Wildfires, hurricanes, famines, and the pandemic – we live on a planet already in deep ecological crisis, with worse to come if today’s climate inaction, soaring inequality, and state violence continue. To shift things and win a just transition, we need ambitious planning and abundant struggle.
Proposals from around the world for a Green New Deal have highlighted the need to win popular control of the infrastructures of energy production and distribution. Fossil capitalism must be shut down since further production of coal, oil, and gas will doom the planet to climate chaos. Meanwhile, construction of renewable energy must be massively accelerated.
What are the obstacles to an energy transition that lifts up frontline communities, workers, Indigenous peoples, people in postcolonial nations, and others? How can we ensure that the transition is genuinely democratic and participatory? What combination of centralized and decentralized initiatives is appropriate given the need for an accelerated transition and the concern that the authoritarian structures of fossil capitalism not be reproduced in a new form of green capitalism/colonialism?
This panel features activists and thinkers Julian Brave NoiseCat, Summer Sandoval, Ashley Dawson, Trevor Ngwane, and David Hughes whose work is helping to move the fight for energy democracy forward.