Climate Futures and Just Transitions

The just transition is a foundational concept for labor-environmentalism and it has generated a range of productive debates between labor, feminist, environmental justice, indigenous forces and other actors about the possibilities, genuine dilemmas and trade-offs that confront all attempts to think through the challenge of decarbonization. Following the incorporation of the term “just transition” into the preamble to the Paris Agreement in 2015 at COP 21, it has also taken on a further life of its own in the international climate space as many leading climate NGOs, business elites and international unions articulate their commitment to decarbonization through the language of just transitions. This course seeks to build a reconstructive environmental sociology of the just transition, incorporating debates from political ecology, energy/technology studies, critical art and design studies and the climate social sciences.