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In the early 1980s, the US labour movement coined the term “just transition”.
Clean air and water laws it had supported on health and environmental grounds had begun driving thousands of Americans out of their jobs.
If environmental protections are going to benefit society, as the “just transition” argument goes, governments must ensure livelihoods they disrupt or destroy are created elsewhere.
The term has become fashionable among today’s environmentalists.
Without the promise of a “just transition”, how can consensus be reached, and urgent progress made towards, the huge societal changes we need to make to avert climate catastrophe?
Yet Thursday’s by-election result in Uxbridge is an example of that test being failed. And it could turn out to be a costly one.
The Conservative candidate won the election after campaigning against the Labour mayor of London’s pollution-busting Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ).
Cleaner air in London would benefit everyone, particularly the poorest, but with living standards their lowest in a generation or more, how can the poorest who rely on a car, right now afford to replace it without help?
Whether or not the ULEZ policy will turn out to be unfair on the poorest is a matter of debate. But the Conservative campaign benefitted from people’s understandable anxiety that they were being expected to give up too much – at a time when they could afford it least.
The Just Stop Oil campaign is another, more extreme, example.
Read more:
This is Rigged climate protesters block gates to Scottish oil sites
Heatmaps reveal the warmest and coolest areas of five English cities
Missed promises leave Britain suffering more from heatwaves and fires, nature chief says
Frustrated by a lack of political progress, motivated by the undeniable urgency to reduce fossil fuel emissions, high-viz…
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