ANALYZING THE REQUIREMENTS OF A SUSTAINABLE, WORKER-INVOLVED JUST TRANSITION

The current climate emergency is one of the most serious threats to our world, with weather events reaching new extremes in recent years, leading to high numbers of weather-related deaths and displacements. Scientific reports call for progressive actions to curb climate change, including the phasing out the use of fossil fuels; as it currently stands, no climate objective set by any government is far-reaching enough to limit global warming to under 2C above pre-industrial limits, as has been deemed necessary by scientists to effectively control the climate emergency. Despite the need to transition away from fossil fuels, it is equally imperative that governments consider the workers and regions who depend on these industries and who will be negatively impacted by their phasing out. This concept – that of ensuring workers’ rights and standards of living are protected during the transition away from fossil fuels – has been referred to in the past decades as “just transition” and has been included in climate legislation such as the Paris Agreement. There is a growing argument, however, that just transition cannot only be transitioning away from fossil fuels. Instead, it must also be transitioning away from how we conduct business in our society, in which we perceive economic growth as the only way forward, even at the cost of our environment and the safety of workers who make economic growth possible. This system and its focus on growth, after all, is a leading factor in how emissions got to their current level. It can therefore be argued that there is no legitimate sustainable path forward, even within “green energy”, without rethinking how our economic model should function. This research seeks to analyze what a “just transition” in the United States might look like under these considerations, and how a true just transition, one that effectively balances and progresses the needs of both a growing climate emergency and labor rights, may be realized.