I have been at Yale since mid-March (except for a month of teaching in August back in Stellenbosch). My aim was to write a book called Just Transitions in a Complex World: Reflections of an Enraged Incrementalist. I have just completed Chapter 8 – two more chapters to go! As always happens when it comes to writing, what emerges is not what was intended at the start. But I am far happier with what is emerging. Last week Routledge let me know they are very keen to publish it – this was because the draft chapters got rave reviews from three reviewers. This was such a boost. One of them wrote: “The breadth of scholarship, the depth of thought, experience and insight is impressive, extraordinary and awe-inspiring. It is also an example of the way the activist and academic modes of learning may work together, a challenge of which the relevance of social and environmental research depends. Integrative studies such as this book that are capable of opening up different kinds of research questions are essential for future developments.” Chapter 8, just completed, is an overview of the renewable energy revolution underway, counterposing the top-down corporate model with the bottom-up cooperative model that drove the renewable transitions in the so-called ‘frontrunner’ countries – Denmark and Germany. By 2000 80% of all wind energy in Denmark was owned by cooperatives and nearly 50% of ALL renewable energy in Germany was owned by cooperatives by 2012. Amazing how cooperatives have driven the innovations that the world now depends on to decarbonize!
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