Energy,Power,and Environment-An Eco-Justice Interpretation Of The Energy Novel Heat And Light

Pennsylvania is rich in coal and it is also the origin of commercial oil extraction in the United States and the location of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.Years of energy extraction have had tremendous repercussions on the local environment and the poor.In the context of the current shale gas boom in Pennsylvania,contemporary American writer Jennifer Haigh published the energy novel Heat and Light(2016),set in a fictional coal town of Bakerton,Pennsylvania.Heat and Light reveals the injustice inflicted on the local poor and the natural environment in the process of energy extraction,fully demonstrating the writer’s concern for the poor.This thesis interprets Heat and Light based on the theory of ecological justice,focusing on the injustice inflicted on the poor groups and the natural environment under the invasion of energy violence machines and exploring the multiple ways in which poor groups reassert ecological justice.On the one hand,the novel discloses that the poor have undergone slow violence in the complicity of energy capital and political power.They are subjected to the physical and psychological harm caused by violent energy exploitation.Besides,the pastoral ideal of local residents is also disillusioned when both the rights of nature and human rights are being severely trampled on.On the other hand,even in the face of mighty energy capital and complex power mechanism,the novel also shows the possibility and importance of reasserting justice for the poor.In this novel,Rena,a farmer in Bakerton,and a geologist,Lorne Trexler,are representatives in the local environmental justice movement.Under their guidance,local residents have improved their energy cognition,learned the dark truth about the complicity of energy capital and political power,and appealed to the law in order to defend the equal right to clean resources.Simultaneously,the process of improving energy cognition and strengthening legal awareness is also the awakening process of constructing eco-cosmopolitanism.As a representative of the poor,protagonist Richard embarks on a journey of constructing ecological cosmopolitanism,from the initial concern for the destruction of his home to the concern for the whole world.Interpreting the energy novel Heat and Light from the perspective of ecological justice exposes the physical and psychological harm of the poor and local environmental deterioration in the energy industry caused by the conspiracy of political power and energy capital.Undertaking the environmental justice movement so as to alleviate the ecological crises requires people to conceptually improve their knowledge of the relationship between energy and power,construct an ecological cosmopolitanism,and defend human rights and the rights of nature through activism so as to ensure that all human and non-human beings enjoy clean resources equally.