Mijin Cha Demands a Just Transition

J. Mijin Cha is an assistant professor in the environmental studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, affiliate faculty in the legal studies department, and on the Faculty Advisory Board at the UCSC Center for Labor and Community. She is also a Fellow at Cornell University’s Climate Jobs Institute, serves on the Board of Greenpeace USA Fund and is Emeritus Board at the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment (CRPE). Her book, A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future will be released in Fall 2024 from MIT Press.

The transition to a more environmentally sustainable economy is inevitable. It’s a necessity to avoid catastrophic climate change — we don’t really have a choice. The choice we face, says Professor Cha, is whether or not the transition will be just. Will we support the workers and communities affected by this transformative economic and social change?

The scale of the transition

The biggest task in the transition is decarbonizing the economy — a change which will have massive consequences. Entire industries will be eliminated or drastically reduced. The most obvious cases are fossil fuel extraction, refinement, and distribution, which employ hundreds of thousands of Americans. And many more industries rely on these fossil fuels for inputs to production (from adhesives to yarn) or energy. Some will be able to pivot to renewable sources, but this will take time and effort. Millions of jobs will be directly or indirectly affected.

These effects spill over to communities and local economies. Industries and jobs don’t just provide incomes for individuals, they also provide tax revenue for essential government services. Many local and state governments are dependent on revenue from carbon intensive industries. For example, in Wyoming, “revenue from coal mining provides more than 40 percent of the entire state budget.” On top of the economic effects, there are social effects: “losing a plant or factory that served as a community anchor is traumatic for both individuals and the collective. These worksites provide more than much needed revenue: they are often social hubs that generate community identity.”

The impact of decarbonization becomes even more complicated when considering how it is distributed in society: the costs and benefits are not shared equally. Some places are highly dependent on carbon-intensive industries, while others are only indirectly exposed. The racial implications are nuanced; for the most part, “fossil fuel employment skews male and white,” but “in places like Louisiana and California, fossil fuel infrastructure is often sited in communities of color, who bear the brunt of the pollution and health impacts but can also lose jobs and local tax revenue when plants close.”

Injustice in economic transition isn’t just a hypothetical. It’s happened before in the process of deindustrialization and globalization. Cha explored the human side of these changes as part of the Just Transition Listening Project which spoke with workers and community leaders about their experiences with economic changes. Listening to these voices, there’s no doubt; unjust transitions create suffering. Governments didn’t support people whose economic situation was harmed by these changes, so their health, identity, and relationships were harmed, too.

Moreover, the green transition is not off in the distant future. Cha emphasized that it’s happening now, and failing to act accordingly will recreate the errors of the past.

The answer from economics

The standard economic approach to decarbonization is either carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems. The idea is to get the price or quantity right and let the private sector respond in its own way. In other words, put the right tax or cap on carbon emissions, and allow businesses and individuals to work out the consequences of the transition.

This approach limits the role of the public sector — even for fundamental changes to peoples’ livelihoods. Some economists will advocate for subsidies to research and use of green technologies, but even that has less support than carbon pricing. When it comes to creating new jobs to replace the old, the belief is that capital will chase labor (businesses will invest in areas where labor is cheap) or labor will chase capital (people will find jobs by “moving to opportunity”).

Also, almost all of the focus in economics is on national or international policies. Economists tend to be skeptical of local or place-based policies because they may encourage competition (for instance in tax rates) between places, be manipulated by local officials, or see all their benefits go to local landowners.

On the other hand

Cha sees the economic answer — and most of environmental policymaking — as inadequate. She raised a few key points for doing better.

