Hydraulic fracturing and environmental inequality

Stephanie A. Malin, Adam Mayer and Shawn Hazboun

Chapter 29 in Handbook on Inequality and the Environment, 2023, pp 531-555 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Since the mid-2000s, unconventional oil and gas (UOG) production transformed the US from an oil importer into the world’s top producer of hydrocarbons. UOG production has been accompanied by an array of environmental, social, and spatial injustices. Drilling wellpads, for instance, may be located only hundreds of feet from homes, schools, and other high-occupancy buildings. UOG production can disrupt communities, ecosystems, and governance processes. Production generates distributive inequities - with environmental, public health, and economic risks concentrating among people living near production and often among minoritized groups. It also generates procedural inequities - where people living near production, or otherwise affected by it, often do not have opportunities to meaningfully participate in making decisions about where, whether, and when production occurs. In this chapter, we offer an extensive review of research on these disparities. We show how the oil and gas industry possesses significant metapower - where they control the rules of the game across multiple political and economic processes. We argue that their power helps shape multiple environmental injustices and perpetuates systemic inequities, while encouraging continued dependence on fossil fuels.

Keywords: Environment; Geography; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781800881136/9781800881136.00044.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20464_29

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().