Welcome to Energy Humanities

12 Min Read

October 6, 2020

Welcome to the Energy Humanities Project, a hub for new ideas and insights about climate, energy, and culture. This site is a collective effort from the Transitions in Energy, Culture, and Society (TECS) project in Canada. It features biweekly commentary on current events from leading thinkers in the energy humanities and related fields. We also plan to feature video interviews with influential and emerging voices on energy and society, as well as relevant news and original essays.

Our hope for this site is to help readers see new connections between climate, energy, and culture.

Despite our scientific knowledge and technological sophistication, the world is nowhere near where it needs to be to achieve an energy transition. A big part of the problem is our inclination to trust in technocentric solutions. Too many of us tend to hope that life can go on as it has for the last half century, but with batteries instead of combustion engines. We look forward to hydrogen planes and AI powered by the sun to fuel mass consumption on a global scale.

These tendencies speak to the cultural and political nature of our problem.

Despite our scientific knowledge and technological sophistication, the world is nowhere near where it needs to be to achieve an energy transition.

The fact of the matter is, we will not achieve a just energy transition without a simultaneous social transition. The challenge before us is immense because our cultural assumptions and sensibilities are deeply shaped by the fossil fuels we depend on in our daily lives. So how do we understand the relationship between culture and energy in ways that help us move forward?

The Humanities –literature, philosophy, history, and more – are generating new and exciting insights into the social nature of our environmental crises. They are helping us to see ourselves anew, and to untangle ourselves from fossil fuels. As a gathering place for these ideas that applies them to what’s going on in the world right now, The Energy Humanities Project aims to use our humanistic tools and insights to foster a new world.

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March 14, 2022

Katja Bruisch and Benjamin Beuerle

Russia and the European Union are substantially linked by trade in energy resources. Katja Bruisch and Benjamin Beuerle argue that these links have put European leaders, who are ostensibly committed to decarbonization, in the difficult position of backtracking on their goals to minimize energy insecurity and economic chaos--a position they could have mitigated or even avoided by more decisive action on fossil fuels. Russia’s brutal, largely oil- and gas-financed invasion of Ukraine brings home in the darkest of ways the dangers of basing international relations, institutions, economies, and lifestyles on fossil fuels.

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May 12, 2021

Enock Mac’Ouma

Rural communities are often hit hard by climate change but face significant barriers in mitigating its effects. Enock Mac'Ouma describes a project of the UNESCO Chair on Community Radio for Agricultural Education at Rongo University, Kenya, which uses community radio to accelerate rural education and technology transfer in a particularly vulnerable region.

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