Climate Change in Carbon Communities: Intimate Intersections, Global Impacts

Climate Change in Carbon Communities: Intimate Intersections, Global Impacts

14 April 2022, 1-2pm

Dr Jessica Lehman, DEI Fellow & Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography

How is climate change experienced in communities that host fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure (i.e. ‘carbon communities’)? How do these experiences of climate change impact the local politics of energy transition? And what does climate justice look like in places that host extraction? As climate-related disasters becomes a lived reality for people around the globe, new questions arise about how changing weather patterns interact with other risks and societal transformations. This talk offers an interdisciplinary research framework for analyzing the lived intersections of climate impacts and fossil fuel extraction and drawing out the insights that these intersections might give on contemporary carbon politics. This is developed from a collaborative project examining the intersecting impacts of flash flooding and natural gas extraction in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. In this research, we found that even when people were unlikely to attribute flood events to climate change, they recognized concerns in line with those identified by climate activists. We also identify the home as a site where these intersections are most keenly felt, and thus as a potential entry point for further co-exploration of climate change impacts and alternative energy futures.

Jessi is a human-environment geographer primarily interested in international environmental politics. My current research on energy comprises two main themes: 1) The intersections of climate change adaptation/resilience and fossil fuel extraction; 2) New geographies of offshore energy and their relationships to marine politics.

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