Energy transition is crucial to the struggle against climate change. Imre Szman is concerned with who is trying to lay claim to the narratives guiding our transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, how they are doing it, and why and to what ends. Mark Simpson joins Szeman in conversation about Szeman’s new book, Futures of the Sun: The Struggle over Renewable Life. 



Imre Szeman is director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation, and Sustainability and professor of human geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is cofounder of the Petrocultures Research group.

Mark Simpson is professor of English and film studies at the University of Alberta, one of the founding collaborators on the research collective After Oil, and a core member of the Petrocultures Research Group.



REFERENCES:
-Imre Szeman, essay, System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster, South Atlantic Quarterly
-Timothy Mitchell / Carbon Democracy
-Seth Klein / A Good War
-Jennifer Wenzel, essay, Forms of Life: Thinking Fossil Infrastructure and Its Narrative Grammar, Social Text
-Extinction Rebellion / Common Sense for the 21st Century
-After Oil Collective / Solarities
-University of Toronto’s Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods, director, Sergio Montero
-Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report


Futures of the Sun: The Struggle over Renewable Life is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book is part of the Forerunners series, and an open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.

“The content of this book is extraordinary. Imre Szeman is an exceptional expert, well-versed in analysing the complex intersections between energy, society, and politics. The book is a real opportunity to deepen our understanding of contemporary energy and political issues.”
—International Journal of Environmental Studies

Futures of the Sun

Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna is a book that asks why so many big bluefin tuna have vanished from the Atlantic Ocean. Author Jen Telesca notes that the term “red gold” has emerged out of the exorbitant price her ruby-colored flesh commands on the global market; for reference, in January 2019, a 613-pound Pacific bluefin tuna sold at market in Tokyo for an astounding record of $3.1 million US dollars. To research this book, Telesca gained unparalleled access to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (also known as ICCAT) to show that the institution has faithfully executed the task assigned to it by international law: to fish as hard as possible to grow national economies. This interview between Telesca and editor Jason Weidemann was recorded in May 2020.

More about the book: http://z.umn.edu/redgold

A transcription of this conversation is available: z.umn.edu/t-redgold

Futures of the Sun

University of Minnesota Press

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