A just transition requires creating energy systems without fossil fuels while ensuring equitable futures. What we see today is a direct result of lots of labour, lots of power, and lots of natural resources. In many contexts, people and nature were often abused, displaced, eliminated, or all three. We want to avoid history from happening again by planning for a future for all.
Addressing future plans for what is just when transitioning away from fossil fuels includes thinking about and reconciling with the past. As part of creating a just and equitable future acknowledge the parts of history and ideological harms caused by colonialism, imperialism, racism, genocide, and slavery.
The systems built on these harms have influenced the urban planning we see today, where overconsumption and energy crises are byproducts of an imbalanced relationship with natural resources.
Over time, beliefs, and systems that rely deeply on these things became foundational grounds for the decisions that shape our histories, global events, national policies, and the power structures we see today.
Throughout the last four hundred years it has been well documented that the world has seen the rise of urban cities and the formation of different relationships and power structures.
We see large buildings, big cars, twenty-four-seven flights, chain fast food restaurants, and just about anything imaginable at the touch of a button (smart phones). Right now, we are dealing with an over consumption issue as well as an energy supply issue. We need things to fill up our cities, and we need power to run them too.
Since the seventies, oil and gas companies have been major suppliers for a lot of the things and energy needed by our cities but we have not been truly honest with ourselves about the facts that are attached to the risks of doing BIG oil projects for long periods of time, and using their byproducts on large scales.
By ignoring the important questions that center responsibility, and ethical ownership of wealth, labour, and land, the fossil fuel industry has become socially, economically, and environmentally volatile. Like the tobacco company, oil has been seen as a daily part of life– a way to make things easier for the average person– but it comes with life threatening consequences.
Like smoking, we see it, we smell it, and we know it's not good for us. It's hard to quit but it's for the best. Quitting does mean replacing it with something. It does not mean smoking different cigarettes, or cigarettes with slightly less tobacco, or healthier cigarettes.
And quite frankly, it does not mean using different oil, reducing oil production, or green oil. It means looking for a healthier solution for all– because when you quit smoking, you are preventing second hand smoke. When we quit fossil fuels, we are preventing dangerous C02 levels.
A pathway forward has always been the light at the end of the tunnel when quitting something and transitioning into anything. Similarly to tobacco, oil and gas companies will need heavier public imposing to not only regulate and slow down their current production plans, but to completely pivot into supplying society with far less harmful energy products.
Policies and regulations for a just transition should disrupt the flow of wealth and create more equitable finance structures, better working conditions, and healthier communities as part of social and environmental restoration plans.
Projects must never cross Indigenous land or land that has been sanctioned by historic African and Caribbean communities without holistic consideration and involvement from those communities directly.
A just transition is not just a pathway to a more sustainable planet, but a movement toward healing and restoring justice for all communities.
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