• Rethink assumptions about value: Economic methods like cost-benefit analysis are often treated as morally neutral exercises with objective results. However, any estimate of the costs and benefits of decarbonization will be based on debatable assumptions which carry moral weight — including the fundamental assumption that costs and benefits can be quantified at all. Cha’s view is that some things simply can’t be objectively priced or are priceless. She says we shouldn’t put a price on things like clean air and clean water because “as soon as we put a number on it, that means there’s a number on the opposite side that can justify it not existing.”
• Pay attention to inequalities: Reducing costs and benefits to single numbers means overlooking the important questions of “costs to whom?” and “benefits to whom?” Economists haven’t ignored inequality or the distributional effects of the green transition, however there are many dimensions of inequality, and they haven’t all received enough attention. Most notable are the spatial inequalities: some places are far more exposed to pollution (sacrifice zones) and more exposed to job losses.
• Consider political realities: Even a policy which perfectly manages all economic problems doesn’t mean much if it never becomes law. So, proposals should be realistic about the political process. For example, Cha argues that we should aim for complete decarbonization and that a carbon tax large enough to do so is unlikely to happen. The other side of political considerations is making policies which increase support for the green transition, such as creating or subsidizing jobs to replace the ones that are lost.
• Take a holistic approach: Many aspects of society need to change in order to successfully transition to an environmentally sustainable economy. Laws which directly restrict emission are obviously a major component, but there are other national and international policies that should change, such as integrating renewables into the power grid and creating a public renewable power agency. Society must be reorganized at the local level, too. For example, the infrastructure in most American cities is designed around cars, so laws and physical spaces must be updated to accommodate greener methods of travel.
• Don’t just transition; transition justly: Most of the attention in economics has been on decarbonizing. This is essential to the economic transition, but to transition justly we must deal with the impact of this change. The most pressing issue is creating good jobs for those who are losing them, but policymakers should also be mindful of people’s health and communities. And it’s important that climate injustice isn’t replaced with a new injustice, for instance by replacing coal mines with prisons or replacing one kind of unsustainable extraction with another. This all requires action at the national level, but the bulk of the work is at the local level. Every place is affected differently by the transition, so just policies will vary.

Cha also highlighted important synergies in her recommendations. For example, focusing on a just transition, which manages the impact of economic changes, will help build public support for green policies and ease political challenges. If the transition is going to destroy someone’s job, they must choose between supporting their own livelihood or fighting global climate change. If instead they can get a new job which is just as good as the old, they don’t face this choice. And taking a holistic approach by focusing on local economies can help here, too. If the jobs are created locally (instead of forcing people to move to opportunity), people don’t have to choose between staying near their friends and family or promoting the green transition.

The focus on jobs and labor is important. In many ways, workers are on the front line of the transition, both because so many jobs hang in the balance and because workers are often the most exposed to environmental hazards. So, environmental advocates can collaborate with labor interests to everyone’s benefit. The everything, everywhere, all at once approach that Cha supports — one which embraces job creation, healthcare, and housing as much as decarbonization — isn’t impractical “everything bagel” policymaking; it’s coalition building.

These coalitions can be very effective. Cha brought up several organizations, who are just a few of the several organizations working on these issues, whose work follows these principles: advocating for justice and connecting labor and environmental concerns at a local level.

• California Environmental Justice Alliance
• Asian Pacific Environmental Network
• Climate Jobs National Resource Center
• Labor Network for Sustainability
• Public Power NY
• Taproot Earth

Back to basics

All this being said, to some extent the problem isn’t complicated. Cha says the basic question underlying a just transition is simply “how do we make people’s lives better?” And the guiding principles are common sense: the system that caused the problem can’t fix the problem, we’re way past the point where we can just tweak things, and so on. Moreover, many good laws are already on the books; it’s just a matter of enforcing them.

Of course, against this simple objective are companies making billions of dollars a year with the status quo carbon economy. They are willing to fight on the global level all the way down to the local level (Cha tells the story of Arvin, California, a small town that had to fight oil companies so it could pass a setback ordinance preventing drilling near homes and business). And governments are complicit, too — swayed by oil money and ideologies which put business before people or deny the environmental damage caused by unsustainable economic activity.

So, the biggest hurdles to a just transition are created by people. This can be discouraging; it’s hard to face up against the rich and powerful. However, it can be encouraging, too. We have the tools and technology to get things right. The challenge is getting together and demanding better.