
Excited to read from Luz at Midnight at this event, a community conversation on what just climate/COVID recovery looks like. I wrote Luz based on my deep involvement over the years in environmental justice struggles in San Antonio, and one particular springboard for the story was the tendency of local powers-that-be to imagine they can address problems like climate change in a purely technological way, swapping out dirty fuels for cleaner tech without addressing its underlying political/economic logics. The book’s political backdrop presents a not-so-distant and very imaginable future in which the necessity of a rapid transition away from fossil fuels launches a new mining boom for the rare earth minerals that will be required to produce all those solar panels and wind turbine strong magnets and electric car batteries–and thus looks a lot like the old world we’re trying to leave behind, with wildcatters and mancamps popping up all over everyone’s watersheds as startups extract and excrete and sleep around with all the city people.
This is the first time I’ll be reading primarily to the folks I’m writing about in the book, so I’m nervous but also excited. I think I picked the right passages.
I’ll be reading at 3:30pm CST but stick around for the rest of the conversation too, which is vital and critical. City people will be speaking, but schedule also features radical and visionary thinker-activists on climate/food/energy justice and regenerative economy, as well as poets and musicians.
To attend, you’ll want to RSVP: sc.org/SAjustrecovery