The environmental crisis calls for the rapid decarbonisation of societies. The scale of this task is enormous: we must switch our energy systems to 100 percent renewable sources within the next decade. Yet as studies in the burgeoning field of the energy humanities recognise, we should not think of energy transition solely as a technical or scientific challenge. Large-scale energy transition demands that we fundamentally rethink the way our politics and societies are organised, our relationship to work and free time, and the cultural practices through which we make sense of the past and invent the future. Our roundtable discussion will examine how the humanities and social sciences can contribute to our understanding of different energy sources, the history of resource extraction and colonial exploitation, and the prospects for a democratic and equitable global transformation of the energy system.
