Analyze

What I find really noteworthy in this text is how Julia Watts Belser takes the poem by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and includes it into a scientific text. In this way, she not only allows an affected person to have her say, the poem also leaves the reader with a very striking image of the connection between the river and the body, in multiple ways, as well as the connection between enviromental harm and disability.

The text was published in 2020 (Vol. 40, No. 4) by The Ohio State University Libraries in their Journal Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ). It is, as you can read on their Homepage "a multidisciplinary and international journal of interest to social scientists, scholars in the humanities and arts, disability rights advocates, and others concerned with the issues of people with disabilities. It represents the full range of methods, epistemologies, perspectives, and content that the field of disability studies embraces. DSQ is committed to developing theoretical and practical knowledge about disability and to promoting the full and equal participation of persons with disabilities in society."

The author connects disability theories and activism with environmental justice, this approach allows her to show how disability is related to and through environmental harm, she shows how diagnoses are used politically in these cases, and looks critically at how these processes determine how, when and in what favor human and environmental harm is taken into account. The writing is shaped by the consequences of the Anthropocene like environmental harm linked to health isusses, especially affected are communities of color and poor communities in the United States, here pre-existing patters of structural inequality, already known from climate change come into play,  this communities are the most affected and the least responsible.

The text left me with a question that I actually often find frustrating in the process of research. On page 6, the authors take up the criticism of a Fukushima resident who says: “[W]hat you call research does not give benefits to local people” (Miyamoto and Ankei, 2008, cited in Ankei, 2013, p.24). The authors here suggest adopting or borrowing terms from the field that are used by citizens to create a more “socially robust science” (Bonhoure et al. 2019, Nowotny, 2003). From the authors' point of view, this can be achieved above all by paying closer and careful attention to the language of citizen organizations and the contexts these groups work in. After further elaboration, the authors call for citizen science terms and concepts developed by, for and with citizens to better reflect the values, priorities, and stakes of its main agents and of all concerned parties. But I am not sure that this approach alone would be sufficient to adequately address such expressed criticism. Perhaps one should ask about the expectations of people one is researching with/about in order to enter into a conversation and to be able to understand this criticism. Perhaps the authors will address this point again in further publications. I think to ask oneself how to deal with this criticism methodically and ethically could also be very fruitful for empirical research in general.

As the title of the work hints to, the text builds on discussions surrounding energy policy and energy investments. Throughout the work, Boyer (2019) discusses dimensions of energy transitions that range from job creation, forms of development (industry and otherwise). Most significant to take into consideration is the fact Boyer (2019) acknowledges energy development often occurs without at par social, political, and economic transitions. Boyer (2019) advances discussions of energy politics and transitions by highlighting the inherent problems energy transitions bring into communities where wind farm and green projects are envisioned. Here, we should note the impacts energy transitions may have on the most vulnerable populations, which have been and continue to be documented. In fact, it is documented that LMI communities tend to be least likely to sport energy-efficient, carbon neutral energy systems and appliances (Cluett et al., 2016; Elnakat, 2016; Kaza et al., 2014).

This text is particularly exemplary in documenting local community antagonism to energy transitions as it recognizes small-scale intrusions green energy may introduce. This varies from loss of agricultural planes to loss of fishing potential, as noises created by aeolian energy production can disrupt wildlife and their habitats. It is important to consider details like these in what can be considered microcosms of life. However, the text does not widely address how to move past these intrustions. Questions that still linger are: How can the introduction of green (aeolian and other) energy avoid damaging such microcosms? How can energy prices be made accessible to everyone thanks to the introduction of green energy instead of being used as an excuse to increase energy prices? What understandings are green energy investors missing to carry forward beneficial green energy projects? And, a question that the author asks from the beginning: How can the introduction of green energy benefit those communities in which projects are carried out?

This text historically traces the exploitative nature of energy supplies and charges (costs). Impactful statistics to consider in Oaxaca are that energy users pay for usage of one-hundred water plants when only twenty are operational but even more drastic is the fact energy companies overcharge residential customers to undercharge commercial customers (Boyer, 2019:100, 133). Here, we can think of COVID-19 parallels where nationwide job loss has burdened families' abilities to cope with utility bill payments. Companies have been pushing for cost/usage increases in residential sectors due to burdens experienced whilst contemporarily reducing cost/usage in commercial sectors. However, if burden experienced by residential customers is ignored, many will likely ask for subsidy payments, as CFE's customer base (98% of customers receive 70% off on their energy costs) (Boyer, 2019:152). The pre-COVID-19 burdens in Oaxaca have likely worsened since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which should inform or at least direct wider discussions of energy rights as situated both within and outside a pandemic. More than informing understandings of COVID-19-situated conditions, this text provides us with the grounds to investigate pre-pandemic burdens and to discuss vulnerabilities to energy losses or scarcity, but also of the needs and willngness to promote efficiency, net-zero emissions, or even carbon neutral energy.

Like many other systems, energy systems are grounded in gender, race, and social hierarchies. Similarly, we can think of energy infrastructures today as continuing racist, gendered, and classist systems, particularly when we think of the energy vulnerbale populations that are particularly affected by the pandemic. Just as Dr. Daggett suggests, we need new energy systems to move away from energy wastes, energy inequality but also energy systems to account for compouded vulnerabilities as faced by the most at risk populations.

As we think of the COVID-19 and energy shifts due to closure for social distancing aims, we can think of Dr. Daggett's argument of energy systems modeled for energy intensive and productive labor. In a sense, despite COVID-19 shifting energy consumption to the residential area, we can argue COVID-19 has also led to an overall reduction in energy use for industrial sectors. However, these reduced expenditures are not as significant as energy analysts had anticipated and, instead, call to Dr. Daggett's discussions of energy governing labor and hierarchies, as developed in a 19th century world. We can think of ways in which our systems (socioeconomic and political) have become wholly dependent on energy production and, thus, even our leisure activities will inevitably lead to the consumption of energy. Our COVID-19 energy paradigms demonstrate energy is so engrained into our regimes, even social distancing measures cannot wholly reduce overall energy expendatures, despite best efforts. In a way, we should try to understand energy paradigms in Dr. Daggett's eyes as specifically situated in the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the text discusses the birth and transitions of energy paradigms, providing timelines of how we have understood energy throughout the centuries, we are left with little in the way of how to move away from existing energy regimes (Daggett, 2019). That said, the text discusses work as a social convention rooted in energy definitions (Daggett, 2019:197). In other words, Dr. Daggett conceptualizes work relations in terms of energy, with productivity and efficiency concepts emerging from energy definitions, providing examples of how we, as a society, have moved from labor intensive work to abstract (still intensive) work to maximize capital. All of the foregoing discussions rely on concepts of energy, drawing connections between the nature of work and the expenditure of energy to discuss how energy-intensive economies have been created. However, while Dr. Daggett brings to light issues with the current energy networks we are frustatingly left with little ideas on how to tackle energy intensive environments. Frustatingly, with little suggestions on how to address energy-intensive labor markets the book simply provides us with a historical and more analytical discussion of how our labor systems have come to be.

As outlined in this brief article by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, energy consumption by New York City alone has dropped significantly more than the surrounding areas. On a prima-facie observation, one could say the foregoing alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures. However, deeper analyses should consider the repercussions that demanding less energy may have on production, supply, and distribution, as well as transitions between larger and smaller electric microgrids. Given energy infrastructures in the United States are already vulnerable, can it be really said the pandemic alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures when everybody is connected to the internet and is generally using more technology at home?