96: What exactly is just transition?

‘Transition is inevitable. Justice is not.’

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In the past five years, the term “just transition” has become, maybe not a household term, but certainly pervasive throughout climate discourse. You see it in environmental justice groups’ missions, academic papers, government policy, NGO campaigns, philanthropic strategies, corporate PR, even chamber of commerce talking points.

Rooted in the labor movement, in its current, simplest form, just transition means moving to a low-carbon economy in such a way that workers and communities that were once reliant on the fossil fuel economy for their livelihoods are not left behind. The classic example is, when a coal plant shuts down, making sure the workers have things like severance or early retirement funds, job training, comparable-wage jobs in other industries, etc. Because the change is going to happen, but the question is, at whose cost—or as Climate Justice Alliance puts it, “Transition is inevitable. Justice is not.”

The term catapulted into the mainstream when, through no small struggle, labor and justice advocates managed to get one little baby clause into the preamble of the 2015 Paris Agreement, calling for a “just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities…” Three years later, it was a central topic in COP24 in Katowice, Poland.

As with the spread of terminology like climate justice, sustainability before that, and even the word “green” before that, it’s an indicator of the concept’s power and a testament to the work of the people who elevated it. A victory, in other words. But just transition’s widespread adoption also threatens to undermine that power, splintering it into new meanings, watering it down, hijacking and steering it away from its original purpose. At the same time, how just transition plays out in the real world can vary enormously based on the communities, governments and economies putting it into action.

That’s the premise of Just Transitions: Social Justice in the Shift Towards a Low-Carbon World, a 2019 collection of essays by scholars and activists edited by Dimitris Stevis, Edouard Morena, and Dunja Krause. (I’m a longtime fan of Morena’s work, particularly his book The Price of Climate Action, and last year we co-authored an article for the French publication AOC on Bloomberg’s presidential candidacy. You can read about it here.) Through a look at the history of just transition and several case studies from around the world, the book seeks to answer the question: What is at the heart of the concept, and how can it be put into action in ways that honor its true intention?

The editors set out to challenge the frequent lip service paid to the concept, starting with discussion of COP24, which was known as the “Just Transition COP,” but seemed to mostly miss the point (it was also sponsored by coal companies). The Katowice COP, “rather than providing a clear sense of how a just transition can be achieved, exposed the gap between climate policy makers’ narrow understandings of just transition, and the complex and multifaceted reality of a ‘living concept’ whose origins and meanings lie deep in the everyday experiences of workers and frontline communities.”

Aside from blatant hypocrisies surrounding the use of the term, it’s also been diluted, tossed into every platform and strategy document with little commitment to its meaning. The editors quote NAACP’s Jacqueline Patterson saying, “It’s a concern when Big Greens and others are using the term and getting funded for using the term. It’s become the term du jour for foundations, and those front-line communities become objectified.”

The evolution of the term hasn’t been all bad, however. For example, grassroots climate justice groups in the United States have broadened the ambitions of just transition, calling not just for a move to new and dignified jobs, but to “build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy,” as the Climate Justice Alliance describes it.

In fact, though it may have drifted from its distinct labor union origins, we have the just transition concept largely to thank for the way the modern climate movement is laced with labor and social justice goals, from the Green New Deal to global climate strikes. And though there may be a battle underway for just transition’s meaning, the authors suggest that the idea has plenty of juice left, if its practitioners remain rooted in its history and the needs of workers and communities.

Origin in unions

Just Transitions emphasizes that to understand the concept, you must understand its origin in trade unions. The editors describe how just transition long predates the climate movement, starting in the 1970s and 1980s to allow workers a path out of jobs with dangerous environmental and health hazards, or to provide support when such industries were shut down or shipped overseas.

Just transition eventually became the animating force that would allow labor and environmental movements to unite around common goals. Anabella Rosemberg, of Greenpeace International and formerly of the International Trade Union Confederation, chronicles how the labor movement went from ambivalence and sometimes animosity toward the environmental movement (and vice versa) to becoming a central actor in climate negotiations.

