Reactionary Decarbonization: How Carbon Capture Is Expanding Environmental Racism in Louisiana

Using Louisiana as a case study, this paper examines the social implications of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a response to the climate crisis. CCS refers to the process of capturing CO2 from power plants or industrial sources, and burying it underground. Although controversial as a climate change solution, CCS was generously subsidized by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and has quickly become a booming industrial sector with Louisiana as ground zero. Based on over 100 interviews and a year of ethnographic fieldwork focused in Louisiana communities targeted for carbon capture infrastructure, I argue that CCS represents a pathway of reactionary decarbonization that reproduces the racialized hegemony of the oil and gas industry while degrading local environments and foisting further risks onto society. Drawing on W.E.B. DuBois’ Black Reconstruction, I show that the distribution of these risks is deeply shaped by the racial geography of Louisiana’s fossil energy regime, which in turn was structured by the legacy of slavery and the failures of Reconstruction.