Frequent news headlines and rising gas prices are constant reminders of the fuel shortage linked to the war in Iran. But energy crises are about more than oil and geopolitics, say and , who co-teach “Communication, Design and the Environment” in the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý’s Communication Leadership program.

Muren, a teaching professor of design, and Russell, a professor of communication, examine environmental problems from a perspective beyond the hard sciences. They are currently working on a book that explores how the systems we design and the stories we tell shape the relationship between society and the living world.

UW News spoke to Muren and Russell about what today’s energy crises reveal about contemporary societies’ dependence on fossil fuels and how we can create a “solar-powered system.”��

The war in Iran has put energy back at the center of public debate. What stands out to you about the conversation we’re having?

Adrienne Russell: To me, it’s impressive how quickly the conversation — in the news media mostly — narrowed to . Where will the oil come from? How quickly can markets stabilize? What will happen to prices? Those are important questions, but they’re also very familiar. Every energy crisis seems to produce the same script. We talk about rather than asking why our societies are organized in ways that make them so vulnerable to disruptions in the first place.

Dominic Muren: Exactly. We tend to treat these moments as temporary interruptions to an otherwise normal system. But they’re also reminders that the system itself depends on finite resources and exceptional geopolitical stability. The crisis isn’t just exposing a shortage of oil; it’s exposing assumptions about how much energy we expect to have available and how our economies are built around that expectation.

What assumptions are built into this way of thinking?

DM: The biggest assumption is that energy should always be available in whatever quantity society demands. When supply falls short, we assume the problem is getting more energy, not reconsidering the expectations that created that demand. That assumption feels natural today, but of the fossil-fuel era.

AR: Those assumptions become embedded in everyday life. We stop noticing that overnight shipping, long commutes, streaming entertainment or all depend on enormous amounts of energy. They begin to feel like ordinary features of modern life instead of choices made possible by a particular energy system.

What are the material consequences of thinking about energy this way?

DM: We respond to crises by reinforcing the very system that created them. The was widely expected to trigger a dramatic spike in global oil prices. Instead, the shock was muted, in part because China rapidly shifted away from imported oil and relied more heavily on domestically produced coal. Economically, that reduced dependence on imported oil. Environmentally, however, it came at a significant cost: than oil per unit of energy, so avoiding one crisis just increased another.��

Even China’s massive electric vehicle fleet — normally a climate advantage — became more carbon-intensive because the electricity charging those vehicles increasingly came from coal rather than lower-carbon sources. From a climate perspective, that represents a significant step backward.

AR: We’re seeing similar patterns elsewhere. In the United States, the war in Iran has been in California and in the name of energy security. Each crisis becomes a justification for extracting more rather than asking why our societies remain so dependent on these fuels in the first place.��

In other words, the immediate response is often to stabilize today’s energy system, even if doing so locks in higher emissions tomorrow. We end up reversing much of the progress we’ve made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions because we’re treating the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying design of the system.

How have fossil fuels shaped contemporary society and our expectations?

DM: Fossil fuels gave us access to enormous stores of concentrated energy accumulated over millions of years. That allowed societies to expand production, transportation and consumption at unprecedented scales. Over time, we built our cities, economies and institutions around the expectation that this on-demand abundance could continue indefinitely. But this ��

AR: Fossil fuels and their infrastructures are one of the most powerful sense-making systems ever built. They have trained societies to expect continuous expansion. Because that expectation feels natural, it rarely appears as a choice; it appears as reality. That’s why energy shocks are so often misread. When supply is disrupted, the instinct is to restore the flow and return to “normal.” But that normal isn’t neutral. It’s a high-energy system organized around the assumption that growth has no meaningful limits. Energy crises aren’t interruptions to that system — they’re the moments when those assumptions collide with physical reality.��

DM: And because those systems become invisible, so do the assumptions they create. Continuous access to energy begins to feel like a law of nature rather than the outcome of a vast physical and political system. So when disruptions occur, we focus on repairing the flow instead of questioning the system that made uninterrupted flow seem inevitable.��

We could counter this tendency by recognizing that the only long-term source of energy available to life on Earth is the continuous flow of . Every fossil fuel we burn is nothing more than stored sunlight from the distant past. And like any finite reserve, it will eventually run out. What is guaranteed is the steady income of energy from the sun we receive each day, nearly unchanged from one sunrise to the next. Long before humans, life on Earth already adapted to this reality. Plants learned to capture sunlight directly, while animals survived by consuming those that did. Growth has always depended on access to this continuous energy flow. The point is not that we need more solar panels. It is that we need to think like a solar-powered system.

What does it mean to think like a solar-powered system? What would have to change, politically and culturally?

