Date: Friday, November 23, 2018 – 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Location: Room – 8-164 or webcast (http://www.unbc.ca/nres-institute/colloquium-webcasts)
Campus: Prince George
This presentation provides an overview of the Corporate Mapping Project (CMP) and discusses one specific project within the CMP. The CMP is a multi-institution, SSHRC-funded research project which focuses on: analyzing the organization and power of fossil-fuel capitalism in western Canada; and contributing toward transparent public debate about a just transition to sustainable energy. The presentation will outline the CMP’s four themes and highlight selected findings. Then turning to a specific project, the presentation will advance a typology of fossil fuel flashpoints with illustrations from northern BC based upon a forthcoming chapter in the edited book, Regime of Obstruction.
- What new info or knowledge did you learn from this presentation?
Fossil-fuel capitalism impedes progress away from fossil-fuel extraction (Carroll 2017) – open access book
Theme 1: Social organization of corporate power in the fossil-fuel sector
Enables “the corporate community to define and pursue its common interests…(Carroll 2017)
FF and finance corporate directorships are interlocked (Daub and Carroll 2017)
FF corporations and knowledge-producing civil society organizations and universities interlocks (Carroll et al. 2018)
Theme 2: Impacts of corporate power on society
Political party donations and lobbying (Graham; Daub and Carroll 2017)
Elite networks and direct influence on policy and regulations
Funding, production of knowledge, and media messaging (Gray and Carroll 2018; Blue, Daub, Yunker, and Rajewicz 2018)
Of the 43 FF firms you can track – 20,000 lobbying contacts between 2010-2018, works out to 14 lobbying contacts per day
Theme 3: FF capitalism at the ground level
-community consultations
-social license or power? – argue that FF industries do have social license because they have been good neighbours and the rural and northern people of Alberta and Saskatchewan need to have other options for income and services.
- Corporate power in the Saskatchewan oil industry in Saskatchewan (Eaton and Enoch 2017)
- Flashpoints in northern BC (MacPhail and Bowles forthcoming)
Theme 4: Democratic discussion and just transition
- Tools for monitoring corporate power and influence, expanding opportunities democratic discussion (Daub and Carroll 2017)
HOW IS Corporate Power wielded at the local level? – Fiona asks this
- Long-standing conflicts…see iPhone photos
- Framework for discovery on the Purpose, motivation and approach – see iPhone photos
2. Are there particular aspects of the presentation you enjoyed or intrigued you and are there others that could have been improved?
I am interested to learn more about the decision making process of how Fiona and her research partner came to establish their research framework;
The 3 typology categories stood out because it shows the level of detail I may have to consider for my own thesis work;
They also identified the intersection with the commodity chain – oil
3. Are there components of the research that would be applicable or relevant to your own master’s research?
Identifying “Potential and challenges for coalition building – reasons for contestation – commodity chain nodes – actors and projects – selected results for three projects…
Links can be found through the section of Social License versus Procedural Justice: Competing narratives of (il)legitimacy at the San Xavier Mine, Mexico
4. How well did the speaker respond to questions and is there a question you would have asked given the opportunity?
I would have asked if she sees her current research functioning within a systems thinking model?
Fiona answered questions clearly and where she didn’t have a direct answer, she provided the audience with direction to other researchers who would have an answer.
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