Energy transitions in a systemically unequal world
Sustainable energy needs to come out of its niche
Hello folks,
I have been away longer than I had anticipated. I got entangled in some deadlines.
I was preparing a post about the rise of energy sharing platforms, but I want to talk instead about the fact that the energy field as a whole has too little to say about the inequalities that are related to race, religion, and socioeconomic class.
Of course, this note follows on the protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the United States. Many voices since then have spoken about the uneasy (or even deeply problematic) relationship of the environmental movement with issues of race. I think their comments are instructive for energy also – perhaps especially. I’d like to take up their words here in order to make this one point: taking this moment seriously for self-examination and re-evaluation will strengthen the push for clean and sustainable energy.
Bill McKibben reiterated how environmental degradation and the threat of police brutality are related. They both make people sick, literally. So,
having a racist and violent police force in your neighborhood is a lot like having a coal-fired power plant in your neighborhood. And having both? And maybe some smoke pouring in from a nearby wildfire? African-Americans are three times as likely to die from asthma as the rest of the population. “I Can’t Breathe” is the daily condition of too many people in this country. One way or another, there are a lot of knees on a lot of necks.
But such connections have traditionally not been recognized in the environmental movement. Writes Emily Atkin:
The environmental movement’s unwillingness to strongly advocate for racial justice is also likely a big reason why Black people are severely underrepresented in mainstream environmental groups; are less likely to identify as “environmentalists;” and less likely to participate in outdoor recreation, despite consistently reporting higher concern for the environment and the climate than white people.
Sarah Lazarovic talks about her own gradual realization of this fact.
Racism is, of course, inherent to the environmental movement because it’s inherent to everything. And the idea that we can fix one problem without fixing the other is single-minded at best and wilfully obstructionist at worst. My fixity on parts per million has often precluded me from thinking about the whole ecosystem.
She links to a post by 350 Canada which explains the 6 Principles of a Just Recovery, which declare that solidarity with and health of all are essential to the work of fighting climate change.
That’s what I want to take as the starting point for today’s letter: the environmental movement should reckon with racial inequality in order to be powerful and successful. (Read Atkin’s newsletter for a deconstruction of the counter-argument.)
(If you read it and miss something, let me know!)
We’ve talked about this intersection of inequality and sustainable energy before here, for instance when introducing and responding to the Green New Deal’s core propositions, or in my interview with Mariëlle Feenstra (entitled ‘How to make the energy transition work for everyone to make it work period’).
Let’s dwell on what it could mean to address that intersection.
Recently, one of the Dutch national government’s research agencies came out with the warning (in Dutch) that sustainable energy policies tended to favour the (mostly rich) ‘frontrunners’. It suggested that this is a bad use of resources. The well-to-do will likely make their investments regardless, while the poor risk missing out or even to come out worse.
The ease with which utilities and policy-makers and these (usually male) frontrunners find each other is sociologically understandable, but rests on a fundamental misrecognition. Frontline communities, often communities of colour or religious minorities, actually are, can be, or should be frontrunners.
Simply put, that very same intersection of inequality and environment means that there’s more for them at stake:
Local people, organised by the Bhoomi Sena in Maharashtra against the proposed bullet train, or others fighting to protect wetlands in coastal Andhra Pradesh, may be motivated not by climate change, but by wanting to preserve control over their lands, other resources, and livelihoods. (South Asian People’s Action on Climate Crisis)
McKibben explains that as a result “some of the most dynamic leadership [in the environmental justice movement] now comes from Latinx and African-American communities, and from indigenous groups”.
Environmental justice x Earth Day, East Oakland, 2010 (via Flickr.)
Implications
What’s an energy professional or policy-maker to do? It will vary. Wherever there are strong justice and civil rights movements (as in the US or with indigenous peoples in the Americas or South (East) Asia), you should link up and ally with them. They know what they are talking about.
In places like (continental) Europe, justice movements aren’t as strongly developed (and energy especially has remained a technocratic field), so there is less institutional insight and agency to draw upon.
You’ll have to start by talking. Earlier, Feenstra advocated cross-sectoral conversations:
If social inequality and the energy transition are indeed related in complex ways, then various departments need to talk to each other. Social Affairs, Urban Planning and Housing, they need to be in conversation with those working on the energy transition and who often have additional resources at their disposal. Breaking down the barriers between these departments also creates joint responsibility and joint ownership of the issue, which will hopefully allow us to develop inclusive energy policy.
But you can reach out to communities directly as well. Not too long ago I talked to one of the directors for the communication program of Amsterdam’s initiative to rid itself of natural gas. In order to raise awareness and solicit feedback it contracted neighbourhood organizations and community centres, relying on the latter’s network and physical presence. It’s but a start and there will be a learning curve in what each can expect from the other. But it’s a good start.
The learning curve means opening up the decision-making process as much as possible, to open up a street of two-way communication. As a result, it may also mean that, in order to be effective, ‘energy’ ceases to be the alpha and omega of your work. You have to figure out where people are at, what they’re struggling with and devise solutions accordingly. Energy will be a mere part of that package.
This is not easy. It requires breaking professional moulds.
It’s worth it though. I want to end with an analogy to a different service that suffered due to a lack of inclusive strategies.
Nuria Rossell (full disclosure: Nuria is sitting in the living room) worked in the national childhood cancer program of El Salvador. At the beginning the program’s biggest challenge was that some families stopped bringing their child to treatment, with often lethal consequences. So they started focussing their efforts on preventing this ‘abandonment of treatment’ by devoting special attention to families at risk. But they soon realized it was impossible to tell which family was ‘at risk’.
The only way they could reliably prevent parents from disappearing was to give every single family ‘special’ care. That meant setting up a protocol that forced the staff to keep closer track of all appointments and directly follow-up every time there was something amiss. As a result, they could detect obstacles early on and subsequently address them. In addition, people felt seen, which is significant and powerful in itself, in a society with stark poverty and thus great social distance from medical institutions. The whole program was the better for it.
The moral of this PhD thesis: if you want to improve things for everyone, you make sure it improves for the most marginalized.
To put this in the context of energy, instead of always circling back to the ‘frontrunners’, you work systematically to remove the obstacles that make people from vulnerable communities hesitant or simply unable to participate in sustainable energy transitions. You work on increasing appropriate funding, reducing bureaucratic hurdles, and enhancing ownership. You make sure you speak a language that resonates. In the process, clean energy will become more accessible to everyone.
Or if you’d like me to rephrase this in the lingo of the day: you develop a minimum viable collaboration with a community and then you iterate the hell out of it. You learn, you reflect, you improve.
The converse is also true: you cannot rely on trickle-down clean energy. I’ll end therefore with Lazarovic’s realization.
If I am not working to fight climate change, I am supporting climate change.
If I am not actively anti-racist, I am racist.The thing about systems-level problems is that the system chooses a default side for you. When the system is destructive and you live in the system, you are destroying. It’s not your fault that you were born into a system; it is your fault if you recognize this and do nothing.