SustainERA Public Research Talk No 7

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About the Speaker

Cara New Daggett is a researcher and writer working on ecofeminism, degrowth, and the politics of energy. She is affiliated with Virginia Tech and currently a fellow at the Futures of Sustainability Center at University of Hamburg.

Her book, The Birth of Energy, Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work, challenges technocratic approaches to energy policy. She also co-edits the Critical Energy Studies series at MIT Press and the journal Energy Humanities.

Talk Abstract

In petro-states such as the United States, Russia, and Brazil, right-wing movements often combine support for fossil fuels with patriarchal social ideals. This talk explores how gender and energy are deeply intertwined.

Focusing on the mid-20th-century United States, Daggett shows how fossil-fuel expansion reinforced a social order structured around the heterosexual family, automobile infrastructure, suburban planning, industrial labour, and mass consumerism.

Drawing on the example of the “Friends of Coal” campaign in Appalachia, she examines how traditional masculine imagery has been mobilised to defend fossil-fuel industries.

The talk concludes by reflecting on what feminist perspectives can contribute to understanding the politics of energy transition.