J.P. Sapinski on Decarbonization, Lock-in and Transition in Eastern Canada [video]

J.P. Sapinski discussed decarbonization, lock-in and transition in Eastern Canada at a talk co-hosted by RAVEN and St. Thomas University’s Environment and Society program on February 28, 2022. The talk is now available for viewing:

In recent years, many projects of hydraulic fracturing, offshore extraction and pipeline expansion have been the focus of public attention in Eastern Canada, in addition to existing refineries and coal-fired power plants.

Many of these infrastructure projects turned into flashpoints of resistance by social and environmental movements, which cut across cultural boundaries to bring together Indigenous, French and English communities into a broad social movement. This mobilization has led to the delay and discontinuation of many such fossil fuel expansion projects.

Now that most expansion projects in the region have been put on ice, this presentation discussed the current state of carbon lock-in in Eastern Canada, and avenues for post-carbon mobilization and transition in New Brunswick.

J. P. Sapinski teaches environmental studies at Université de Moncton. He is interested in how the structures of capitalism and corporate power mediate the social metabolism between human societies and the ecosphere, and how we can transform and decolonize this relationship to make it just and sustainable.

Sapinski is a co-author of Organizing the 1%: How Corporate Power Works (Fernwood, 2018) and a co-editor of Has It Come to This? Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink with Holly Jean Buck and Andreas Malm (Rutgers 2020). He is a co-investigator with the Corporate Mapping Project.