no longer afford the energy needed to satisfy their basic needs (like warmth). Driven by voluntary organisations, politicians, and social scientists in Britain, the term "fuel poverty" was coined for this phenomenon during the same period. This development was parallel by forming a new environmental consciousness in the 1970s, most notably seen in the emergence of a global environmental movement.
The paper examines the everyday experiences, practices, and perceptions of those dealing with "fuel poverty" in Britain, contextualising their lives within the broader framework of environmental consciousness formation in the 1970s. It highlights how the coping strategies employed by households in "fuel poverty", often unwittingly, either supported or opposed the prevailing environmental policies and regulations of the time. These strategies, ranging from the potentially harmful, such as the excessive use of paraffin stoves, to resource-conserving behaviours, became embedded in contemporary discourses on energy conservation. The latter phenomenon, the "environmentalism of the poor", is still largely unexplored in environmental history (esp. for the Global North). Examining the ecological dimension of the everyday life of households in “fuel poverty” makes it possible to examine hitherto underexposed aspects of the "ecological revolution" of the 1970s.