The Social Impacts of Supply-Side Decarbonization

From the earliest studies examining impacts of coal-powered Industrial Revolution, field sociology has possessed an intimate, if often implicit, interest in interconnectedness fossil fuels and modernity. With looming climate crisis, world must rapidly wean itself from these resources favor others that emit little to no greenhouse gasses. And while this energy transition will likely have profound social implications, it only recently begun receive sustained attention sociologists across subfields. Consequently, although debates emphasized technological market dimensions shift, its relational human aspects remained relatively marginal. In article, we review research on fuel production transitions renewables. Such work is critical urgent, since main barriers combating crisis are neither nor economic; they are, instead, deeply social.