A Just Transition framework is required to head of the climate denying Right

May 19, 2025
bill
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The recent federal election in Australia saw the conservative opposition coalition lose further seats in parliament building on their disastrous 2022 result. The coalition is made up of conservative urban types (the so-called Liberal Party) and the National party, which represents the rural lobby. The Nationals are essentially climate-change denialists and because the Liberals require them to have any hope to govern, the smaller rural lobby can dominate policy choices. To convince the Nationals to adopt a net-zero by 2050 stance, the Liberals had to agree to propose a shift to Nuclear power, which was neither realistic in a logistical sense or economic in a cost sense. The electorate clearly rejected that option at the recent election. Now the Liberals, who are facing an existential crisis after the devastating loss, has to make a choice – stick with the Nationals and jettison net zero or break the Coalition and pitch a climate policy that will be acceptable to voters. The problem is that neither option will deliver them electoral success. Progressives are enjoying some rare schadenfreude over this conservative dilemma. It seems that the British Labour Party has got itself into a similar dilemma, with pressure from the Right-wing Reform Party to water down its climate policy. But what is more interesting in the UK setting is the role played by Labour’s former Prime Minister, who is also now attacking ‘green’ stances. I predict that will not end well for Starmer and Co. Fortunately, the Australian Labor party, which is also in government is sticking to a more ambitious climate agenda, although, even then, it is not ambitious enough. However, governments that are pursuing a net zero agenda must provide security for communities and regions that will bear the brunt of the policies introduced. The resistance to change that political forces such as Reform UK exploit can be easily offset if governments accompany their net zero agenda with a Just Transition framework. However, there is an absence of policy development in that area.

Developing effective climate policy is being undermined in many ways.

First, the attacks by outright climate denialists eats up some votes.

These characters use all sorts of misinformation and pseudo science to justify their claim that there is no anthropomorphic climate shifts occurring.

Second, and related, there are those who claim a ‘green agenda’ is the plaything of the ‘woke’ elites in our societies whose employment fortunes are not directly undermined by policies that aim to reduce carbon use.

Unlike the Australian electoral outcome, which rejected the the climate denial approach, the situation elsewhere is different.

In the UK, Reform UK recently won 677 of the approximately 1,600 seats in the local council election, at the expense mostly of the Conservatives.

The BBC report (May 3, 2025) – Reform UK makes big gains in English local elections – noted that Reform UK “also won control of Doncaster, the only council Labour was defending, and Durham, where Labour was previously the largest party” and “also displaced Labour in Runcorn and Helsby, where it won a tightly-fought Westminster by-election”.

The reaction by the Labour Prime Minister seemed to indicate that the Government will tilt towards policies aimed at capturing Reform UK votes – including “changes to public services, immigration and cost of living pressures”.

Farage fought the election by advocating further governments spending cuts and said they would “scale back local diversity and climate policies” and “push back on asylum seekers”.

Trump UK!

As I noted in this blog post – Australia is not America – elections after Trump (May 5, 2025) – the Trump-style attempt by the conservative Coalition to win the Australian election was categorically rejected by voters.

So not only is Australia different to the US, it seems to be quite different to the UK in the dominant political sentiments.

The BBC said that:

… if elections had taken place across Britain on Thursday, the Conservatives would have slumped to just 15% of the national vote, its worst-ever share of such a projection, behind the Liberal Democrats on 17%.

Labour would have won 20% of the vote, according to the projection, equalling its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009.

So Reform UK is driving a wedge into the political support bases of the traditional major parties – Tory and Labour.

The UK Guardian article (May 11, 2025) – After Blair’s bombshell, will Labour stick with or abandon net zero? – documented the problems that British Labour face in this regard.

It noted that:

The rightwing populist party’s energy spokesperson, Richard Tice, attacks “net stupid zero” at every opportunity, and its leader, Nigel Farage, has warned council officials who work on climate change to look for new jobs.

And Labour’s response is being influenced it seems by its former leader and ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair who gave oxygen to the Right and Reform UK by claiming that Labour’s net zero objective will harm the UK while the rest of the world continues to pollute.

Blair outlined his views in a Foreword to a new report released by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change April 29, 2025) – The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change.

He wrote:

… though most people will accept that climate change is a reality caused by human activity, they’re turning away from the politics of the issue because they believe the proposed solutions are not founded on good policy …

… voters feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal. Whatever the historical responsibility of the developed world for climate change, those with even a cursory knowledge of the facts understand that in the future the major sources of pollution will come principally from the developing world.

