Looking to History to Build Power

Hosted by Climate and Community Institute

The cost of living problem in the United States is an energy problem. Millions of Americans can’t pay their utility bills each month as for-profit utilities extract high profits while also polluting communities and making the climate crisis worse.

In this moment of a looming Trump presidency, what are the ideas, the strategies, the constituencies that we need to mobilize in order to lower people’s costs, regain control over the backbone of the economy, and ensure a livable climate? One answer: mobilize a base to fight for public power from the ground up.

In his debut book, Democracy in Power, Sandeep Vaheesan brings in the past to equip campaigns of the future. Vaheesan traces the rise of publicly governed utilities in the twentieth-century electrification of America, exploring its backers and headwinds. There is no doubt that controlling and democratizing the grid is a story of David vs Goliath– but it is a fight we have won in the past. And a potential to build

Join us for a discussion with journalist, Kate Aronoff, as she moderates a discussion between Vaheesan and two public power advocates, Advait Arun and Johanna Bozuwa, to discuss what is next post Trump election in the fight for climate and energy justice.

About the Panel:

Sandeep Vaheesan is the author of Democracy in Power and is the legal director at the Open Markets Institute. He leads Open Markets’ legal advocacy and research work, including its amicus program.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic. She is the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet—and How We Fight Back, and co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal.

Advait Arun is the Senior Associate for Energy Finance at the Center for Public Enterprise. He has experience evaluating strategies for mobilizing public and private finance toward the green transition.

Johanna Bozuwa is the Executive Director of the Climate and Community Institute. Her research explores the political economy of the energy transition.

Host or Publisher Climate and Community Project