A Path Towards Justice:
A Just Transition

Climate! Jobs! Justice!

It is essential that, worldwide, we reach zero-emissions by 2050 to halt any additional anthropocentric global warming. According to climate and environmental justice advocates, like the Climate Justice Alliance, any plans to reach zero-emissions need to integrate strategies for a “Just Transition”. A just transition occurs when a community "transitions" or moves away from a fossil fuel-based economy that produces environmental harm to a zero-emission, clean energy economy that improves environmental and human well-being and facilitates socially equitable outcomes. Moving away from fossil fuels often presents a fear of widespread job loss. However, a just transition aims to make sure that a zero-emissions economy provides new jobs, trains fossil fuel laborers for these emerging jobs, and supports the needs of the wider community by placing equity and justice at its center (World Resources Institute). 

The Climate Justice Alliance explains that strategies for a just transition were first developed by labor unions and environmental justice (EJ) groups who were from or represented low-income communities of color, and saw the need to phase out the industries that were harming workers, community health and the planet. These polluting industries are often rooted in or nearby communities of color, and subsequently, are also often a source of jobs within those same communities (read Dr. Robert Bullard's "Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality" to learn more). So, labor unions and EJ organizers also identified a need to provide just pathways for workers to transition to new jobs in the zero-emission economy. Just transition strategies today have been expanded to include communities as a whole through demanding compensation and reparations for communities who have been harmed by polluters. 

"The clean energy future is bright. With the right policies and community engagement, we can build opportunities for high-quality jobs for displaced workers. We can empower and support communities that have suffered through years of neglect and pollution. And we must strive to ensure that every member of the community benefits. That’s what the principle of a just transition is all about,” writes the National Resources Defense Council's Brian Palmer.

What does a just transition look like?

Well, it depends on who you ask. Just transition strategies are meant to be specific to the community facing the transition away from fossil fuels. But Lara Ettenson, director of the energy efficiency initiative in NRDC’s Climate & Clean Energy Program says,"...there are a few things that are needed in every situation: diverse local representation to ensure the transition plan is equitably designed by and for the community, accessible job training with connections to high-quality jobs, and sufficient funding to make the transition plan possible.” 

The Green New Deal (GND) is one of the better-known proposals with strategies to help facilitate a just transition with federal backing. The GND draws inspiration from President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal from the post-depression era and is basically a 14-page roadmap of "massive program of investments in clean-energy jobs and infrastructure, meant to transform not just the energy sector, but the entire economy," writes Vox's David Roberts, and it is meant to get the job done as quickly as possible. Most notably, it contains a federal jobs guarantee and promises to promote justice and equity by "stopping current, preventing future, and remediating historic cases of oppression" in the U.S. by working with frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal mobilization at the local level.