Extended Spaces of Environmental Injustice: Hydrocarbon Pipelines in the Age of Planetary Urbanization

Abstract

Abstract Hydrocarbon pipelines have emerged as a highly contentious political issue in recent years. In this paper, I conduct spatial regression analyses at national and regional scales to determine whether the locations of hydrocarbon pipelines constitute a systemic environmental justice issue throughout the contiguous US transmission pipeline system. National-level analyses show that counties with higher percentages of non-White residents are associated with more kilometers of hydrocarbon pipeline, whereas counties with a higher percentage of residents with a four-year college degree are associated with fewer kilometers of hydrocarbon pipeline. Regional analyses reveal further complexity, showing only degrees of consistency with national-level results. Situating these results within the emergent literature on planetary urbanization, I develop a multiscalar environmental justice framework that I call extended spaces of environmental injustice. Extended spaces of environmental injustice describe the places through which infrastructures of extended urbanization, which are built across vast geographical distances and operate to meet the material needs of urban society, materialize as spatially variegated environmental justice issues at the local scale. I conclude by arguing that the extended spaces of environmental injustice framework can open new pathways for research related to environmental justice and scale, both in analyzing the geography of existing infrastructures of extended urbanization and the construction of future infrastructure as efforts to decarbonize the economy manifest spatially.