Bringing climate politics home: Lived experiences of flooding and housing insecurity in a natural gas boomtown

As the extraction of shale gas and oil transforms localities, these places emerge as important, if understudied, sites contemporary carbon politics. In this paper, we develop a new approach for examining lived connections between fossil fuel climate change. We propose concept mobilization to describe multiple stages combustion that may be experienced independently (as an economic boom, disaster, or air pollution, example) simultaneously, in locally distinctive combinations – but until now have been considered separately most scholarship public policy. explore experiences Bradford County, Pennsylvania, community that, last decade, has gone through boom bust suffered from severe flooding. Interviews with social service providers county leaders indicated industry disaster manifested saliently around housing security—particularly loss due floods insecurity related boom-bust cycles. Economic changes development brought made flood resilience more challenging some, easier others. Perhaps surprisingly, natural was “double winner,” benefitting by gaining reputation helping recovery. suggest while global discourse not resonate communities host extraction, people make locally-salient different mobilization, important policy justice implications.