Still today, American unions sometimes fight environmental regulations and the transition to renewables, mainly because new energy jobs in the US are often not union jobs, but the 1990s were a time of much greater tension between the movements (in large part because of the influence of the AFL-CIO). The two camps were divided by the industry narrative that jobs and environmental regulation were inherently at odds. But in the 2000s, the labor movement, especially international unions, went from a mainly defensive stance, to a proactive one on climate and the environment. Labor fought for a role within cliquey and elitist global climate negotiations, met with suspicion and even disbelief that they would be sincerely dedicated to the issue. But eventually the UNFCCC granted unions official “constituency” status, alongside business, research, and nonprofit organizations.

It was their added power, in part, that managed to get just transition into the Paris Agreement and by extension into mainstream discourse. But, as Rosemberg concludes, the inclusion of just transition language became seen as too much of an end in itself. The real power of the concept is as a means to build organizing power between workers and climate advocates “and in the process, re-place the values of international solidarity and social justice at the heart of both the union and climate agendas.”

The never-ending story

One of my favorite chapters in the book is an essay by Nils Moussu of the University of Lausanne, who critiques the way corporations co-opt just transition to retain power and perpetuate business as usual. As Moussu points out, businesses have done a remarkable job of positioning themselves as climate heroes, despite being the largest emitters of carbon dioxide and often powerful forces blocking government action on climate. The goal in framing themselves as climate leaders is to retain their hegemony and increase their power to define climate change solutions as mainly technological and market-based, such that they can protect profits and prevent new regulations.

This is done in large part through powerful messaging campaigns that have allowed corporate actors to “present themselves as the main architects of a ‘safe and prosperous future,'” thereby avoiding criticism, setting limits on what is permissible within climate action, and shutting out more radical or transformative alternatives that would undermine their power:

As the main character of the narrative, unsurprisingly, business describes itself as a ‘frustrated hero’ willing to do more, provided that the ‘right regulations’ are put in place (e.g. regulations that favour price signals through carbon pricing over command-and-control policies). Through this self-description, business is able to escape the role of the villain and to promote the view that climate talks should not be about business, but conducted in dialogue with business, and that these talks should produce regulation for business instead of regulation of business.

The best way I can think of to illustrate this is through a sketch in Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, which is honestly my primary way of engaging with the world lately. In the sketch, someone driving a hot dog-shaped car crashes into a business storefront, and as the people inside are trying to figure out what happened, one guy in particular is super eager to find the culprit.

Moussu describes the rhetorical flourishes businesses use in their mission statements and goals that may include just transition, but in the same breath as other goals that are very likely in contradiction to it. Using language like “while,” “at the same time,” and “without sacrificing,” corporate just transition plans describe only win-win situations, which are never likely, and lack specifics on what happens when someone actually has to give something up or pay for something (spoiler, it is not them). In other words, they offer the promise of actions that may not serve their bottom line, on the condition that such actions serve their bottom line.

Another main insight is recognizing that corporations have folded the idea of just transition into a long-running industry CSR strategy, the “business in transition” narrative. In short, industry presents a narrative that 1) things were going along business as usual, 2) something alarming happened that requires urgent action, 3) business is already working on the solution but more needs to be done, and 4) if business’s hands are not tied by regulations, they can lead the way forward. But the trick is, this is a never-ending story. It is always a work in progress, wherein corporate actors must adapt to the latest challenge to continue their tireless work of ensuring a healthy and sustainable world when, in reality, their underlying objectives of profit, growth and power are undermining that world.

Reading this chapter, the inescapable “climate pledge” comes to mind. Every industry, every business, every government has issued some ambitious, say, 30-year climate pledge. Lots of long-term ambition, far too little short-term action to get there. But you have our pledge. We are working on it. Check back in 2050 and we’ll give you an update.

A revolutionary political project

The remaining bulk of the book is case studies, from the American South, South Africa, Germany, Argentina, Australia, and Canada, presenting a drumbeat of reminders that local culture, systems and economies shape how climate action unfolds. There’s no one solution. Places with tremendous advantages often disappoint, while seemingly hopeless political environments yield inspiring success.

