TY - JOUR
T1 - Contesting just transitions
T2 - Climate delay and the contradictions of labour environmentalism
AU - Harry, Steven
AU - Maltby, Tomas
AU - Szulecki, Kacper
N1 - Funding Information:
The concept of \u2018just transition\u2019 (hereafter JT) is one of the most important discursive constructions in contemporary environmental politics. Developed in the late 20th century as a union initiative in the global North to reconcile occupational and environmental objectives, the concept has since become a key feature in global climate and energy politics (Morena et al., 2020; Stevis, 2023; Stevis & Felli, 2015, 2020). This includes energy transition policies such as the Paris Agreement's commitment to \u201CTak[e] into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce\u201D (UNFCCC, 2015, p. 1) the Silesia Declaration on Solidarity and Just Transition from the 2018 UN climate summit (UN, 2018), and within the EU's Just Transition Fund (Commission, 2021). In the US, President Joe Biden has argued that energy transitions provide \u201Copportunities to create well-paying union jobs\u201D whilst also \u201Cdeliver[ing] an equitable, clean energy future\u201D (White House, 2021).We acknowledge the financial support of the King's Climate & Sustainability Seed Fund as well as the INCLUDE research centre for socially inclusive energy transitions at the University of Oslo. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the \u201CDelay as the new denial: actors, strategies, and practices\u201D workshop held in Oslo in September 2022, the Environment and Public Policy Group workshop at King's College London in June 2023, and the panel \u201CDelay as the new denial\u201D at the 2023 ECPR General Conference in Prague. We thank the participants of these events as well as the anonymous referees for the valuable feedback.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors
PY - 2024/4/18
Y1 - 2024/4/18
N2 - The notion of ‘just transition’ (JT) is an attempt to align climate and energy objectives with the material concerns of industrial workers, frontline communities, and marginalised groups. Despite the potential for fusing social and environmental justice, there is growing concern that the concept is being mobilised in practice as a form of ‘climate delayism’: a problem more ambiguous than open forms of denialism as it draws in multiple and conflictual agents, practices, and discourses. Using an historical materialist framework, attentive to both energy-capital and capital-labour relations, we show how JT is vulnerable to forces and relations of climate delay across both fossil capital and climate capital hegemonic projects. We review this through an engagement with the climate obstructionism literature and the theory of labour environmentalism: the political engagement of trade unionists and workers with environmental issues. As tensions within the labour movement surface amidst the unsettling of the carbon capital hegemony, we assess the degree to which (organised) labour—as an internally differentiated, contradictory movement—is participating in climate breakdown through a ‘praxis of delay’. Trade unions and industrial workers are often implicated in resisting or undermining transitions, but this is related significantly to their structural power relations vis a vis the fossil hegemony. Notably, JT negotiations are themselves structurally embedded within the carbon capital economy. The general preferences of trade unions for social over environmental justice might be prevalent but are neither universal nor inevitable; JT is open and contested political terrain, and labour-environmental struggles remain imperative for building just energy futures.
AB - The notion of ‘just transition’ (JT) is an attempt to align climate and energy objectives with the material concerns of industrial workers, frontline communities, and marginalised groups. Despite the potential for fusing social and environmental justice, there is growing concern that the concept is being mobilised in practice as a form of ‘climate delayism’: a problem more ambiguous than open forms of denialism as it draws in multiple and conflictual agents, practices, and discourses. Using an historical materialist framework, attentive to both energy-capital and capital-labour relations, we show how JT is vulnerable to forces and relations of climate delay across both fossil capital and climate capital hegemonic projects. We review this through an engagement with the climate obstructionism literature and the theory of labour environmentalism: the political engagement of trade unionists and workers with environmental issues. As tensions within the labour movement surface amidst the unsettling of the carbon capital hegemony, we assess the degree to which (organised) labour—as an internally differentiated, contradictory movement—is participating in climate breakdown through a ‘praxis of delay’. Trade unions and industrial workers are often implicated in resisting or undermining transitions, but this is related significantly to their structural power relations vis a vis the fossil hegemony. Notably, JT negotiations are themselves structurally embedded within the carbon capital economy. The general preferences of trade unions for social over environmental justice might be prevalent but are neither universal nor inevitable; JT is open and contested political terrain, and labour-environmental struggles remain imperative for building just energy futures.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85190528422&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103114
DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103114
M3 - Article
SN - 0962-6298
VL - 112
JO - POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
JF - POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
M1 - 103114
ER -
