Hier ein ausgezeichneter Vortrag von Herrmann Scheer, der am 12. Mai im Journal Panorama auf Ö1 gesendet wurde. Scheer, dem für seinen Einsatz für die Solarenergie der Alternative Nobelpreis 1999 verliehen wurde, plädiert darin für eine radikale Wende in der Art unserer Energieversorgung, weg von den fossilen Brennstoffen hin zu erneuerbaren, dezentral organisierten Energieformen und unterstreicht die sozialen und politischen Auswirkungen eines solchen Wandels.
(der Player funktioniert nicht im MS Internet Explorer - hier gibts ein mp3)
Dazu passt auch das aktuelle Forschungsprojekt von Timothy Mitchell (Columbia University) das den Titel "Carbon Democracy" trägt. Mitchell untersucht unter Berücksichtigung sowohl der Science and Technology Studies als auch der Postcolonial Theory, die Geschichte der fossilen Brennstoffe und stellt eine Verbindung zu den Möglichkeiten demokratischer Entwicklung im Zuge der Konstruktion moderner Energienetzwerke her. Aus dem Abstract zu einer vorläufigen Fassung:
"States that depend upon oil revenues appear to be less democratic than other states. Yet oil presents a much larger problem for democracy: faced with the threats of oil depletion and catastrophic climate change, the democratic machineries that emerged to govern the age of carbon energy seem to be unable to address the processes that may end it. This paper explores these multiple dimensions of carbon democracy, by examining the intersecting histories of coal, oil, and democracy in the twentieth century. Following closely the methods by which fossil fuels were produced, distributed, and converted into other forms of socio-technical organization, financial circulation, and political power, the paper traces ways in which the concentration and control of energy flows could open up democratic possibilities or close them down; how in the postwar period connections were engineered between the flow of oil and the flows of international finance, on which democratic stability was thought to depend; how these same circulations made possible the emergence of the economy and its unlimited growth as the main object of democratic politics; and how the relations among forms of energy, finance, economic knowledge, democracy, and violence were transformed in the 1967-74 oil-dollar-Middle East crises."
China launches green power revolution to catch up on west
ReplyDeleteThe Guardian, Wednesday 10 June 2009
China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday. [...]