Skip to content
GIVING DAY is April 11! Starting now, you can support CSSH students and programs with a $5+ gift to any of our funds.
Apply
Stories

‘It’s not inevitable that this will be unjust’: A Q&A with Shalanda Baker on energy justice

WBUR, January 2021

Most discussions of institutional racism focus on schools, housing and the criminal justice system. But our energy system – how we power our lights and gas up our cars – can also enforce racism. That’s because most of our energy comes through a system of “extraction and pollution” – we take stuff out of the ground, burn it to make energy, and dump the pollution somewhere — usually in a poor neighborhood or community of color.

The next decade offers an opportunity to upend that system, as the world switches from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, like solar and wind. And while energy policy may seem a long way from the fight for racial justice, Shalanda Baker argues that it’s a critical part of the discussion.

“The energy system is not immune from this broader reckoning with racial and social justice,” Baker, a professor of law, public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University, says.

Continue reading at WBUR.

More Stories

NU Boston’s 3rd annual bell hooks symposium: “Black Feminist World Making”

02.23.2024

In Memoriam: Ángel David Nieves

12.11.2023
Israeli students hold Palestinian and Israeli flags, during a demonstration against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new hard-right government, in Tel Aviv University's campus, on January 16, 2023. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

A generational divide on views of Israel … in both parties, according to new survey 

02.26.24
Northeastern Global News