DM: A solar-powered system is one that aligns its activity with incoming energy rather than assuming limitless withdrawals from stored capital. Instead of designing around unlimited energy and perpetual expansion, we’d design around timing, sufficiency, resilience and adaptation. It’s not simply a technological shift; it’s a different way of imagining how society should function with whatever technologies — past, current�� or yet-to-be-invented — make that possible.

The transition isn’t simply replacing fossil fuels with renewable technologies. It’s replacing the mindset fossil fuels made possible. If we continue expecting unlimited growth while changing only the energy source, we’ll recreate many of the same problems in a different form. supports this.�� A durable transition means learning to organize society around the energy that is actually available, rather than around the illusion of limitless reserves.��

AR: We would have to rethink many of the assumptions we’ve inherited about progress and abundance. Much of contemporary culture treats continual expansion as both natural and desirable. Changing energy systems requires changing those stories as well.

For more information, contact Russell at adruss@uw.edu and Muren at dmuren@uw.edu.

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On the second day of “Communications & Design for the Environment,” a Communication Leadership course held for the first time this spring, and took their students to the Apple Store and told them to implode it.

Figuratively, of course.

The concept comes from Donna Haraway, a scholar of science and technology studies, who famously challenged her students to “implode” everyday objects to unpack the way the world works. Russell, a ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý professor of communication, and Muren, a teaching professor of design, applied the technique to their course by challenging students to examine the objects around them and how they connect to the environment and the climate crisis.

For example, in a zine created for the course, Russell and Muren used the implosion method to examine a ceramic mug. The mining, shipping and firing of porcelain clay generates carbon emissions. The industrial molding process creates a low-cost product, but material and energy are wasted on mugs that break easily. A joke giftware mug, which likely gets little use, still leaves behind carbon emissions. This all means that a ceramic mug often has a carbon footprint ten to hundreds of times greater than a glass or plastic mug.

In the Apple Store, the students came prepared with a printed list of things to observe and questions to ask. They went through the implosion process for an hour and a half before returning to the classroom. They then discussed the dissonance that emerged when considering the welcoming store layout and clean brand design with the environmental impact of mining, refining and producing the company’s products.

The course teaches students how to examine the climate crisis and environmental problems from a perspective beyond the hard sciences. From a communication standpoint, this means considering which topics resonate with audiences, whose views get amplified while others are silenced, which ideas are backed by money and more. The design viewpoint means exploring how people get around, what they wear and where they live. Russell and Muren are working on designing a certificate program for Comm Lead, in which students will take a series of courses focused on environmental design and communication.

“The climate crisis is such a huge issue,” Russell said. “A lot of people get stalled trying to deal with it. But what we hope students take away from this class is that no matter where you are or what you do or what your expertise is, there’s an entry point where you can think about things and how they relate to the environment.”

The idea for the course took root at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Russell and Muren happen to be neighbors, and, like so many others, they started a book club to get through lockdown. Much of their respective work revolves around the environment and climate change, so their reading list did, too. And since they were already immersed in��research on the topic anyway, they started planning a class.

“The way communication and design allow you to understand the climate crisis is really different from the scientific or political tradition,” Muren said. “Both of those traditions are powerful, but there’s not a lot that an individual can do within them. You basically need giant actors to fund these huge things for climate change to get addressed by science or the government. We approach it from a more bottom-up, influence-based perspective, where ideological threads can be encoded into objects, spaces or organizations.”

With this in mind, students completed projects that were tailored to their interests and skills. One student, who worked as a user experience designer, was interested in designing more sustainable websites. While redesigning the website of a popular clothing store, she learned how to create websites that use less energy and made a how-to guide for other designers.

Another student, inspired by her Native Hawaiian ancestry, focused on loʻi kalo — traditional Hawaiian wetland farms where taro is cultivated in terraced ponds. She considered the perspective of an organization that’s trying to restore the system, explaining the science and why they’re pursuing it. She created multiple vehicles for the information, including a zine and a presentation that explicitly discussed the reason kids are important to the revitalization’s success.

“One of the things everybody always wants to hear is what they can do about the climate crisis,” Russell said. “The fact of the matter is, there’s no way we can solve this if we just put the most vulnerable people out there and expect them to do it.”

But, Russell said, there are many ways people are engaging with environmental issues. Some professors, for example, work the climate crisis into their everyday classes. There are also alliances like Clean Creatives, a movement of advertising and public relations professionals who refuse to work with fossil fuel clients.

“Our fundamental idea behind this course is shifting people’s mindset to think about how whatever you’re doing can intervene and not exacerbate the climate crisis,” Russell said. “This is very different from talking about individual solutions, and it’s not shifting the responsibility away from governments and corporations that are doing most of the polluting. It’s a mentality shift so people don’t feel so discouraged, and it’s also about the ways we can shape our smaller communities.”

This kind of reframing also allows people to address problems like emissions while simultaneously building resilience.

