Language and environmental justice: articulating intersectionality within energy policy deliberations

ABSTRACT

The widespread practice of shale gas extraction via high volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) has created challenges for communities who attempt to understand HVHF risk. This study uses a critical discourse lens to understand how intersectionality, and environmental justice language frames might be more clearly established in tools that stakeholders must use to engage in energy policy deliberation. I examine how stakeholders in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York navigate public comment tools in an attempt to understand environmental risk. Using both interview and think aloud protocol, I find that possibilities to voice concern about HVHF risk vary by locality and state. HVHF policy deliberation that does not often include ‘intersectional’ and ‘environmental justice’ frameworks results in an uneven distribution of HVHF risk across and within states. By understanding various discourse frames within policy tools in different states, a more just system of risk identification might emerge.

KEYWORDS:

• Shale development
• public participation
• environmental justice
• intersectionality
• critical discourse analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I define regulatory risk reporting tools as texts and procedures that are sponsored by institutions to manage risk reporting.

2. During these meetings, participants might have shared personal anecdotes, scientific research and strategies for community reporting models that are not included in institutional regulatory environmental agencies.

3. Homo economicus highlights a belief in a world ‘populated by economic actors’ who might ‘appear as a consumer or a producer’ (Dryzek 2005, 133).

4. Some participants in PA and OH were also arrested for HVHF protest and were aware of New York arrests, but some PA and OH participants pointed out that they did not have the support systems to pay legal fees associated with arrests for protest, an intersectional concern. The fact that arrests are part of stakeholder discourse at all points to the marginalization many feel in attempts at environmental deliberation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barbara George

Dr. Barbara George teaches composition at Kent State University. Her research interests include community literacies, sustainability literacies, environmental rhetoric, and environmental critical discourse analysis.