Struggles Over Transition: Emancipating Energy? (excerpt) | Kolya Abramsky We live in a world in which close to half of the world's population still use basic biomass fuels (unprocessed wood and animal dung) to cook and heat their houses, where women and children often walk for hours to gather these fuels. Even the dream of subsidized air travel and SUVs is beyond the reach of most people. In this context, all too often it is simply the wrong questions that are asked about energy and the current (and future) "energy crisis". The question as to how can the countries with the highest consumption of energy, especially the USA, maintain their "lifestyles" and standards of living becomes the center of attention surely pales in the face of the more confrontational question that strives to address today's enormous global energy inequalities. Without doubt, people in the US can, and indeed must, play a crucial role in this process, but together with people from around the world, and in a way that simultaneously challenges the inequalities and coerciveness of the current energy regime, but also in a way that challenges that the energy demands of society are set by commercial interests rather than human need. There is an urgent need for people living in high energy consuming countries (especially the USA) to learn about the existing energy flows and structures in a global context, talking to the people who suffer from it, in Nigeria, in Iraq, in disappearing Islands etc. In addition to this, there is also an urgent need to learn and experiment with other models of energy, including a discussion about public and decommodified forms of producing and consuming energy. And, above all there is the urgency to ensure that a transition to a post-petrol economy (hopefully 100% renewables) will not be trapped into preserving the "American way" at the expense of others. There is nothing inherently progressive about renewable energies. This is one of the biggest mistakes that advocates of renewable energies can make (and I include myself as one). Renewable energies implemented within existing social relations, while perhaps alleviating some of the worst aspects of climate change, are unlikely to solve other social and ecological problems. In fact, they may even exacerbate them if renewable energy becomes another profit orientated and privately controlled industrial growth sector just like any other.