Thursday March 10th — Two Toronto Events with Kolya Abramsky, editor of “Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World”

As the world’s energy system faces a period of unprecedented change, a global struggle is intensifying over who controls this sector, and for what purposes. The question of “green capitalism” is unavoidable for capitalist planners and anti-capitalist struggles alike. From all sides we hear that it’s time to save the planet in order to save the economy, but what lies before us is the next round of global class struggle with energy at the center, as the key means of production and subsistence.

Please join us for two events with Kolya Abramsky, editor of the new anthology, “Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World” to discuss

1. Workshop on “Renewable Energies, Capitalist Crisis and Class Struggles: the View from the Global South”

12:30pm-3:00pm, York University Student Centre, Room 313. (Sponsored by OPIRG York)

2. Toronto Launch of “Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World” featuring a presentation from editor Kolya Abramsky. (Sponsored by OPIRG Toronto and Upping the Anti)

Thursday, March 10 at 7pm. Back Room of the Regal Beagle, 335 Bloor St W. (South side of Bloor St. in between Spadina and St. George)

Kolya Abramsky is a former visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science, Technology and Society, in Graz, Austria, where he received the Manfred-Heindler Award for Energy and Climate Change Research, and in 2006 was coordinator of the Danish-based World Wind Energy Institute, an international effort in non-commercial renewable energy education, involving different renewable energy centers from around the world. Abramsky has worked for over a decade with a range of grassroots social and environmental organizations around the world doing educational work, international mobilizations, publications and translations. He is currently coordinating Towards a Worldwide Energy Revolution, a global project that aims to bring together people from a wide range of organizations and struggles to build long term alliances in order to prepare for an anti-capitalist transition to a new energy system.

More information about the book “Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution”

There are no easy answers in this battle for control of the world’s energy system. “Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution” is not a book of sound bites. It unpacks the seemingly innocent terms “energy sector” and “energy system” by situating the current energy crisis, peak oil, and the transition to a post-petrol future within a historical understanding of the global, social, economic, political, financial, military, and ecological relations of which energy and technology are parts.

With over fifty chapters written by contributors from approximately twenty countries, Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution forms a collective map of the most dynamic struggles within the energy sector. Visit: http://www.akpress.org/2009/items/sparkingaworldwideenergyrevolution