Juneteenth Thoughts for the Energy Transition

I've been thinking about my job at a global tech company, in a role serving some of the world's most profitable energy companies. While my vision and values seem clear, "use technology to accelerate the energy transition," every day I must reconcile competing truths.

AI promises to help us model and forecast scenarios fast enough to do something about climate change. AI promises to drive carbon emissions up, not down.

Digitalization and automation are helping energy companies stay relevant and viable as the energy market changes. Digitalization and automation are helping energy companies squeeze more profit from extractive practices as the fossil fuel economy faces extinction.

I use my creative and business skills to sell software, so energy and utility companies can modernize operations and serve us better. I use my creative and business skills to sell software, so billionaire tech investors make more money regardless of what's good and right.

Dealing with this cognitive dissonance makes me tired and cranky. Most days I try to remember that acceptance and a "yes, and" mentality is the emotionally healthy way to go. Working through it is also really good for my neuroplasticity.

My husband and I were reflecting on Juneteenth and, in a characteristically synthesizing conversation, he reminded me of a story about Bob Marley and John Newton. John Newton wrote the words to the hymn "Amazing Grace" in 1772. People around the world are familiar with the hymn, and many have heard its story: that the position of wretchedness from which he wrote came not only from deep personal tragedy, but also his conviction about the evil he engaged in as a slave trader. Two hundred years later, Bob Marley wrote "Redemption Song," a different take, where salvation and heavenly assistance is offered not to a slaver, but to a persecuted, devalued slave. My husband had read an interview with Marley in which he said the song was a partial response to Amazing Grace. Newton had the privilege of feeling wretched as a perpetrator, seeking absolution for the sin. He was a tireless anti-slavery champion after he repented, but slavery continued way beyond Newton's lifetime, and racism never ended. In that context, there's no grace for the enslaved. Nor is forgiveness the right thing to offer the enslaved. So, in his prayer for salvation, Marley invokes strength and dignity, offering these to people who are broken and stripped of identity and value. Put together, these songs form a more complete picture of the longing for restoration - and freedom - of both enslaver and enslaved.

How does that connect to the energy transition?

We don't have two centuries to change our energy behavior if we want our descendants to survive climate change, but we can learn from this past.

Our problem inextricably connects oppositional groups: the privileged and the disenfranchised; perpetrators and victims; those who need to disinvest, and those who have nothing more to lose. Climate change is our shared problem.

The energy transition is requiring oil and gas companies to acknowledge their transgression against humanity and creation, and give up the very practices generating their wealth. As we know from anti-racism work, the tears of the privileged do not warrant special dispensation to let them continue in doing wrong. Repentance is not just remorse and regret - it's turning away from the thing you're sorry about, and walking in the direction that's right. So, extending grace means extending help and support, without softening the severity of the situation or letting people off the hook.

A just and equitable energy transition includes restoration and repair. While oil and gas companies have a responsibility to give up entitlement as they change their practices, front line communities never had entitlement and privilege. Grace must be tangible. Conversations about reparation, which Oxford Languages defines as "the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged," have been helpful to me as I think about this.

And it's not just environmental justice communities. For those of us straddling privilege and impotence, buying induction stoves and turning down our thermostats are not enough. All of us can demand change, speak truth to power, advocate for those with less influence, and ask for a livable, healthy, sustainable planet.

My husband and I were having this far-ranging conversation yesterday as we marked our 30th wedding anniversary. I had oral surgery that morning, not a romantic way to celebrate. But as my husband said lovingly, "For better and for worse!" And that's how I hope we can all approach the energy transition. Some of us are wretched because it's really hard to let go of what's working for us even though we know it's killing everyone. Some of us are wretched because we're the ones being killed and we can't do much about it. All of us wretches face better and worse choices. But we're in the same slave boat. If we honor our connection and our shared, human problem, we can do hard things together. Hopefully faster than it took to end slavery.

Side Trails

• Holly Alpine's interview with Grist has helped me crystallize some of the intentions and values inside myself, although I have not decided where I land yet.
• I'm glad that my company has made sustainable and equitable AI a top priority. Responsible AI Institute works with big tech on these very issues.
• "Reparations" is too complex for me to unpack here but Shalanda Baker informed my foundational thinking on this with her book Revolutionary Power: An Activist's Guid to the Energy Transition.