Energy Ethics and Urban Futures in the Anthropocene

Description

In the challenge to create sustainable futures, cities will play an increasingly central role.  Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas and, according to the United Nations, this number expected to reach 68% by 2050. In Canada, over 80% of the population already lives in urban centres. As Canada and the world attempt to meet the demands of the Anthropocene and its attendant ecological crises, debates about energy systems and sustainable futures remain extremely timely. Energy projects promote particular viewpoints about the present, but also entail visions of how the world should be and how to enact desirable futures. In short, debates about energy raise fundamental ethical questions. In a time of energy crisis globally, this workshop will examine how ethical evaluations about energy and visions of the future are brought together to meet the challenges and possibilities of global environmental change. In a time of political polarization, this workshop will ask how cities can—or cannot—become shared ethical projects for a sustainable future. This workshop will take up these questions and more in order to examine how energy projects raise fundamental ethical questions about values, social organization, political imagination and the future.

Speakers

Adam Fleischmann is an anthropologist, writer, and teacher with a PhD in anthropology from McGill University. His research and teaching practices bridge anthropological and related approaches to the study of global climate change, science and technology, social movements, the environment, institutions, energy, expertise, knowledge, and ethics. He is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Sustainability at the University of Ottawa.

Mette High is Professor in Social Anthropology and the founding Director of the Centre for Energy Ethics at the University of St Andrews. High also leads the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods, which is a Scotland-wide consortium funded by the Scottish Funding Council. High recently completed her European Research Council-funded project: "The Ethics of Oil: Finance Moralities and Environmental Politics in the Global Oil Economy (ENERGY ETHICS)".