This seminar will be held on Zoom. If you are interested in attending and not part of SPRU, please email fd49@sussex.ac.uk.

Title: Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy

The climate crisis is a crisis of leadership. For too long too many leaders have prioritized corporate profits over the public good, exacerbating climate vulnerabilities while reinforcing economic and racial injustice. Transformation to a just, sustainable renewable-based society requires leaders who connect social justice to climate and energy.

During the Trump era, connections among white supremacy, environmental destruction, and fossil fuel dependence have become more conspicuous. Many of the same leadership deficiencies that shaped the inadequate response in the United States to the coronavirus pandemic have also thwarted the US response to the climate crisis. The inadequate and ineffective framing of climate change as a narrow, isolated, discrete problem to be “solved” by technical solutions is failing. The dominance of technocratic, white, male perspectives on climate and energy has inhibited investments in social change and social innovations. With new leadership and diverse voices, we can strengthen climate resilience, reduce racial and economic inequities, and promote social justice.

In Diversifying Power, energy expert Jennie Stephens argues that the key to effectively addressing the climate crisis is diversifying leadership so that antiracist, feminist priorities are central.  All politics is now climate politics, so all policies, from housing to health, now have to integrate climate resilience and renewable energy.

Biography

Jennie C. Stephens’ research, teaching, and community engagement focus on social-political aspects of renewable energy transformation, energy democracy, climate resilience, reducing fossil-fuel reliance, gender diversity in energy and climate, and social, economic and racial justice in climate and energy policy. Before coming to Northeastern, she taught at University of Vermont, Clark University, Tufts and MIT.