For many in Puerto Rico, ‘energy dominance’ is just a new name for US colonialism

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Catalina de Onis, Willamette University

(THE CONVERSATION) The Trump administration has made “achieving American energy dominance” a central policy goal. President Trump asserts that “energy dominance” requires expanding nuclear development, increasing coal and natural gas exports, building transnational pipelines and accessing offshore oil and gas deposits. These efforts, Trump contends, will maximize the nation’s “boundless capacity” for energy production, including spreading U.S. fossil fuels around the globe, to showcase its independence from foreign oil.

My research studies how expansionist efforts play out in the U.S. unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico. For centuries, Spanish and U.S. colonial governments and corporations have practiced what could be called “energy dominance” by harnessing human labor and fossil fuels to exploit local resources through mining, coffee and sugarcane development, and other industries. Puerto Rico’s history makes clear that Trump’s policy, which benefits corporations and their...