Maintaining the Rule of Experts? Interrogating the Contradictions of Energy

Ayesha Vemuri

In this note, originally published on the Energy Humanities site, Ayesha Vemuri reflects on the legacy of Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy (Verso, 2011) and Rule of Experts (Univ. of California Press, 2002) for thinking about expertise and the coloniality of climate crisis. As Vemuri observes, “…the rule of experts keeps intact the very structures of power that produced the climate crisis, while the costs of development and transition are once again borne by the very communities who contributed least to the problem…An environmental justice approach requires not only the counting of carbon emissions, but an altogether different paradigm of expertise.” Read the essay in its entirety here.