“We had a farmer come in and present his work on community food sovereignty and racial inclusivity around food,” Muren said. “He’s trying to bring wine and people of color together in community. That’s a joyful side effect of trying to solve the climate crisis. It doesn’t have to be all about these negative things if you can think about it in clever, more holistic ways.”

For more information, contact Russell at adruss@uw.edu and Muren at dmuren@uw.edu.

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There is a place where the climate crisis and the information crisis collide, and wants to take you there.

“We hear a lot about both,” said Russell, professor of communication at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, “but not a lot of talk about how they intersect.”

In her new book, “,” Russell examines how journalism, activism, corporations and Big Tech battle to influence the public about climate change. The book, published in August by Columbia University Press, documents how the world’s inadequate response to the climate crisis is intertwined with challenges in the communication realm. It’s more difficult than ever to find reliable information and to foster healthy debate.

UW News sat down with Russell to discuss her book, the dual crises and potential solutions.

You write about how the work of journalists and climate activists is being undermined by the current information environment. What do you mean by that?

Adrienne Russell: One of the primary hurdles to making progress in terms of climate action is the pollution filling the information landscape. There’s a lot of energy being put into debunking bad information. But that will never work because the information system we’ve created rewards pollution. I started out looking at what journalists are facing — what is happening online and why it’s so hard for good information to rise to the top. We assume good information rises — that in the so-called “marketplace of ideas” the best ideas will win out. But does it really seem to anyone that the best information is winning the day? Our information environment is built to do the opposite. It’s tilted to fuel the most emotional and the most extreme stories, which aren’t sober, evidence-based, solutions-oriented stories. What does it mean when we are guided by an assumption that’s just fundamentally wrong? What’s dictating the mechanisms of our public sphere?

The people who are working hard to make change are being undercut every step of the way. My book looks at journalists, activists and technological infrastructure. What I found is that a lot of journalists are doing a great job covering climate change: adapting professional practices and recognizing that climate justice is an issue. Activists are also doing a great job — consider the recent pipeline victories and the way young people have gotten us to think more about the rights of future generations. But it’s all undermined both directly and indirectly in this information environment.

We all kind of inherently understand this because of the way we’ve adapted our online behavior. Just think of the things you will or won’t say or do online. Everything you do is with the recognition that data is being collected and possibly used against you. There’s this everyday way we’re kind of prohibited from genuinely relating to one another online. There’s also this reality that the people producing good-quality information and campaigns are being harassed. There’s noise being injected into the system that obscures good information.

I would say there are three different levels to what’s happening. One is the noise, which is when there is a lot of bot behavior and misinformation — like distraction tactics. It’s hard for readers and viewers to determine the facts. The other thing is that people — climate scientists and politicians, and especially women and people of color — are facing harassment and death threats. This is happening not just in the United States but all over the world. Finally, we have this assumption that the internet is simply ambivalent, a tool that can be used for good or bad. We assume people like Mark Zuckerberg are trying to do good. We have given them a lot of freedom and access to make great technologies and earn a lot of money. As a result, public life is conducted seamlessly offline and online. But we must actively create circumstances where they recognize and fulfill their obligation to consider the public interest among the top priorities in their work. They’re building and maintaining the infrastructure of public life. There must be rules.

Can you discuss some potential solutions to these problems?

AR: People who study this have come up with good solutions. For example, we need to hold platforms accountable. We should break up the tech oligarchy. And we should demand interoperability, or the ability of different systems to communicate. That way, if we don’t like what any platform or application is doing, we can take all our connections and content with us when we leave. If platforms were required to be open, it would make them accountable, because people could leave if they wanted.

But the overarching thing is, we need to stop thinking about freedom only from the perspective of individual rights. We need to think about freedom to breathe clean air, the freedom to use the web without being tracked and deluged with junk information and intimidated and threatened. A lot of people aren’t free really to speak in public or publish work online, because they’ll draw death threats, because they’ll be concerned for the safety of their loved ones. We’re looking at freedom in all the wrong ways.

What do you hope readers learn about the climate and information crises from this book?

AR: I hope people start to understand the climate crisis isn’t just a scientific issue. It’s a social and communication issue. That takes it out of the hands of only professionals and makes people understand that they are involved. I don’t mean on an individual level, like recycling, but in the way that there are everyday things we’re experiencing that are getting in the way of progress.

There is literature on how the most important thing you can do about climate change is to talk about it, and to talk about it with people who may not agree with you. Especially in the United States, there is a lot of climate change denialism, and people don’t talk about it because they think there’s nothing they can do.

If we instead start talking and putting pressure on policymakers, or voting with the climate and information crises in mind, we start helping each other understand things. We must accept that we’re making an energy system that will better serve the public and the planet, and we must also begin making a communication and information system that does the same.

For more information, contact Russell at adruss@uw.edu.

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