The Public Power Observatory

Abstract

Abstract We are entering a period of abrupt and irreversible environmental change. Currently dominant assumptions about what is politically appropriate and realistic will be obliterated as vast masses of people find the conditions for their collective survival annihilated in coming decades. This article argues that it is imperative we deepen the debate about strategies to provoke revolutionary ruptures within the fossil-capitalist world system. We need viable strategies to generalize mutual aid and disaster communism, and these strategies must provide concrete solutions to the intersecting climate crises on different scales, from the local to the global. The abolition of fossil capital through the building of counterpower—in all senses of that term—should be a key strategic priority of the global movement for ecosocialism. The article discusses the Public Power NY campaign, which has established itself as a potent counterpower within the corporate-dominated US energy system. Constituted on the heels of the campaign's legislative success, the Public Power Observatory is an interdisciplinary formation dedicated to monitoring and building this counterpower and, in so doing, reclaiming the energy commons. The article discusses some of the suite of transmedia tools currently being developed by the Public Power Observatory.