When teaching “The Politics of the Bathroom,” my students and I realized that nearly every social justice movement of the century has involved bathrooms.
Jim Crow laws and apartheid dictated separate bathrooms for whites and non-whites. Women’s liberation also fueled debate over bathrooms. Feminists coined the term “potty parity” to protest inequalities in the distribution of restroom facilities (restrooms for female senators were not provided in the U.S. Senate until 1992), while opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment argued that its passage would spell an end to separate bathrooms for men and women. Disability activists fought to make bathrooms accessible for individuals with physical handicaps.
Today, nothing is more symbolic of transgender politics in the U.S. than bathrooms. For a transgender individual, every trip to the bathroom is accompanied by anxiety and dread, so much so that many simply avoid public restrooms altogether, often risking their health. If transgender individuals cannot use public facilities, they cannot participate fully in public life. They cannot be regular consumers — or citizens.
Public bathrooms both reflect and construct sexual dimorphism, our sense that nature produces bodies of only two kinds. Those supporting “bathroom bills” — the legislation of separate bathroom facilities for men and women in public buildings — see sex as fixed and immutable. For supporters of transgender rights, the biology of sex is not so cut and dried: Genes, anatomy and hormones do not always line up neatly on one side or the other of an absolute divide. The concept of “gender” attempts to recognize that life can’t be defined in simple either/or terms; it’s a more complex, messier project.
Ultimately, public restrooms create social anxieties because they are spaces in which the public and private collide in the most intimate ways. While the need to eliminate unites us all, the design and distribution of bathrooms carve space according to social hierarchies of gender, race, class and ability, making the toilet a historic symbol of public debate
Unmitigated climate change poses an existential threat to our way of life.
A major economic study projects a long-term 20 percent reduction in global gross domestic product from climate change. To avoid such unprecedented declines, we must reduce our greenhouse emissions in the U.S. by 80 percent by 2050. This goal is realistic, but a major undertaking that requires deliberate action.
Numerous economic models demonstrate that transitioning to renewable energy is likely to result in a net economic gain for our society. That does not mean that every individual will benefit, nor that the transition with be without pain, but it does mean that the transition is likely to result in more jobs and a more efficient and resilient electricity system. A recent study by the Risky Business Project provides a framework for an approach that is both technically and economically feasible. It is based on three principal transitions: shifting from fossil fuels to electricity, generating electricity from low- and zero-carbon sources and using all energy more efficiently.
The shift from fossil fuels to electricity includes the gradual adoption of electric vehicles, electric and geothermal heat pumps, and electricity in industrial processes. The shift to renewable electricity production requires a rapid transition to zero-carbon sources, like wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear, along with an expansion of energy-storage technologies and a redesigned grid to reduce the variability impacts of wind and solar. The potential for increased efficiency in energy use is significant, as we lose about half of all electricity generated in the U.S. to system losses. A redesigned distributed generation grid could dramatically reduce those losses.
The cost of this particular plan would be around $320 billion a year from 2020 to 2050, but the returns over the life of the transition would be substantially larger and would continue indefinitely. The savings would start at around $65 billion a year in the 2020s, increasing to over $700 billion a year in the 2040s. Around 1 million additional jobs would be created during the 30-year transition, with many of the largest gains being in the domestic construction and utilities sectors. While other approaches may offer greater or fewer costs or benefits, the important point is that the renewable energy transition can be a win-win proposition for our economy.