Prof. Stacey Balkan Publishes "Can Solarpunk Save the World?" in Public Books
Congratulations to Prof. Stacey Balkan on publication of her essay in Public Books. "Can Solarpunk Save the World?" is an exploration of a genre and a political movement that offers viable infrastructural alternatives (and hope) for a world after extraction.
Balkan's essay is a new format for Public Books鈥攁 long-form essay on issues of the day. An excerpt from :
Solar power is, of course, already being slotted into existing grids and investment portfolios across the world. This shift is occurring because of increasing awareness of the fact that 鈥渢he sunlight striking the earth鈥檚 surface in just one hour delivers enough energy to power the world economy for one year,鈥 alongside the belated acknowledgement of the catastrophic consequences of atmospheric carbon.5 (Although, because of the intermittent nature of solar power, it has yet to gain traction as a marketable alternative to fossil fuels.) But what organizations like Queremos Sol are calling for is something different: a society founded not on scarcity and hierarchy, but, instead, on abundance and equality. They don鈥檛 just want the sun; they want what energy-justice workers would describe as an 鈥渆nergy commons.鈥 They want not only solar power, but a solar politics oriented toward solidarity.
Read Balkan's essay
; read more about Balkan's projects on her faculty page and at her .
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by Felix Mittermeier; licensed under