Renewable Energy is Not Sustainable Without Justice Says GU-Q Professor
“How energy is governed in a country is the key to understanding its political system and agenda” explained historian Trish Kahle, at a Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) book launch for her first book Energy Citizenship: Coal and Democracy in the American Century, recently published by Columbia University Press. “Energy is not just a resource, but a relationship between people. As the foundation of political economy, energy and its governance has a profound impact on society.”
An Assistant Professor at GU-Q, Dr. Kahle’s book delves into the human side of energy, offering a new perspective on the history of coal miners in America and the imprints they have left on the country’s laws and political imagination. Yet her research is not confined to American history alone, it also addresses broader global trends affecting governance and injustice worldwide.
Scouring through thousands of pages of coal miner archives, affidavits, and oral histories to write the book, Dr. Kahle found surprising connections with US foreign affairs. “I found evidence that coal towns, which people saw as being at the core of the US’s territory, existed as quasi-imperial spaces, and the military brought in to suppress miner organizing had gained their experience in places like the Philippines, Hawai’i, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. They drew on these experiences to put down resistance in the coalfields.” The actions of miners helped to shift the conversation about the human cost of energy production to the center of energy policymaking for the first time, earning them rights and concessions.
The connection between American energy and labor governance to global systems of inequality means that the book’s insightful treatment of the role of coal miners in shaping foundational energy justice principles offers a new understanding of energy citizenship critical to today’s discussions about a sustainable energy transition.
Examining the struggles of coal miners and the rights they fought to secure, from the Progressive Era in the 1880s through President Reagan’s election in 1980, Kahle emphasizes the core contradictions between the mines as an engine of democratic politics, and a source of violence, oppression, and environmental destruction. The result is a strong case to rethink energy production in terms of its human costs and benefits, rather than solely thinking of the environmental costs and benefits. Whether the energy raw materials are used at home or abroad, considerations for energy laborers need to be at the heart of energy policy.
“The message from this particular history has lots of resonance with today’s push to decarbonize energy systems,” advised Dr. Kahle, who while writing the book has also concurrently read accounts of industries driving the renewables industry such as cobalt mines in the Congo, and lithium mines in Latin America. “I’m seeing this same story playing out again, but there is still time to make a difference,” she emphasized, adding, “we have to realize that renewables are not inherently more just simply because they are not fossil fuels. Decarbonization is not energy justice if you are perpetuating the same forms of extractivism and global inequality.”
Dr. Kahle further discussed themes of labor justice, sustainable futures, and the process of decolonizing energy humanities in the Gulf region at the book launch event hosted by the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS). Director of CIRS, Zahra Babar, moderated the event in conversation with the co-leaders of the CIRS Energy Humanities Research Initiative, Dr. Kahle, Dr. Firat Oruc, and Dr. Victoria Googasian.
Dr. Kahle’s Three Key Takeaways for a Just Energy Future
- Energy policy is really about people. Energy is not just a material to be governed, it is also a political relationship with the people who extract it.
- Labor injustice and environmental destruction associated with extractive mining has a long life, and can undercut a government’s aspirational claims to democracy, and people’s ability to participate in it, even if they receive financial benefits.
- A shift to renewables isn’t enough to achieve energy justice on a global scale. You have to build a better energy system in order to achieve environmental justice.
About the Author:
Dr. Trish Kahle is a historian of energy, labor, and politics. An assistant professor, she co-leads GU-Q’s Program in Energy Humanities, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to energy and society. She is also a co-investigator on a two-year Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant, “Powering Reliable Connections: From Historical Insights to Collaborative Research in Electric Power Systems.”