Section VI VI: Concluding thoughts – from crisis to opportunity. In the 1990s, Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW—now merged with the Steelworkers) Union Secretary-Treasurer Tony Mazzocchi coined the term “just transition.” He recognized that OCAW members worked in some of the most dangerous and toxic industries on the planet and, if they were to survive, both individually and collectively, they needed to begin to plan a transition away from these hazardous industries that was just. Tony used to say, “There’s a Superfund for dirt; there ought to be a superfund for workers.”263 Despite Mazzocchi’s visionary call for a just transition, it wasn’t until after his death in 2002 that his work was embraced more broadly by elements of labor, environmentalist, and environmental justice communities who saw in his call for a “just transition” for workers a similar need for a “just transition” for people in so-called “fenceline” communities, close to toxic and extractive industries, and for their environment. 264 Quinton Sankofa, a staff member of the nonprofit group Movement Generation, was quoted by writer Naomi Klein as saying: “Transition is inevitable. Justice is not.” A great transition is underway in Alaska, but justice is not yet part of that transition. Alaska’s shortsighted and near total dependence on oil and gas revenues should be a cautionary tale for the rest of the country, if not the world. With little to no planning, the entire state of Alaska is now suffering through an extraordinarily unjust transition. But nothing focuses the mind like a crisis, and many people throughout Alaska are beginning to explore the opportunities of abundance and self-reliance that lie on the other side of dependence on the fossil fuel industry. It is that opportunity that remains to be fully embraced by most elected officials in Alaska, who remain largely beholden to their sponsors in the fossil fuel industry.
and resources are expensive to extract and need to stay in the ground if the planet—much less, Alaska – has any decent chance of avoiding the most dire consequences of climate change. The framework of sustainable development embraced by the U.S. and 191 others in “The Future We Want,” the outcome document from Rio+20, and the new Sustainable Development Goals provides a hopeful way forward. Both sets of agreements and commitments are universal: they apply equally to both developed and developing countries in recognition of the fact that even in the richest nations there are regions with high poverty, deteriorating social and economic conditions, and environmental degradation. As such, they provide an alternative blueprint for Alaska’s future that focuses on meeting the social, environmental, and economic needs of the population in more direct ways than resource extraction has done in the past.
This report focuses on the sustainable development opportunities this crisis creates – economic opportunities that are designed to benefit those least well off, protect Alaska Native rights and culture, and maintain the productivity of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems even as the climate change signal deepens. To ensure that the transition is as just and seamless as possible, decision makers in Alaska should begin to embrace these new opportunities now. The era of high oil prices is probably over for good, the state’s untapped oil, gas, and coal reserves
The UN’s sustainable development framework puts a high priority on food security, quality education, affordable energy, resilient infrastructure, sustainable resource management, and eradication of poverty. We believe that economic development options in Alaska that advance one or more of these goals simultaneously—with a particular focus on the needs of Alaska Native communities – must be a high priority. In this report, we suggest seven thematic
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