“Decentralized, distributed energy production like renewables can have a broader disruptive impact on energy infrastructures and…
“Decentralized, distributed energy production like renewables can have a broader disruptive impact on energy infrastructures and how they interact with social and political relations. Integrating distributed, small-scale energy generation within towns and cities can make them more self-sufficient; whereas most people now are alienated from their modes of energy production, bringing production into their spheres of governance and living can alter that relationship in positive ways. Neighborhood-controlled energy, for instance, can have positive civic impacts, making towns more democratic and profit-sharing more widespread. Further integrating some form of degrowth economics—such as circular economy principles—could also disrupt the fossil economy even more broadly. Nuclear is necessarily a top-down energy source; solar and wind can be (though are not inevitably) a bottom-up energy source, particularly when paired with degrowth principles and policies. Embracing nuclear would leave many status quo structural relations largely intact, given the way it depends on states, militaries, and command-and-control politics.”— Samuel Miller McDonald, Is Nuclear Power Our Best Bet Against Climate Change? (via probablyasocialecologist)