Jeremy Schmidt, a 2009 Scholar of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, has published Landlocked: Water, Energy, and Planetary Politics in Alberta with the University of Chicago Press. 

The environment as a foundation of political authority 

In the book, Schmidt examines how geoscience, governance, and power became intertwined in the development of Alberta and its energy industry. By focusing in particular on water and oil, he shows how the environment has helped shape and sustain political authority in the province. 

Landlocked traces the role of water and oil in early state-building projects, including irrigation, and examines how geoscience supported processes ranging from land settlement to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. 

The book argues that environmental policies and management practices are not merely instruments of state power, but are central to Alberta’s political identity and legitimacy.