Re-attaching to coal in a Climate Emergency

The case of the Whitehaven mine

Bibliographic Data

ID4464459
AuthorsP Lewis (0000-0002-2226-4352, Lancaster University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume7
Issue4
Pages1821-1843
Publication date2024-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486241238663
OpenAlexW4392925892
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited37

This paper draws on the concept of 'attachment' to examine pro-coal sentiment in Whitehaven - an English town at the centre of global political controversy because of a plan to open a coal mine in the area. Drawing on fieldwork data, I show that pro-mine persuasions among some residents are underpinned by a process of 're-attaching' to coal. I argue that the case of the Whitehaven mine is a warning about how fossil fuels might re-emerge as promissory objects in other parts of the world, even when a transition away from fossil fuels has been completed. Paradoxically, the very disorientations and deepening traumas that climate change is causing threaten to spur on the rise of fossil fuel (re-)attachments. The paper also examines how pro-coal discourses linked to wider vested interests are received in a context where coal exists as 'afterlife'. Consequently, local actors construct narratives that legitimise new coal extraction by (re)articulating discourses of delay. My findings are thus a reminder of the need to guard against over-valorising 'the grassroots', arguably a risk in environmental justice scholarship. I conclude by calling for further empirical research on the way attachments to high-carbon objects are (re/de)composed, an urgent task given the need for rapid societal decarbonisation - one which has received very little attention to date

Archaeology · Coal · Coal mining · Context (archaeology · Environmental ethics · Environmental justice · Grassroots · Guard (computer science · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Mining and Resource Management

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