This paper traces the development of energy policy in the mainline churches beginning with Margaret Mead and René Dubos's 1974 commission to prepare a report to the National Council of Churches on the use of plutonium as a commercial fuel. The report stirred a controversy and a broader examination of energy ethics that culminated in the adoption in 1979 of a National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. policy paper and encouraged constituent denominations to make their own studies of energy policy. The development and implementation of these policies is followed from 1980 to the present, using the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as a representative mainline denomination. This turn to ethical reasoning to support change in U.S. energy policy is a hopeful development, given the stalemate in such discussion when framed in scientific or political terms.

This paper contributes to the development of an anthropological understanding of the emerging political economies of renewable energy in the contemporary United States. It explores efforts to develop place-based, local systems of renewable energy production and places them in the context of a larger history of the political economy and social construction of U.S. energy systems. Marked by emancipatory discourses of local self-reliance, decentralization, ecological sustainability, energy security, and community-scale governance, contemporary renewable energy initiatives bear a strong resemblance to the small-scale, grassroots energy actions that emerged during the energy crises of the 1970s. Both past and current local renewable energy efforts are also deeply embedded within and subject to contemporary regimes of environmental governance, ecological modernization, and neoliberal responses to ecological crises. Using emerging energy initiatives in Washington, DC as a case study, I discuss three key elements of the political and social construction of contemporary local renewable energy production—ownership, governance, and sustainable urban place-making—and examine the problematic theme of “localism” that links them.

Over the past few years industrial sand mining has expanded rapidly in western Wisconsin, driven largely by the use of sand in hydraulic fracturing, itself a controversial technology widely deployed in natural gas and oil drilling throughout the United States. A unique geological history combined with existing railroad networks has positioned Wisconsin as a major supplier of “frac sand” and thus a key link in a wider hydrocarbon commodity chain. The unprecedented growth of frac sand mining, however, has raised new social and environmental concerns, becoming the target of grassroots organizing. This article reports on ongoing ethnographic research focused on frac sand conflicts, providing an overview of the main areas of contention, the trajectory of community organizing, and the response of the mining industry.

Underneath some of the most exceptional Australian farm lands lie far more unconventional natural resources: huge methane reserves contained inside deep underground coal seams. In the last few years, Australia has seen a veritable boom in high capital foreign investments to extract and export this coal seam gas (CSG), particularly in the state of Queensland, where a few thousand gas wells have now been constructed despite significant opposition and concern. Based on the public record and ongoing anthropological fieldwork in the agricultural region of the Darling Downs in southern Queensland, this paper sets out some of the key issues of what might be described as the Australian agri-gas field conflict. It takes a view of agri-gas fields as sites of socioeconomic transformation where cultural boundaries of place and matter are contested, forcing farmers and others to reassess variously imagined future human–environment relationships in the region, Australia, and beyond.

This paper presents initial research on a community of renters in Southwestern Pennsylvania whose homes are adjacent to a hydraulic fracturing site and containment pond. The community is nestled in a rural section of the county where abandoned and working coal mines are neighbors to fracking's new industrial process of energy extraction, which residents describe as moving in like “aliens.” Most have family members who work(ed) in the coal industry, and the identity that emerges from their community of practice, and the attendant institutions and structures that shape their commentary of complaint and benefit are fundamentally informed by factors associated with labor. Coal miners are a more localized, populous, networked labor force with deep roots in the area, while the fracking-related labor is diffuse, disaggregated, and transient. Residents seek ways to frame their concerns and articulate their unease from a position as outsiders, and while buy-in on jobs as a natural outcome of the natural gas industry is high despite evidence to the contrary, critiques about health and the environment are tentative.