But for that developing world, there is an equal resentment when they’re told the investment is not available for the energy necessary for their development because it is not “green”. They believe, correctly, that they have a right to develop and that those who have already developed using fossil fuels do not have the right to inhibit them from whatever is the most effective way of developing …

Despite the past 15 years seeing an explosion in renewable energy and despite electric vehicles becoming the fastest-growing sector of the vehicle market, with China leading the way in both, production of fossil fuels and demand for them has risen, not fallen, and is set to rise further up to 2030 …

These are the inconvenient facts, which mean that any strategy based on either “phasing out” fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail …

The disdain for this technology … [carbon capture] … in favour of the purist solution of stopping fossil-fuel production is totally misguided.

Blair also outlined a case for choosing the “cheapest option” including “nuclear fission” and extolled the virtues of “carbon capture” over politices that aim to reduce “fossil-fuel production” altogether.

He also claimed that governments had to enable financial markets to invest in these new technologies.

This intervention and the arguments put forward by his Institute have been interpreted as a broadside against net zero thinking, and thus against the British Labour Party’s current official policy stance.

It is also being seized upon by the Right, including Reform UK as justifying their attacks on climate science and ‘green’ initiatives.

Reform UK was quoted in the UK Guardian cited above as saying they will now “oppose renewable energy developments” in council areas that they have taken control of.

The confusion is that opinion polls seem to reject these attacks on ‘green’ policies – “40% of voters think the UK’s 2050 target is a good policy while only 21% view it as a bad idea” according the UK Guardian report.

One of the tensions that bodies like Reform UK play on is the impact on local communities of climate policies that aim to end fossil-fuel production – where the economy of these communities has been built on such production and material prosperity is dependent on it.

This is the classic problem facing nations everywhere.

Blair’s observations about the developing world are valid.

I wrote about my experiences in this regard while working in Manila earlier in the year in this blog post – Field trip to the Philippines – Report (January 23, 2025).

I wrote:

The other thing that I have been musing about in relation to my current work on degrowth, delinking and breaking colonial dependencies is how far removed from such a narrative are nations such as the Philippines.

Everyone I have spoken to wants faster growth and material accumulation, which would be an outrageous aspiration in advanced nations but is perfectly understandable in the context of a nation like the Philippines.

Trying to bring those two ‘worlds’ together to save the planet is an almost insurmountable task and I will have further discussions today with officials to further understand this issue.

But walking through the streets of Manila – dodging traffic and motor cycles (and viagra sellers!) – the overwhelming feeling I have had is how far away from reaching a point where degrowth could become a topic of conversation in countries like this.

So on the global level, progressives are going to have to work out how the material security of the poorest nations can be elevated while still moving (quickly) towards an overall degrowth outcome.

That won’t be easy.

But this dilemma also plays out at regional levels within nations.

The UK Guardian article cited above reported that the next Greens leader in England and Wales as saying:

We should all be angry about net zero … the poorest people in our society are being expected to step up to tackle the climate crisis. But it’s the government’s fault, not the people’s fault.

How do we advance degrowth agendas or even net zero agendas, when the policies that are required undermine the very structure of local economies which specific regions depend upon for employment and incomes?

In Australia, the Greens have historically been very urban focused and regional communities have exhibited resentment to city dweller turning up to their communities with banners telling the locals to stop mining or forestry activities or fishing etc.

The problem has been the the ‘green’ advocacy has been seen as presenting to these fossil-fuel dependent communities a trade-off between jobs and green salvation.

This has long been a brake on wider support for ‘green’ policies and is the sort of communication error that the likes of Reform UK play on.

It also is why Blair can argue that “voters feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal.”

The problem is not new and can be traced back to the early days of the broad climate movement in the 1970s.

I have written about this issue before.

For example, see the blog post – Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 5 (September 27, 2016).

I also published a major study in June 2008 (with my colleagues at the Centre of Full Employment and Equity) – A Just Transition to a Renewable Energy Economy in the Hunter Region, Australia – which was one of the first modelling exercises to establish the case for renewable energy alternatives, long before the most recent technology developments have made these alternatives even more compelling.

To militate against the sort of arguments that Blair and Reform UK make, governments must design their degrowth strategies within a so-called – Just Transition Framework.

It amazes me that governments that are allegedly serious about reducing emissions have not designed and announced such frameworks to head off the attacks from the Right such as those enunciated by Blair and Farage’s gang.

I live some of the time in Newcastle and the Port of Newcastle at the mouth of the Hunter River, is the world’s largest coal export port.

Further up the valley are the large coal mining centres which sustain a significant population.

Those centres will not be able to continue for much longer as coal producers.

Yet, the federal and state governments, knowing that, has precious little policies in place to provide these communities with an alternative.

It is not surprising that there is deep resentment to ‘green’ issues in those towns.

That was a resentment that Canadian trade unionist Brian Kohler encountered back in the 1990s.

