民主能源：艾比·斯皮纳克谈气候变化与资本主义的关系-新东方前途出国

　　Democratic Energy: Abby Spinak on the relationship between climate change and capitalism 

　　民主能源：艾比·斯皮纳克谈气候变化与资本主义的关系

　　October 8, 2019 Text by Jessica Lynne

　　2019年10月8日Jessica Lynne的短信

　　It is difficult to discuss the ongoing consequences of climate change without discussing its relationship to the history and current implementation of urban planning policy. Understanding our ecological and built environments is not simply a matter of technical knowledge and expertise; it also depends on recognizing the role that political and social infrastructures—in urban, suburban, and rural settings—have played leading up to the present-day crisis. Through her research, Dr. Abby Spinak—a lecturer in urban planning and design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design—grapples with these issues as she focuses on the history of energy infrastructures and what it can tell us about the relationship between planning, design, and climate change mitigations.

　　如果不讨论气候变化与城市规划政策的历史和目前执行情况之间的关系，就很难讨论气候变化的持续后果。了解我们的生态和建筑环境不仅仅是一个技术知识和专门知识的问题；它还取决于认识到城市、郊区和农村环境中的政治和社会基础设施在导致当前危机的过程中所起的作用。通过她的研究，哈佛大学设计研究院城市规划与设计讲师Abby Spinak博士致力于解决这些问题，因为她专注于能源基础设施的历史，以及它能告诉我们什么是规划、设计和气候变化缓解之间的关系。

　　After receiving her PhD in urban planning from MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Spinak held fellowships in the History of American Capitalism and the Energy Humanities. While working on her dissertation, she began to think deeply about what it means to protect local cultures, investigate alternative economies, and practice good environmental stewardship. She explains, “My time as a graduate student was influenced by climate change on one end and the economic recession on the other. As climate change was becoming a problem, coupled with market collapse, I found myself gravitating toward an area of study that was very critical of capitalism while asking about alternative economies and alternative approaches to work and labor.”

　　在获得麻省理工学院城市研究与规划系的城市规划博士学位后，斯宾克获得了美国资本主义史和能源人文学科的研究金在写论文的过程中，她开始深入思考保护当地文化、调查替代经济以及实行良好的环境管理的意义她解释道：“我作为一名研究生的时间一方面受到气候变化的影响，另一方面也受到经济衰退的影响。随着气候变化逐渐成为一个问题，再加上市场崩溃，我发现自己被一个非常批判资本主义的研究领域所吸引，同时询问其他经济体以及工作和劳动的其他方法。”

　　“Alger Delta Cooperative Electric Association, Arcs and Sparks newsletter, Vol. 1, no. 51,” (1953). Courtesy: National Archives and Records Administration

　　“阿尔杰三角洲合作电力协会，电弧和火花通讯，第一卷，第51期，”（1953年）。礼节：国家档案局

　　Spinak’s research resonated further with her own experience when she discovered that her family had belonged to an energy cooperative on Maryland’s Eastern Shore for years. They bought electricity from the co-op, but didn’t know that they could vote or have a say in energy policy. Networks of these cooperatives have existed in the United States for more than 80 years; and the model provided fertile ground for contemplating the radical social possibilities that could emerge from organizing energy resources in this way. What might democratic community ownership of electricity mean for our ability to address climate concerns? “I was curious about whether or not this was a latent landscape of democracy that was governing energy resources that had potential for being a bigger player in the new economy,” Spinak says. “I found very quickly that the answer was no,” she notes. Many of these co-ops, the result of New Deal funding, are quite conservative in nature. Spinak argues that tracing the loan constraints originally placed on these co-ops linked them more to the expansion of industrial agriculture and federal support for suburban and ex-urban development than to protection of the local farming communities that were intended to be the policy’s primary beneficiaries.

　　当她发现自己的家庭多年来一直属于马里兰州东岸的一家能源合作社时，斯皮纳克的研究与她自己的经历产生了进一步的共鸣他们从合作社购买电力，但不知道他们可以投票或在能源政策上有发言权。这些合作社的网络在美国已经存在了80多年，并且这种模式为思考以这种方式组织能源资源可能产生的激进的社会可能性提供了肥沃的土壤。民主社会拥有电力对我们解决气候问题的能力意味着什么？斯皮纳克说：“我很好奇，这是否是一个潜在的民主景观，它控制着能源资源，有可能成为新经济中更大的参与者。”“我很快就发现答案是否定的，”她说。新政融资的结果是，这些合作社中的许多在性质上相当保守斯皮纳克认为，追查最初对这些合作社施加的贷款限制，与其说是为了保护本应成为该政策主要受益者的当地农业社区，不如说是为了扩大工业农业和联邦对郊区和非城市发展的支持。

　　At its root, planning implies that we need something other than the market to govern society and action—a belief that is pretty counterculture in American society right now.

