Energy without Conscience

"This is a fascinating exploration of uncharted—and crucial—intellectual ground. It is hardest for us to see that which is hidden in plain sight, as David McDermott Hughes makes powerfully clear." - Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

"An informative and entertaining work, Energy without Conscience probes deeply into different forms of energy and the related social systems that sustain them. David McDermott Hughes makes it clear that energy systems are embedded in moral economies, suggesting that they can be reconfigured in relation to activist politics and ethics. Passionately arguing against the silence and unwillingness to think about the immorality of using oil, Hughes sets a high standard of engaged anthropology." - Andrew S. Mathews, author of Instituting Nature: Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests

"Recommended." - D. Rogers, Choice

“Hughes has contributed greatly to an understanding of how climate change is viewed in locations outside of the modern Western world.” - Sandra Moore, Anthropology Book Forum

"Energy without Conscience is a thoughtful take on how climate change complicity can exist without a countrywide collective conscience of wrongdoing." - Trey Murphy, Geographical Review

"Hughes offers us a rich and important ethnographic account of Trinidad that marks the Caribbean nation not only as the site of Christopher Columbus’ third exploration to the Americas, but also as the world’s first petro- extractive geography. . . . Energy Without Conscience is a powerful and urgent book, one that furthers an understanding of global interconnectedness, not as a neoliberal project of unity, but through a web of danger, unequal outcomes, and a matrix of complicity." - Macarena Gomez-Barris, Journal of Latin American Geography

“Overall, Hughes’s Energy Without Conscience gives us a deeply historicized description of Trinidad and Tobago’s oil economy. Most importantly, he describes the potentiality of the past to have led to different presents and inspires us to consider different futures…. [The book] raises important questions about the ethical considerations and responsibilities of doing research in a world facing climate catastrophe. Owing to the methodical issues it covers, it will be of particular interest to anyone planning and conducting research in the broad fields of energy humanities, the anthropology of climate change, and extractive industries.” - Kari Dahlgren, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute