Book Review | A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future, by J. Mijin Cha (MIT Press, 2024)

Amidst an increasingly dire climate crisis, J. Mijin Cha's A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future offers a clarion call for action to counter the devastating consequences of global fossil fuel dependency.Drawing upon years of fieldwork in collaboration with environmental activists and impacted stakeholders, Cha articulates a clear vision of just transition that requires both a definitive break from fossil fuels as well as a comprehensive plan to assist those whose livelihoods would be significantly altered by this shift.To build towards this vision, Cha proposes the Four+ Pillars framework as a means of assessing efforts that build toward a just transition, specifically by ensuring that such policies and programs are both actionable and effective at reducing carbon emissions and assisting those impacted by the dissolution of fossil fuels.While referring in particular to those most closely tied to the industry, such as miners in the Appalachian Mountains, one of Cha's most provocative contributions is to highlight how virtually all of society is entangled with fossil fuels in one way or another.In other words, a just transition from fossil fuels would require a radical shift in how all of society lives and operates on a global scale.Anything short of this, Cha argues, would fail to meet our planet's desperate need for alternative modes of living beyond extractivist violence.Chapter 1 traces the history of fossil fuel development from the Industrial Revolution onwards and examines how fossil fuels have become so deeply enmeshed in nearly every aspect of modern life.One key contribution of this chapter is to foreground how central fossil fuels have been to the rise of global Author Bio