Next System Project research associate Johanna Bozuwa was among the panelists at the “Climate Futures, Design and the Just Transition” conference November 9-10 at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island.

The two-day conference brought together a range of scholars and activists to map some of the different ways the search for just and rapid post-carbon transitions is animating a broad range of interventions—by labor and climate justice activists, designers, architects, academics and artists—and is opening up intersectional spaces across movements fighting for racial and gender justice.

During her presentation at Day Two of the conference (starting at 4:21:15), Bozuwa explained a proposal to take the nation’s energy system into public ownership—from nationalizing the fossil fuel industry to returning energy utilities into community hands. The goal is a rapid transition from a paradigm of fossil fuel extraction to an energy future based on democratic, equitable, community control of the energy system.

Conference organizers and moderators included Damian White, Dean of Liberal Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design; Thea Riofrancos, professor of political science at Providence College, and Timmons Roberts, professor of sociology at Brown University and an associate with the university’s Climate and Development Lab.

Day 1

Day 2