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

Why the wind, and energy it produces, should not be private property

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.

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.