CEGU

Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization
Division of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago

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poster for Environmental Emergencies, Emergent Environments; inaugural CEGU conference (2023)

Energy—Capital—Metabolism

Organized by the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization and the Shapiro Initiative on Environment and Society, Department of History, The University of Chicago
April 24–25, 2025 | Social Science Research Building & 1155 E. 60th St.

poster for Environmental Emergencies, Emergent Environments; inaugural CEGU conference (2023)

Energy—Capital—Metabolism

Organized by the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization and the Shapiro Initiative on Environment and Society, Department of History, The University of Chicago

Social Science Research Building & 1155 E. 60th St.
April 24–25, 2025

← Conference Overview

The Politics of Measurement

Moderated by Elizabeth Chatterjee, Department of History and CEGU, The University of Chicago

Friday, April 25, 2025, 3:00–4:00pm
John Hope Franklin Room, Social Science Research Building
(2nd Floor, 1126 E. 59th St.)

From Reduction to Regeneration: Beyond Carbon Fundamentalism in Climate Policy

Myles Lennon, Institute for Environment and Society and Department of Anthropology, Brown University

Myles Lennon is an environmental anthropologist, Dean’s Assistant Professor of Environment & Society and Anthropology at Brown University, and a former sustainable energy policy practitioner. His forthcoming book, Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism (Duke U Press), explores the intersectional dimensions of solar infrastructure in New York City, illuminating the sensorial and emotional power of renewable energy in a gentrifying skyline built on racial capitalism and threatened by climate collapse. He is currently conducting long-term research on young, Black land stewards’ complex efforts to navigate settler colonialism and redress white supremacy through forestry, farming, and other land-based labor in the United States. Recent publications include “Improperty: Black Land Stewardship and the Paradox of Liberation on Stolen Land,” in American Ethnologist; “The Problem with ‘Solutions’: Apolitical Optimism in the Sustainable Energy Industry” in Current Anthropology; and “From Reduction to Regeneration: Environmental Justice and Ecological Unity in the IRA Era,” in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.

While our ever-expanding carbon emissions are an unequivocal cause of the climate crisis, in this talk I question the conventional wisdom that carbon emissions reductions represent a straightforward solution to the problem. Specifically, I  suggest that the enumerated reduction of carbon emerges from a reductive environmentalism that reduces the interdependencies of life to an “environment” that certain humans can manage. As a corrective to this reductive approach, I call for climate mitigation projects that pair carbon reduction with two frameworks championed by the environmental justice movement: ecological unity and co-pollutants. These frameworks can ensure that carbon reduction projects better address the causes and complications of the climate crisis.

Myles Lennon is an environmental anthropologist, Dean’s Assistant Professor of Environment & Society and Anthropology at Brown University, and a former sustainable energy policy practitioner. His forthcoming book, Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism (Duke U Press), explores the intersectional dimensions of solar infrastructure in New York City, illuminating the sensorial and emotional power of renewable energy in a gentrifying skyline built on racial capitalism and threatened by climate collapse. He is currently conducting long-term research on young, Black land stewards’ complex efforts to navigate settler colonialism and redress white supremacy through forestry, farming, and other land-based labor in the United States. Recent publications include “Improperty: Black Land Stewardship and the Paradox of Liberation on Stolen Land,” in American Ethnologist; “The Problem with ‘Solutions’: Apolitical Optimism in the Sustainable Energy Industry” in Current Anthropology; and “From Reduction to Regeneration: Environmental Justice and Ecological Unity in the IRA Era,” in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.

Governing Energy: The Great Acceleration and the Rise of Energy ‘Balancing’

Daniela Ruß, Global and European Studies Institute, University of Leipzig, Germany

Daniela Ruß is a historical sociologist and assistant professor at the University of Leipzig’s Global and European Studies Institute. Her research explores the history of the energy economy from a global perspective, the social conflicts around the decarbonization of the electricity system, and the theory and practice of Soviet energy and ecological planning. She is co-editor with Thomas Turnbull of Energy’s History: Toward a Global Canon (SUP, 2025). Her book Working Nature: A History of the Energy Economy will by published by Verso Books in 2026. 

Energy balances are an accounting framework that is used in engineering, ecology, and economic statistics, to map the relations and conversions of different forms of energy within an (economic, biological, productive) unit. Focusing on economic statistics, the paper argues that this more holistic approach to energy developed in both capitalist and socialist countries after WWII, where it oriented planning for economic growth. In my view, the paper speaks to the call in linking the genealogy of a ‚holistic‘ governance of energy to the first question of capitalist development and geopolitical competition. By looking at how a (somewhat) holistic perspective on energy has developed within capitalism, we might also learn something about an understanding of energy that could go beyond it.

Daniela Ruß is a historical sociologist and assistant professor at the University of Leipzig’s Global and European Studies Institute. Her research explores the history of the energy economy from a global perspective, the social conflicts around the decarbonization of the electricity system, and the theory and practice of Soviet energy and ecological planning. She is co-editor with Thomas Turnbull of Energy’s History: Toward a Global Canon (SUP, 2025). Her book Working Nature: A History of the Energy Economy will by published by Verso Books in 2026.