‘All of Ireland had been wiped out’: Irish Nuclear Anxiety and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s The Bray House

The Bray House (1990) is Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's curious and contested first novel, the story of a near-future archaeological expedition to an Ireland devastated by a British nuclear disaster. It is a book which has offered much analytical fodder to readers and critics alike, with the question of the novel's genre continually in flux since its publication. This article argues that, in The Bray House, Ní Dhuibhne consciously inverts Old Irish narrative forms to create a work of speculative writing which yokes together the seemingly contradictory concerns of the Gaelic literary tradition and contemporary Irish anxiety about vulnerabilities to the British nuclear energy industry. It examines how the author combines unease over international energy politics with native narrative structures to create a work which sits comfortably within the genre of science fiction. It considers how The Bray House brings to light what Darko Suvin calls the ‘congeneric elements in the cognitive and marvellous bias of the voyage extraordinaire’, in this case the Old Irish Echtra form. Particular attention is paid throughout to how science fiction (specifically the techno-Robinsonade model) allows Ní Dhuibhne to vividly express Irish national concerns over the presence of the Sellafield nuclear power plant in the late 1980s.

Energy Re-Shift for an Urbanizing World

This essay considers the rural-to-urban transition and correlates it with urban energy demands. Three distinct themes are inspected and interrelated to develop awareness for an urbanizing world: internal urban design and innovation, technical transition, and geopolitical change. Data were collected on the use of energy in cities and, by extension, nation states over the last 30 years. The urban population boom continues to pressure the energy dimension with heavily weighted impacts on less developed regions. Sustainable urban energy will need to reduce resource inputs and environmental impacts and decouple economic growth from energy consumption. Fossil fuels continue to be the preferred method of energy for cities; however, an increased understanding is emerging that sustainable energy forms can be implemented as alternatives. Key to this transition will be the will to invest in renewables (i.e., solar, wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, and biomass), efficient infrastructure, and smart eco-city designs. This essay elucidates how the technical transition of energy-friendly technologies focuses on understanding the changes in the energy mix from non-renewable to renewable. Smart electricity storage grids with artificial intelligence can operate internationally and alleviate some geopolitical barriers. Energy politics is shown to be a problematic hurdle with case research examples specific to Central and Eastern Europe. The energy re-shift stressed is a philosophical re-thinking of modern cities as well as a new approach to the human-energy relationship.

Book Reviews

Langston, Nancy. 2017. Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 292 pp. ISBN 978-0-300-21298-3.Moore, Margaret. 2019. Who Should Own Natural Resources? Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. 140 pp. ISBN 978-1-509-52916-2.Middleton Manning, Beth Rose. 2018. Upstream: Trust Lands and Power on the Feather River. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 244 pp. ISBN 978-0-8165-3514-9.Van de Graaf, Thijs, and Benjamin K. Sovacool. 2020. Global Energy Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 978-1-5095-3048-9.Wapner, Paul. 2020. Is Wildness Over? Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. ISBN 978-1-5095-3212-4.DeSombre, Elizabeth R. 2020. What Is Environmental Politics? Cambridge: Polity Press. 202 pp. ISBN 978-1-5095-3413-5.Ptáčková, Jarmila. 2020. Exile from Grasslands: Tibetan Herders and Chinese Development Projects. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN: 9 78-0-295-74819-1.Liegey, Vincent, and Anitra Nelson. 2020. Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide. London: Pluto Press. 224 pp. ISBN 978-0-7453-4201-6.Behringer, Wolfgang. 2019. Tambora and the Year without a Summer: How a Volcano Plunged the World into Crisis. Medford, MA: Polity Press. 334 pp. ISBN 978-1-509-52549-2.Duvall, Chris S. 2019. The African Roots of Marijuana. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 351 pp. ISBN 978-1-4780-0394-6.

U.S.–Nigerian Relations

The United States and Nigeria have a long history, stretching back to the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century and continuing today through economic and security partnerships. While the relationship has evolved over time and both countries have helped to shape each other’s histories in important ways, there remains a tension between hope and reality in which both sides struggle to live up to the expectations set for themselves and for each other. The United States looks to Nigeria to be the model of progress and stability in Africa that the West African state wants to become; Nigeria looks to American support for its development and security needs despite the United States continuously coming up short. There have been many strains in the relationship, and the United States and Nigeria have continued to ebb and flow between cooperation and conflict. Whatever friction there might be, the relationship between the United States and Nigeria is important to analyze because it offers a window to understanding trends and broad currents in international history such as decolonization, humanitarianism, energy politics, and terrorism.

The Climate Crisis, Renewable Energy, and the Changing Landscape of Global Energy Politics

This essay reviews three recent books on the changing landscape of global energy politics in the era of climate change. Key questions that the authors investigate include: how will the renewable energy transition reshape the global balance of power? How will political-economic interdependencies and geopolitical alignments shift? Will contemporary petro-states adapt or collapse? And what new patterns of peace and conflict may emerge in a decarbonized world order? The authors provide different perspectives on the likely speed of the energy transition and its geopolitical implications. However, they occlude deeper questions about the depth of the transformations needed to prevent climate catastrophe—particularly in the nature of capitalism and military power—and the potential for more radical perspectives on energy futures. In contrast, I will argue that we should advance a critical research agenda on the global energy transition that accounts for the possibility of more far-reaching transformations in the political-economic, military, and ideological bases of world politics and highlights diverse movements fighting for their realization. These possible transformations include (1) transitions to post-growth political economies; (2) a radical shrinkage of emissions-intensive military–industrial complexes; and (3) decolonizing ideologies of “progress.” If struggles for alternative energy futures beyond the hegemony of economic growth and Western-style modernization are at the forefront of radical politics today, then these struggles deserve greater attention from critical IR scholars.

Energy Worlds in Experiment

Energy Worlds in Experiment is an experiment in writing about energy and an exploration of energy infrastructures as experiments. Twenty authors have written collaborative chapters that examine energy politics and practices, from electricity cables and energy monitors to swamps and estuaries. Each chapter proposes a unique format to tell energy worlds differently and to stimulate energy imaginaries: thesis, propositions, interviews, stories, card games, and a graphic novel. The book offers practitioners, students, and scholars a range of new tools to help think, engage and critique energy politics, practices and infrastructures.