As we enter one other pandemic yr feeling cautiously hopeful and trying to deal with a mess of intertwined international crises — poverty, air pollution, pandemic — our Simply Transition Alliance staff wished to share some reflections on navigating 2022.
Luckily for us, this GreenBiz piece by Joel Makower offered a framework for such reflections.
Makower invitations reader’s suggestions on two questions:
- What does “simply transition” imply?
- Who ought to outline “simply transition”?
Opposite to Makower’s remark that “for the uninitiated, it’s a compelling, albeit imprecise time period,” simply transition is something however imprecise. Advanced, sure. Controversial, possibly. However actually not imprecise.
Let’s begin with its etymology — the historical past and use of the time period within the environmental justice (EJ) motion, the place 500 years of resistance to colonial extractivism has formed our understanding of simply transition over the previous 5 a long time.
Historical past defines the complexity
Whereas some — appropriately — attribute the coining of “simply transition” to Oil, Chemical and Atomic Staff Union (OCAWU) chief Tony Mazzochi, that is solely half of a bigger story. Like different dominant-culture narratives, the OCAWU story has emerged in a extremely sanitized type, fully enhancing out the roles of Black, brown and Indigenous communities.
By definition, ‘simply transition’ and ‘net-zero’ are contradictory phrases. When used collectively they type an oxymoron.
All through the Nineteen Sixties, ’70s and ’80s, simply transition developed by means of dialogue between communities of shade and labor organizers on the frontlines of extractive industries threatening neighborhood and employee well being, our ecological life-support programs and Indigenous land protection. The place Black, brown, Indigenous, migrant and poor white communities have been combating polluting vitality, petrochemical and waste firms, industrial employees and their unions have been typically pitted towards our communities by firms utilizing the false binary debate of jobs versus setting.
That is the place OCAWU, the Communication Vitality and Paperworkers Union and lots of different radical — principally native — unions stepped in to work with our communities to battle numerous polluting industries. Guided by widespread trigger, these collaborations served to construct relational belief between labor and environmental justice actions by means of the Nineties.
The formation of the Simply Transition Alliance passed off once we realized that collaborating on place-based methods to finish such hurt and create native alternate options was the best method ahead. We knew we needed to work previous our variations and align our efforts for the lengthy haul — as a result of change is inevitable and justice just isn’t.
Thus, the idea and time period of “simply transition” was born on the intersection of employee rights, occupational well being and security, environmental, financial and racial justice, with a common imaginative and prescient of systemic change. For as we speak’s local weather justice motion, it represents a physique of rules, processes and practices that assist us shift away from polluting, extractive industrial complexes and in direction of place-based economies that serve the wants of communities, employees and the setting. It is usually a essential path for navigating all of the storms, floods, fires, droughts, air pollution, pandemic, police, prisons and different types of structural violence headed our method.
Methods outlined by these first and most affected
This brings us to Makower’s second query. Who ought to or will get to outline simply transition is definitely answered by a core environmental justice worth: “Nothing about us, with out us.” All selections, designs, insurance policies and investments that decide change for any industrial sector should be led by these employees and communities traditionally most impacted by the sector. Therefore, any authorities, educational establishment or nongovernmental group dedicated to simply transition ought to search the management of these whose lived expertise gives the perfect steerage and people whose lives, labor and livelihoods are most harmed.
In his article, Makower appropriately notes, “[Just transition] will quickly turn out to be desk stakes inside corporations that “over time … will turn out to be broadly used, overused and presumably abused, utilized indiscriminately to corporations, merchandise, providers, authorities applications.” Nevertheless, we refute the declare that “simply transition is the brand new web zero.”
Actual options, not net-zero nonsense
By definition, “simply transition” and “web zero” are contradictory phrases. When used collectively they type an oxymoron.
As we lately defined to Beltway allies who launched the Inexperienced New Deal decision to U.S. Congress, coupling simply transition with “net-zero emissions targets” is like saying we should always blindly permit polluting firms to resolve what decarbonization pathways go well with their fancy. Our actions would by no means conform to have foxes guarding the henhouse.
“Web zero” signifies that polluting firms, governments and markets can erase their complete sum of greenhouse gasoline emissions on a spreadsheet with out really lowering their air pollution masses. It does this through mechanisms reminiscent of: investing in renewable vitality applications that subsidize poisonous applied sciences reminiscent of nuclear energy, waste and biomass incineration; shopping for forest conservation offsets that result in the displacement of Indigenous individuals and proliferate dangerous biofuels (palm oil) and monoculture plantations; subsidizing fossil-fuel extraction by means of unproven, harmful technofixes reminiscent of carbon seize and storage.
To Makower’s credit score, he gives honest protection of web zero in a earlier piece, pointing to the vary of opposition that has emerged in recent times, primarily on account of critique by Indigenous communities and grassroots EJ actions all over the world.
Within the lead-up to COP26, greater than 700 teams from all over the world demanded that governments help Actual Options, Not Web Zero. Regardless of such common demand, the United Nations continued advancing a neoliberal mandate on the twenty sixth “Convention of Profiteers.” We witnessed spurious negotiations to advance carbon markets and the emergence of a brand new greenwashing risk — Nature-Primarily based Options.
Web zero promotes fossil-fuel subsidies
Web-zero emissions targets are certainly not a brand new risk. This carbon market flexibility idea was constructed on the foundations of many neoliberal, profiteering schemes — carbon neutrality, cap and commerce, cap and dividend and forest carbon offsets, to call a couple of. Environmental justice communities have at all times been cautious of such monetary schemes that search to show revenue from hurt.
Now we have at all times asserted that efficient local weather justice methods should be developed by the management of frontline communities and employees, not by employed weapons who serve transnational firms. For this reason we opposed the Waxman Markey cap-and-trade invoice in 2010. During the last decade, witnessing the failure of air pollution buying and selling regimes reminiscent of California’s AB32, our opposition has grown.
Nevertheless, we proceed to face billions of public {dollars} being handed to soiled vitality by federal initiatives such because the Construct Again Higher Act. To successfully transfer cash away from such fossil-fuel subsidies and in direction of actual options, we want bigger, extra privileged civil society teams (nationwide inexperienced teams, worldwide unions, local weather philanthropy) and neighborhood companies to affix us in opposing these schemes.
Resisting local weather cash laundering
To assist our allies perceive such market-based schemes, dangerous technofixes and hole guarantees, we lately revealed “Hoodwinked within the Hothouse,” a guidebook for understanding how catastrophe capitalists search to fleece public coffers at numerous ranges of governance and public spending — from metropolis councils and tribal nations to the budgets of nation states and international mechanisms being developed on the UNFCCC.
Co-authored by dozens of veteran local weather justice organizers and coverage advocates, “Hoodwinked” is an inoculation towards the worldwide greenwash pandemic. The place 1000’s of personal consultants, researchers and teachers are being recruited to guard the established order of soiled vitality, we have to keep away from being duped as many have previously — reminiscent of when the oil and gasoline business employed medical-health consultants previously employed by the tobacco cartel to assert their services have been secure.
As at all times, one of the simplest ways to make sure the integrity of simply transition is to show to the true consultants — frontline communities and employees — to outline its phrases and situations.