　　从根本上讲，计划意味着我们需要市场以外的东西来管理社会和行动——这是美国社会目前相当反文化的一种信仰。

　　Abby Spinakon the opportunity for planners to challenge epistemologies surrounding climate change

　　Abby Spinakon规划者有机会挑战围绕气候变化的认识论

　　So understanding the historical archive is central to Spinak’s work as a scholar and educator. “One of the reasons that I think teaching history to planners is so important is that it demystifies existing institutions, the existing built environment, and the existing model for infrastructure delivery. There is nothing sacred about the status quo,” Spinak says. Planning can be reparative and experimental, and a close reading of history reveals this, just as it reveals the gaps and chasms of precedents. What’s more, a study of history encourages confronting multivalent, and, at times, opposing, problem-solving strategies within a wider discourse on climate change.

　　因此，了解历史档案是斯皮纳克作为学者和教育家工作的核心“我认为规划师对教学历史如此重要的原因之一是它对现有的机构、现有的建筑环境和现有的基础设施交付模式进行了神秘化。“现状没有什么神圣可言，”斯波尼克说规划可以是修复性的和实验性的，仔细阅读历史就会发现这一点，正如它揭示了先例的空白和裂痕一样更重要的是，对历史的研究鼓励在一个更广泛的关于气候变化的讨论中面对多元的、有时甚至是对立的解决问题的策略。

　　“Rural Electrification News Vol. 1, no. 7,” (1936)

　　《农村电气化新闻》第一卷第7期（1936年）

　　Given the reality of multiple markers of crises along various historical timelines, it becomes important to examine our visions for the future in this moment of widespread global change and to understand the possible impacts of any revisions. In this context, Spinak’s research into energy infrastructure invites reflection upon the potential political transformations that can occur within hyperlocal contexts.

　　鉴于在不同的历史时间线上存在着多重危机标志，在全球大范围变化的这一时刻，审视我们对未来的愿景并理解任何修订可能产生的影响就变得非常重要。在这一背景下，斯皮纳克对能源基础设施的研究引起了人们对超地方性环境下可能发生的潜在政治变革的思考。

　　For Spinak, reparative planning is a marriage of theory and practice—an emphasis that she brings into the classroom: “What I’m more concerned about is, How does it translate? Are my students actually taking this and doing something with it?” She offers the example of one of her students, Jennifer Matchett, who is currently working with an indigenous community in the Yukon to design solar energy projects within the frameworks of indigenous knowledge. Rather than appropriating the “best practices” of a solar industry informed by settler colonialism, this community is envisioning how a new solar grid—one that functions within its own regional economy—becomes a technology that supports local indigenous governmental and social infrastructures.

　　对斯皮纳克来说，补救性计划是理论和实践的结合，她在课堂上强调：“我更关心的是，它如何翻译？我的学生真的拿着这个做点什么吗？“她举了她的一个学生詹妮弗·马切特的例子，她目前正在育空地区的一个土著社区工作，在土著知识的框架内设计太阳能项目这个社区并没有盗用定居者殖民主义所告知的太阳能产业的“最佳做法”，而是设想一个在自己的区域经济中运作的新太阳能电网如何成为一种支持当地土著政府和社会基础设施的技术。

　　“At its root,” Spinak says, “planning implies that we need something other than the market to govern society and action—a belief that is pretty counterculture in American society right now.” Planners have the opportunity to challenge epistemologies surrounding climate change; they can weigh in on matters of social and economic justice, not just on scientific or technical factors such as carbon emissions. They must confront the social outcomes of ecological instability: Think the slow disappearance of coastal communities. Her current course, Climate Justice, addresses these issues by looking at climate change as a symptom of broader structural inequality and enduring geopolitical violence.

　　“从根本上说，”斯皮纳克说，“计划意味着我们需要市场以外的东西来管理社会和行动——这是目前美国社会中相当反文化的一种信念。”规划者有机会挑战围绕气候变化的认识论；他们可以在社会和经济公正问题上施加压力，不仅仅是科学或技术因素，如碳排放他们必须面对生态不稳定的社会后果：想想沿海社区的缓慢消失。她目前的课程“气候正义”将气候变化视为更广泛的结构不平等和持久的地缘政治暴力的征兆，以此解决这些问题。

　　Spinak believes in the radical role that planners can play: “One of the applications I see of my research at the GSD is its ability to teach people to be more critical of the historical dependencies that have constructed the world around them and to know that if they change things, they are not disrupting this perfect logic, but trying something new. That’s all design and planning has ever been.”

　　斯皮纳克相信规划者可以发挥的根本作用：“我在GSD的研究中看到的一个应用是，它能够教会人们对构建他们周围世界的历史依赖性更加挑剔，并知道如果他们改变了事情，他们不是在破坏这一完美的逻辑，而是在尝试一些东西。”新的这就是所有的设计和规划。”