Trish Kahle, Assistant Professor of History, Georgetown University Qatar
How much risk—bodily, environmental, economic, or political—is acceptable in a democratic energy system? And, just as importantly, who should bear that risk? These questions have been at the core of energy policy-making in the modern United States, but the answers to these questions often have uncomfortable answers. In this talk, Kahle will consider the uncertain relationship between coal and democracy in US history as miners’ democratic aspirations confronted the deadly record of the country’s coal mines. From that conflict emerged a coal-fired social contract that continues to shape the present.