We need more social science in the energy field
Here's this publication's plan to help make that happen
Happy New Year everyone, I hope you spent wholesome holidays with family and friends and are now charged and crackling to go full steam ahead with ever decreasing amounts of fossil fuels to power you along the way.
Towards the end of last year, this publication slowed down a little as my battery was running low, but I’m all geared up for weekly posts again. Not only that, I come bearing New Year’s Resolutions.
The Social Life of Energy in 2020
So far, I’ve been writing this newsletter on the side, and that’s one reason my battery was running low. That is why I have resolved to take the first half of this year to explore the possibility of turning this newsletter into my main activity. My goal: to make sure that insights from social scientists reach as far as possible.
Why this goal, you ask?
Please consider David Roberts’ sobering opening statements for the new decade:
The slogan meant to summarize the state of affairs [in which we could still reach our climate goals, if only everything goes right] has been around, with variations, for decades: “We have all the tools we need, all we lack is the political will.”
But political will is not some final item on the grocery list to be checked off once everything else is in the cart. It is everything. None of the rest of it, none of the available policies and technologies, mean anything without it. It can’t be avoided, short-circuited, or wished away.
Our climate challenge is not primarily a technological challenge, it is a social one. Sustainable energy transitions require us to become more aware of, and attuned to, the social, cultural and political dimensions of change.
We therefore need more of the wisdom accumulated in the works of scientists who have examined precisely those dimensions, and integrate it into our policy processes, technology development, activism and journalistic reporting.
At the same time, those working on the ground have accumulated important experience and insights themselves as well (which sometimes social scientists can only echo in wordier terms). ‘Integrating social science’ thus means we must bring it into conversation with the challenges policy and professional practitioners currently face.
That is the task I set for this newsletter this year: keep digging for golden nuggets of knowledge and searching for compelling perspectives in the literature, while regularly polling practitioners for challenges and lessons learned. Hopefully, the comparison will provide grounds for further discussion, on this platform and elsewhere.
This author doth protest the reductive use of microscopes and vials as emblems of science, but otherwise wholeheartedly supports this message! (Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash)
Practically speaking
What does this mean for the letters you’ll be getting? Primarily, you’ll see greater diversity in the kind of mailings:
I’ll split up content aimed at academics from content aimed at, well, everybody else. The latter will want key takeaways, the former will want some sense of where the literature is at, for any given theme. Combining these make the newsletters too long, so I’ll treat them separately.
I’ll spend more time enriching our understanding of policy ideas and technologies that are deemed most promising by the policy wonks (for example, Hal Harvey’s The Energy Policy Simulator, Paul Hawken’s Drawdown)
I’ll interview researchers and energy professionals about their perennial questions and ultimate answers.
I’ll try my hand at creating infographics that capture particularly important points. Visuals tend to travel more easily than words.
I’ll split up some of my literature reviews into two more digestible chunks. You’ll receive mail more regularly, but each letter will demand less of a commitment to carve out a space for in your busy days.
Of course, I’ll be asking you what you think of these changes and if you have any other bright ideas I might not have thought of. You can let me know now or await a small survey later on!
Plan de Campagne
However, and here comes the most crucial point, for this whole plan to succeed, I need to find the experts, professionals and academics interested in and in need of the conversation this publication hopes to promote. Thus far, I have not focused on growing the number of subscribers, but that is something I will dedicate more time to from now on.
However, I simply cannot do this without your help. Broadcast as I might, it cannot beat your word of mouth.
So, if you agree more social science is crucial for sustainable transitions and you see value in the approach I take here, please share this newsletter with people or institutions who might benefit from it. (If you’d like to share on Twitter, please note this publication comes with its very own Twitter account called @GreenNewSci.) Alternatively, if you know of a venue or network whose members might be interested in this effort, please let me know and I’ll contact them.
Thanks so much and till next week, when we’ll kick off this year properly with the first interview!
Best wishes,
Marten