Cultural cumulative effects: Communicating energy extraction's true costs

Residents of northeastern British Columbia's Peace River region concurrently confront intensifying oil/gas drilling, reinvigorated coal mining and the construction of a third massive hydroelectric dam. After years of approaching industrial impacts as temporally and spatially isolatable, calls to acknowledge cumulative ecological effects are finally being heard. Yet the sociocultural disruptions that accompany biophysical alterations are equally essential components of a comprehensive cumulative effects agenda. This article considers how frameworks for comprehending the consequences of landscape‐altering, life‐changing projects could be expanded to address both the complex realities of ecological degradation and the entangled cultural and political transformations that contour local communities and lives. Ultimately, the resource extraction experiences at the forefront of regional residents’ minds must be recognized as key determinants of forthcoming socio‐natural worlds, as they arise and aggregate out of countless culturally constituted and politically mediated decisions to embrace, accept or oppose extractive schemes.