The best example of the latter comes from Jackson, Mississippi, written by Kali Akuno, executive director of Cooperation Jackson, a Black-led network of worker-owned cooperatives and supporting institutions that is blossoming within a highly conservative political regime that is holding back communities of color. “As Peter Moskowitz wrote, ‘The idea is essentially this: since Jackson’s current economy isn’t working for its residents, and its current political system isn’t doing much to help, why not create a new economic and political system right alongside the old one?’”

Cooperation Jackson is similar to networks like PUSH Buffalo in New York or Boston Ujima Project, which carve out small, alternative economies within the husk of the old economy, but do so with the intention of building power and changing society outside of its own immediate scope. So Cooperation Jackson consists of an urban farming collective, a cafe and catering service, and a landscaping and composting service, operating from a community center and 20 parcels of land it owns. The network is also building an “eco-village” pilot project, a live-work community on a protected land trust, with solar-thermal energy and permaculture landscaping.

But Cooperation Jackson also educates its members on organizing and political principles, advocates for changes to municipal regulations, and through participation in networks like the It Takes Roots Alliance, advocates for national policy change. All of this is undergirded by a commitment to nothing short of societal transformation.

“It is about simultaneously and inextricably transitioning the self, the community, the city and the world. In this sense, it differs from more common understandings of just transition that centre on the energy sector and workers, and that do not carry a broader, emancipatory and revolutionary political project.”

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Other examples are downright depressing, like Australia’s corporate capture and redefining of just transition. The example in Canada is a rare, top-down government effort that does a pretty good job of supporting workers, but it’s all in service of transitioning the country’s coal plants to natural gas plants, which undermines the necessary emissions reductions. Also Canada doesn’t even burn very much coal so whomp whomp. It reminds me, not of the US government’s efforts of course don’t be silly, but our liberal philanthropic (Bloomberg) and market-led coal shutdown that enabled a ton of new gas infrastructure whomp whomp.

So on one level, I guess I came away from this book, which overall I highly recommend, somewhat depressed by the state of just transition. It serves a little like a pair of those sunglasses in Rowdy Roddy Piper masterpiece They Live, but you put them on and instead of seeing the words “just transition” you might see the words “quarterly earnings” or “corporate partnerships.”

But that’s definitely not always the case, as the Jackson example shows, and above all else the editors and authors plumb the complexity and challenges of true just transition. Also the reality that it’s not an end state; it’s a pursuit. Much like electing a new president who does not have a gold toilet or a wave of racial justice protests, just transition is a portal to something better. And it can be an extremely powerful one, as it not only offers a distant view of a shiny new post-carbon future, but also leads us to many real-world paths to getting there.

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Listening

I can’t stop listening to this brand new record By the Time I Get to Phoenix, from Tempe, Arizona rap group Injury Reserve, which sounds like listening to the apocalypse but in a good way. There’s actually a really sad story behind it because Jordan Groggs one of the MCs died at 32 last year, so this is the last thing he recorded. But it is very good and has haunting lines like “The smoke never clear / strap up your own boots it’s all uphill from here” and “You better run and hide / take your ass inside/ If you don’t go breathe the air you might stay alive” and “But let’s be honest here / This don’t end with agree to disagree, it ain’t possible.”

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Going to keep it simple today folks. I would like to dedicate this issue to the older gentleman who lived next door to us, who I would regularly pass while walking the dogs and he would be sitting on a stool in his open garage next to his Lincoln sedan smoking a cigar and I would wave to him and say how’s it going and he’d wave and say howaahhya every time. Or sometimes I’d see him from a distance and he’d just put a hand up to wave and I’d put a hand up to wave. Today a fire truck and an ambulance pulled up to the curb and it turned out that his family came to visit and he had passed away in his home.

I never got his name, and it always seemed like that wave and hello was really the extent of the socialization he was looking for, but I do regret that I never talked to him at any length. I left him a note during the pandemic to call if he needed anything but never heard from him. Anyway, he was getting up there, and it happens when you live in an old neighborhood, but I’ll be sad to not see him in his garage smoking his cigars, always eager to wave hello. It was a nice moment, I hope, in both of our days, and I will miss it.

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