UC Riverside

The world is already in climate “crisis” mode. Fossil fuels are the largest driver of climate change, and eliminating their use is an important step toward addressing the future of climate change. Yet, I argue that eliminating fossil fuel use alone is insufficient to address the crises not only of climate change, but the uneven effects of climate change and fossil fuel racial capitalism as they play out across the world. Building on the work of W.E.B. Du Bois in thinking through the establishment of abolition democracy in the post-emancipation project of Black Reconstruction, this article offers a conceptual analysis of why and to what end such a framework is essential to building a radically democratic society rooted in liberation for all. The article looks toward an abolitionist energy democracy, where abolition democracy offers guiding principles for developing theory and organizing praxis. Using a case study of the People Power Solar Cooperative in Oakland, California, USA, the article considers how people are working to dismantle fossil fuel racial capitalism through the simultaneous building up of new institutions and infrastructures in the spirit of abolition democracy. This article thus considers a notion of abolition democracy rooted in not just the elimination of a system of dominance, but the simultaneous remaking of new systems as an important way of thinking about fighting for social and ecological change.