https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331217736741 Space and Culture 2018, Vol. 21(1) 4–17 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1206331217736741 journals.sagepub.com/home/sac Article Bare Nature Rob Shields 1 Abstract This article considers the ethical implications of a stance toward or relation with the natural environment that could be characterized as dominant across many sectors of not only the economy but consumption patterns generally. Despite popular perception or denial of climate change over the past decades, this is an implicit relation toward the collateral risks and damages to ecosystems by human activity. Not only are livelihoods sustained on the basis of natural resources but the direct costs of hydrocarbon development are borne locally in the environment. For some, this is understood to be without a personal cost despite the fears expressed. The article quotes from interviews with residents. It stages a broader, continuing conversation about the ambivalence of being dependent on hydrocarbons. This article explores the difficulty of developing an ethical engagement with the nonhuman and natural ecosystems when they are relegated to the status of what will be referred to as “bare nature.” Rather than state of exception or standing reserve, nonhuman nature is only present as a form of absence and as nonentities and does not present an ethical challenge or claim. Keywords nature, ecocide, environmental ethics, Bestand, Athabasca Tar Sands Underneath the woods and the muskeg of northern Alberta lie roughly two trillion barrels of oil, fifteen percent of the world’s known reserves and six times more than what’s left in Saudi Arabia. The oil fields are also the homeland of aboriginal communities such as Fort Mackay and Fort Chipewyan, on the Athabasca River. The people of these communities are trying to preserve their traditional way of life in the midst of the largest and most destructive oil recovery operation the world has ever known. They are being blocked from hunting and trapping on their traditional lands. Their air and water is being polluted. The fish, berries and wildlife they depend on are contaminated. They suffer from some of the highest cancer rates in the world. —Cariou and McArthur (2009b) This article considers the ethical implications of a generalized stance toward bare nature. This underlines social relations to the natural environment that could be characterized as dominant across many sectors. It characterizes not only specific sectors of the economy but production and consumption patterns. Despite popular perception or denial of climate change over the past decades, bare nature is an implicit relation toward the collateral risks and damages to ecosystems by human activity. As in the quotation above, not only are livelihoods sustained on the basis of 1 University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Corresponding Author: Rob Shields, City Region Studies Centre,/Sociology, University of Alberta, 5-21 Tory Building, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H4, Canada. Email: rshields@ualberta.ca 736741SAC XX X 10.1177/1206331217736741Space and CultureShields research-article 2017