Schatz CenterEnergy transitions in a time of intersecting precarities: from reductive environmentalism to antiracist praxis
This talk will offer a pragmatic praxis for aligning community solar campaigns with antiracist principles — linkages that can help communities of color rebuild after Covid-19. This praxis shifts the focus of such campaigns from the “means of reduction” to the means of production. Here, the means of reduction refers to the practices that render commodities as capable of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and electricity bills. In shifting the focus of community solar campaigns from reduction to production, the proposed praxis can ensure that community solar efforts address the white supremacist hierarchies that inhere in solar supply chains. The praxis’ “theoretical” component repurposes the concept of “co-pollutants” to illuminate environmental injustices in the production of solar commodities. Its “practice” component addresses solar’s co-pollutants by transitioning community solar campaigns away from consumer power and toward people power.
Myles Lennon is an environmental anthropologist, Dean’s Assistant Professor of Environment & Society and Anthropology at Brown University, and a former sustainable energy policy practitioner. His research explores how rooftop solar, resiliency microgrids, and other climate mitigation infrastructures simultaneously reinforce and upend entrenched structures of power as they materialize across long-standing race and class divisions in New York City. He holds a BA in Development Studies from Brown University and a PhD in environmental anthropology from Yale University.
How to attend
We’re holding this year’s Sustainable Futures Speaker Series online via webinar. Each lecture will be streamed via Zoom, and will be followed by a Q&A discussion period. All events are free and open to the public.
About the series
The Sustainable Futures Speaker Series stimulates interdisciplinary collaboration around issues related to energy, the environment, and society. All lectures are free and open to the public, and are sponsored by the Schatz Energy Research Center, the Environment & Community graduate program, and the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences at Humboldt State University.
Questions? Email info@schatzcenter.org.
