ABSTRACT
Moving from an account of the winter of 2021 in Texas (USA) and its impact on the electrical grid, Dawson details how corporate utilities, the primary providers of electricity to the majority of people in the US, are constitutively unprepared to cope with extreme weather. The essay then profiles the creative forms of direct action embraced by popular movements in New York against the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. In particular, it discusses the work of Public Power NY, a campaign that aims to get New York City off fossil fuels and move it to a power system based on democratically controlled renewable energy, offering a blueprint for what could be achieved on a bigger scale through a federal Green New Deal.
