Abstract
The crises that characterize our time mirror a civilizational crisis with roots in the monopoly of knowledge, in which the ways of knowing developed by scientific capitalism degrade the environment and subjugate knowledge built in the co-evolution of cultures with nature, territories and means of life. Technology and scientific innovations have taken a central role in today’s society, mediating countless social, environmental and political relations hegemonized by contemporary colonial capitalism. In this essay, we seek to bring reflections on the relationships between the fields of energy and health which, in addition to manifesting successive crises, have been mobilizing the social imagination in recent years as they are governed by socio-technical systems that condition modern ways of life. Energy and health crises are addressed based on their historical constructions, the productive structures they mobilize, the ways of life they create and the social relations they order. We point to the mechanisms by which global circuits of capital export externalities towards populations with less access to mechanical energy available in their socio-technical systems, generating socio-environmental catastrophes, land expropriation, loss of biodiversity, climate change, pollution, poverty, famine and epidemics.
Keywords:
collective health; political ecology; COVID-19; health crisis; energy crisis