The green transition is necessary. It is also, as currently designed, a form of displacement.
Solar panels are manufactured with electricity from coal plants. Electric vehicles charge on grids that haven't gone clean. The minerals that power batteries are mined by hands that will never see the profits.
In ten sharp, research-driven essays, Ayush Ram examines what gets left out of the story we tell about clean energy - who pays for the transition, who controls it, and who gets to decide what "sustainable" actually means. From India's coal-dependent grid to the geopolitics of lithium and cobalt, from democratic gridlock to the rural communities left out of climate policy, these essays trace a single argument across ten angles: that good intentions are not the same as good outcomes.
Grounded in India's specific contradictions but built for a global argument, Uncomfortable Solutions doesn't ask readers to abandon the green transition. It asks them to look at it honestly.