Cutler J. Cleveland and Heather Clifford introduce Visualizing Energy, a new project of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability. Visualizing Energy is an open access, interdisciplinary science communication project that aims to increase actionable knowledge about a sustainable and just energy transition. The project knits data analysis, visualizations, and the written word into stories that reveal how our energy system can be transformed to reduce inequity, steer humanity from climate disaster, improve health and other social outcomes, and lead to healthy natural systems. Visualizing Energy is a public good; its motivations and methods are transparent, and its data products are freely available to all, making it an excellent tool for both research and teaching.
Andreas Roos' new book, Solar Technology and Global Environmental Justice: The Vision and the Reality, is both a sober critique of techno-optimistic visions of solar power and a call for “realistic envisioning.” In this Author's Note, Roos discusses the moment he realized that the current structure of solar energy has a darker side, as well as his hope that the book will inspire communities to explore better ways of harnessing solar energy to create new social metabolisms.
In the final Forum on Fossil Capital essay, Imre Szeman explores how the current solar transition complicates Malm's conclusions about the possibility for energy transition under capitalism, noting the emergence of a new ideology: "solar fetishism."
In the third Forum on Fossil Capital essay, Andrew M. Rose puts Fossil Capital into conversation with Timothy Mitchell's Carbon Democracy, emphasizing the need for green social movements to reconsider their approach in appealing to democratic states and institutions–entities which are not simply captured by fossil fuel interests but fundamentally and at their very origin an outgrowth of the carbon economy.
Andreas Malm's 2016 book, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, has significantly shaped debates about the relationship between energy, capitalism, and global warming. Eva Cherniavsky (University of Washington) introduces this EH Forum on Fossil Capital, in which four leading scholars assess the strengths and limits of Malm’s influential book, and ask: where do we locate the cultural and political prospects for creating a post-carbon economy?
Barbara Leckie beautifully explores the interruptions of time, academic research and writing, and climate behind her new book, Climate Change, Interrupted: Representation and the Remaking of Time.
The Petrocultures Research Group's After Oil Collective recently began its After Oil 3 (AOS 3) project. One result of the first AOS 3 meeting is a six-episode podcast series called Volatile Trajectories, which has just been released online and as part of the Environmental Humanities Month 2022 Program. The podcast episodes were written and recorded over a day and a half at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in October 2022. They feature leading and emerging energy humanities researchers in conversation about how we move beyond fossil fuels and climate crisis.
Achieving net-zero is a complex process beset by many challenges. Writing about the Canadian context, Temitope Onifade, a legal scholar and instructor in climate law and policy at the University of British Columbia, explains the need to develop and apply a "low carbon justice" approach to the actions that Canada takes to reduce its carbon emissions. If it doesn't prioritize justice, Onifade argues, Canada will once again fail its most vulnerable populations.
In this author's note on his new book, Who Owns the Wind?, anthropologist David Hughes offers a tantalizing glimpse of what energy justice could look like, and why it matters.
