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Contribution short abstract

Using ethnographies of energy justice in Central Asia and Canada, I argue for consciously crafting the possible. Instead of chosing either outright resistance to fossil fascism, or reform within established energy systems, I argue for maximizing the craft of what is possible.

Contribution long abstract

This contribution draws on ethnographies of energy justice in Central Asia and Canada, to argue for a conscious strategy of crafting the possible. Rather than following the lines of an often fraught division between advocates of either pushing for outright resistance to fossil fascism, or reform within established energy systems, I argue for maximizing the craft of assessing what is possible. I use two examples to illustrate this necessary breadth in different socio-political contexts.

First, the water allocation of major rivers in Central Asia is a central source of conflict between upriver and downriver republics, opposing key interests in hydropower and irrigation. Working on energy provision and big dam building in the region, I discuss public art interventions, as well as academia itself, as formats that can safely depoliticize enough, for citizens to engage with energy justice in authoritarian contexts.

The second case uses the collaborative ethnographic study of environmental justice questions around tidal energy innovations in Canada. I here discuss a much more directly political tool box, e.g. design coast-to-coast learning platforms on experimental blue energy technologies, that can bypass, but also interact with policy-makers and other ‚experts‘.

One major question to explore in each case is: who are potential allies in seeking energy and climate justice? What -often uneasy- alliances can we join, or help to forge? As a broader question: how do we avoid preaching to the converted on the one hand, and maintain our commitment to ‚safe enough‘ action with research partners, on the other?