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

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.

About author(s):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.