I never thought I’d see the day when the words “national,” “energy” and “strategy” would be strung together and promoted by the Alberta government. For 30 years, Pierre Trudeau’s 1980 National Energy Program (NEP) had been recurrently trotted out by Alberta premiers and Calgary’s oilpatch, strung up, and ritualistically pummelled.

Int D 593 Grad Seminar in Political Sociology / Political Economy. Fall 2011 Thursdays 14:00 to 16:50
This fall’s course has been greatly revised to address pressing 21st century issues by looking at debates surrounding the Political Economy of transitioning off fossil fuels. We will focus on the triple challenges of: 1) the end of the age of cheap oil (peak oil) and the end of the ‘death distance’, 2) coming struggles over which groups will have access to a basic amount of energy in a powered-down future (energy security as a citizen’s right, ending ‘fuel poverty’ as the British call it) and 3) impending climate change disasters.