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Matthew Todd Huber

Professor of Geography, Syracuse University
Areas of Expertise:

About Matthew

Huber's teaching and research focus on the politics of energy and climate change. His new research examines the ecological impacts of industrial fertilizer production and connections to food and the politics of energy and climate change.

Contributions

Inequality and the Politics of Climate Change

In the News

"Lifestyle Environmentalism Will Never Win Over Workers," Matthew Todd Huber, Environment, Jacobin, August 2, 2021.
"Climate Doom Won’t Save the Planet," Matthew Todd Huber, Environment, Jacobin, July 23, 2021.
"Why the Green New Deal Has Failed — So Far," Matthew Todd Huber, Jacobin, May 10, 2021.
"The Oil Crash Should Be Our Chance to Transform Energy Production," Matthew Todd Huber (with Hadas Thier), Jacobinmag, May 7, 2020.
"COVID-19 Shows Why We Must Socialize the Food System," Matthew Todd Huber, Crisis/Food/Health, Jacobin, April 17, 2020.
"Climate Change Is Class Struggle," Matthew Todd Huber, Environment/Strategy, Jacobin, December 19, 2019.
"Ecological Politics for the Working Class," Matthew Todd Huber, Society/Environment/Strategy, Jacobin, October 12, 2019.
"Bernie Is the Best Chance We Have on Climate," Matthew Todd Huber, Party/ Politics/ Environment, Jacobin, July 22, 2019.
"A Real Green New Deal Means Class Struggle," Matthew Todd Huber (with Keith Brower Brown, Jeremy Gong, and Jamie Munro), Environment / Unions, Jacobin, March 21, 2019.
"Syracuse University Professor Condemns Koch Foundation Investment," Matthew Todd Huber, The Daily Ornge, December 4, 2016.
"The Carbon Tax is Doomed," Matthew Todd Huber, Jacobin, October 9, 2016.
"Elon Musk Saves the World?," Matthew Todd Huber, Jacobin, May 12, 2015.
"Too Much Oil," Matthew Todd Huber, Jacobin, March 12, 2015.
"Syracuse University Adjunct Faculty Call for Better Pay, Working Conditions (Commentary)," Matthew Todd Huber, Syracuse.com / The Post-Standard, February 25, 2015.

Publications

"Hidden Abodes: Industrializing Political Ecology" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 107 (2017): 151-166.

Suggests we need to make visible (and politicize) the immense ecological impacts from often hidden industrial spaces. It examines the case of a massive nitrogen fertilizer facility in southern Louisiana.   

"Reinvigorating Class in Political Ecology: Nitrogen Capital and the Means of Degradation" Geoforum (2016).

Advocates a Marxist class approach focused on the role of industrial capital in producing climate change and other ecological problems. It provides the nitrogen fertilizer industry as a case. 

"Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital" (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

Argues oil is central in powering a particular form of privatized suburban life (what it calls ‘entrepreneurial life’). The book historically traces the interplay of state policies and capital accumulation in making this form of life in the 1930s, its crisis in the 1970s and the continued politics of “oil addiction” today in relation to war, climate change, and ecological crisis.

"Enforcing Scarcity: Oil, Violence and the Making of the Market" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101, no. 4 (2011): 816-826.

Argues the scarcity of oil is not natural, but a product of social forces attempting to prevent overproduction and market gluts. It examines the case of the 1930s oil boom when the governors of Texas and Oklahoma declared ‘martial law’ to stop rampant oil production. 

"Energizing Historical Materialism: Fossil Fuels, Space and The Capitalist Mode of Production" Geoforum 40, no. 1 (2009): 105-115.

Argues we need to theorize fossil fuels as a central aspect of the capitalist mode of production. It focuses on the role of coal and steam in the rise of industrial capitalism.