Dr. Ry Brennan is an eco-decentralist whose work seeks to forge connections among environmental and energy justice, democratic theory, social ecology, organizational theory, virtue ethics, and actor-network theory. Their research methods include intensive interviewing, participant observation, ethnography, and community based participatory action research. During their coursework they also developed proficiency in quantitative methods, including complex frameworks such as causal inference. They have given guest lectures on climate change and globalization, infrastructure and social change, and mixed methods research.
Decarbonization, Decentralization, Democratization: The Threefold Cord of Just Energy Transformation — PhD Dissertation
Three Sites of Energy Transformation in Santa Barbara County and What They Teach Us
A visual representation of the Macrogrid & Microgrid. Illustrations by Ry Brennan.
Decarbonization: Strauss Wind Energy Project. Building trades and environmental groups clash over oil and gas — but they also conflict over clean energy projects. What’s more, the battle lines appear in surprising places. To achieve decarbonization, actors must seek autonomy within groups, build communities of fate between groups, and find leverage against the growth coalition.
Decentralization: Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). Transforming the centralized, fossil fuel-based Macrogrid into the decentralized, renewables-based Microgrid will require a dramatic renegotiation of the facts we build about energy, the organizations that do the work, the character of ecology and risk, economic and ethical values, and even the human subject.
Democratization: Community Choice Aggregation (CCA). CCAs were formed to enable local, democratic control over energy procurement. Democracy is a fundamental element of a just energy transformation aimed at decarbonization, though bureaucratic dysfunctions and the pull of centralization threaten CCA goals.
“Decentralization is not enough on its own, but if we add democracy we can avoid the problem of elitism; Democratization remains vulnerable to centralized bureaucracies, but if we add decentralism, we have a chance to keep the people at the table; Decarbonization may occur at the expense of justice, but if we add democracy, we may yet affirm the utility friendship of actors previously at cross–purposes. Together, these processes achieve the harmony of optimality. Like a threefold cord woven together, they do not break; like a musical progression, they are resolved.”
Technoregionalism
A tangle of electrical wires in Delhi. Photo by Ry Brennan.
Technoregion: a geographic space defined by common use of a given technology or technological assemblage.
Technoregionalism: a strategic epistemology that involves looking at technology as regionally patterned.
Technoregions of Insurrection: the use of technoregional transformation to remake actor-networks.
Social Ecology • Virtue Ethics • Actor-Network Theory • Organizational Theory
“Unlike bioregions, technoregions can be remade to manifest better ecological futures.”
Environment-Building Trades Relations
Best Practices for Intersectional Organizing:
Diorama of the Cat Canyon Oil Project. Photo by Ry Brennan.
Be promiscuous in your networking.
Establish autonomy between and within groups.
Reject ‘Big Tent’ organizing and embrace single-issue campaigns.
Recognize differences, choosing solidarity over hegemony.
Establish early, consistent, and transparent communication.
Intersectionality • Environmental Justice • Just Transitions
“When organizing in a coalition, it is crucial to stay at the table with a wide variety of groups while maintaining autonomy and employing a diversity of tactics. Coalitions fail when they demand intergroup strategic alignment, and when they claim the right to direct the conversation.”
Prison Ecology & Carceral Technoregionalism
Prison Ecology: a focus on the intersections of mass incarceration and environmental degradation that begins by recognizing incarcerated peoples’ severance from their ecological context as a moral crisis.
‘Seize the Technoregion’: an abolitionist strategy wherein local actors gain control over the technoregions that overlap with prisons and use those infrastructures as leverage points to undermine carcerality and re-place incarcerated people within multi-scalar ecological contexts.
Critical Environmental Justice • Prison Ecology • Abolition Ecology
“Seizing the technoregion transforms our strategy so we are not making demands of politicians and prison bureaucrats; instead, we are reasserting the ecological context of the prison to empower local actors in collaboration with inmate populations to undermine carceral hegemony.”