Sawyer Seminar on Energy and Society

During the Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 semesters, the BU Department of Geography & Environment and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future convened the John Sawyer Seminars on Energy Transitions and Society. The seminar series, supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, brought together leading scholars to discuss various aspects of how energy transitions are themselves socially constituted and how they have, and are likely to, impact society.

Seminar 1. AN OVERVIEW OF ENERGY TRANSITIONS
Monday, September 20, 2010
Martin Melosi, University of Houston
Download Presentation: Energy Transitions in Historical Perspective
Bruce Podobnik, Lewis and Clark College
Download Presentation: Social Movements and Energy Transition
Cutler Cleveland, Boston University
Download Presentation: Energy Transitions: an Overview

Seminar 2. ENERGY, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE
Friday, October 15, 2010
Laura Nader, University of California Berkeley
Peter Shulman, Case Western Reserve University
Download Presentation: The Prophet and the Pessimist: Narrating the Future of Energy in the 19th Century
Moderated by Adil Najam, Boston University

Seminar 3. ENERGY AND DEVELOPMENT
Monday, November 8, 2010
Joan Martinez-Alier, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Download Presentation: The EROI of agriculture, its use by the Via Campesina
Paul Epstein, Harvard University Medical School
Download Presentation: Energy and Development
Moderated by James McCann, Boston University

Seminar 4. THE BUSINESS OF ENERGY
Friday, December 3, 2010
Joseph Pratt, University of Houston
Download Presentation: The Primacy of Price
Martha Amram, Founder and CEO, Ennovationz
Download Presentation: The Business of Changing how Much Energy We Use
Paul McManus, Boston University
Download Presentation: The Business of Energy

Seminar 5. ENERGY POLICY
Friday January 28, 2011
Robert Lifset, University of Oklahoma
Download Presentation: The Need for a Political Roadmap: American Energy Conservation Policy Since the 1970’s
Paul Sabin,  Yale University
Download Presentation: Crisis and Continuity in United States Oil Politics, 1965-1980
Michael C. Caramanis, Boston University

Seminar 6. ROLE OF ENERGY IN AVOIDING COLLAPSE
Friday, February 25, 2011
Joe Tainter, Utah State University
Robert Kaufmann, Boston University
Download Presentation: The End of Cheap Oil in the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R.
Robert Weller, Boston University

Seminar 7. ENERGY, SECURITY, and CONFLICT
Friday, March 25, 2011
Amy Myers Jaffe, Rice University
Download Presentation: Middle East Turmoil and Implications for Global Oil Markets
Michael Klare, Hampshire College
Download Presentation: The Collapse of the Old Oil Order
Dana Bauer, Boston University

Seminar 8. GEOGRAPHIES OF ENERGY
Friday, April 22, 2011
Peter O’Connor, Boston University
Rania Ghosn, Boston University
Cutler Cleveland, Boston University

PROJECT COORDINATORS
Cutler Cleveland, Department of Geography and Environment
Adil Najam, Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future
Post-Doctoral Fellow: Rania Ghosn
Graduate Research Assistant: Peter O’Connor

The Seminar Series was co-sponsored by the Boston University Clean Energy and Environmental Sustainability Initiative (CEESI).