The Just Transition framework first really gained traction in the public debate in the 1990s as a result of the pioneering work of Brian Kohler who emphasised that environmental preservation and employment were not trade-offs.

In a 1996 Op Ed, Brian Kohler wrote (Kohler, 1996):

The real choice is not jobs or environment. It is both or neither.

[Reference: (1996) ‘Sustainable development: a labor view’, San Diego Earth Times, May 1997, Based on presentation at the Persistent Organic Pollutants Conference, Chicago, December 5, 1996. LINK.]

This insight was formalised in his 1998 article – Just Transition – A labour view of Sustainable Development – and was adopted by the Canadian trade union movement in 2000 (CLC, 2000).

[Reference: Kohler, B. (1998), ‘Just Transition – A labour view of Sustainable Development’, CEP Journal on-line, Summer, 6(2).]

[Reference: Canadian Labour Congress (2000) Just Transition for Workers During Environmental Change.]

The initiative was in relation to the challenges that climate change was presenting for unions who were keen to promote the growth of so-called ‘green jobs’ on the one hand, but knew full well that “when we create Green Jobs, there will be an industrial transition – this means that workers in traditional industries must be protected” (CLC, 2000).

The idea of a Just Transition is that it allows the benefits of new green technologies to be introduced but, at the same time, provides a “safeguard” for people who “work in jobs that will become obsolete” as a result of “unsustainable production” processes (CLC, 2000).

The International Labour Organisation (ILO, 2010: 141) note that the “definition, boundaries and scope” of the Just Transition concept “has evolved” since the initial idea was floated by the Canadian union movement.

The ILO (2010: 141) offered this definition of a “Just Transition”:

… can be understood as the conceptual framework in which the labour movement captures the complexities of the transition towards a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy, highlighting public policy needs and aiming to maximize benefits and minimize hardships for workers and their communities in this transformation.

It is not a blocking framework – but rather “a supporting mechanism of climate action, and not inaction” (ILO, 2010: 141).

[Reference: International Labour Organisation (2010) ‘Climate Change and Labour: the need for a “just transition”‘, International Journal of Labour Research, 2(2), Geneva, International Labour Office.]

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Cooling et al., 2015: 5) introduced a distributional focus by stating that:

Underlying the concept of just transition is the principle that the costs of environmental adjustments should be shared across society rather than shouldered alone by those most affected by them.

[Reference: Cooling, K., Lee, K., Daub, S. and Singer, J. (2015) ‘Just Transition: Creating a green social constrat for BC’s resource workers’, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canadian Justice Project, January]

Whether the source of disruption is climate change or the march of robots, economic restructuring is a painful process and is, typically, spatially concentrated, which raises significant issues for the social settlement (where people live).

It is the responsibility of the state to put in place a framework that minimises the impact of these disruptions on people and regions that are affected by them.

A progressive vision should ensure that these impacts are not only minimised but also shared across the nation.

Any such response requires government to ensure that new opportunities for work are available to workers who, in the interests of society in general have to give up work as a result of climate change or who are displaced by the manifestations of the ‘second machine age’.

A ‘Just Transition’ ensures that the costs of economic restructuring and the shift to sustainability do not fall on workers in targeted industries and their communities. It would also help manage the impacts of the second machine age.

A Just Transition in any threatened region or sector requires government intervention and community partnerships to create the regulatory framework, infrastructure and market incentives for the creation of well-paid, secure, healthy, satisfying environmentally-friendly jobs with particular attention to appropriately meeting the needs of affected workers and their communities.

Government support in a progressive world must include:

Assistance for both displaced workers and for contractors;
Adequate notice of workplace change and closures;
Consultation with and full engagement of relevant unions;
Support for innovation and partnerships for new local industries, research and development and infrastructure investments;
Training and alternative employment tailored to local and individual needs and opportunities;
Special targeted support for older, disabled and less educated workers;
Relocation assistance for displaced workers;
Income maintenance, redundancy entitlements and retraining allowances;
Cheap loans and subsidies for new industries and employers;
Compensation and equipment buy-outs for contractors;
Assistance programs extended to workers employed by contractors;
A just transition requires investment in training programs and apprenticeships to create a highly trained ‘green’ workforce;
The introduction of a Job Guarantee to provide continuous employment for all those without work.

These support elements go well beyond the conceptualisation of the individual as merely needing income security to maintain current consumption levels.

The Just Transition framework provides a dynamic environment to allow an individual, their families, their regions to make adjustments that will enhance their future prospects.

Conclusion

I am waiting for the British Labour government to refute Blair’s self-centred intervention and put some work in to provide a comprehensive Just Transition framework to accompany the net zero ambitions.

It might be a long wait!