committed to a federal-government purchase of
hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles. Since
then, the U.S. auto industry has become an electric-
vehicle arms race, with companies left and right
announcing new capital expenditures to advance
the national electric-vehicle fleet. GM says it will
spend $35 billion in the effort over the next few
years. Ford says it’s spending $50 billion.
Last year, I traveled to Ohio and Tennessee to
see firsthand how the pressing questions about this
transformation were playing out on the ground in
the cities and towns that have relied on the auto
industry for decades. In conversations with work-
ers and local officials, I could sense excitement, but
also consternation. Building an electric vehicle re-
quires less labor than does its old-fashioned coun-
terpart, and there’s no guarantee that new jobs cre-
ated will be covered by a union. “There’s just going
to be a lot less people building cars,” Dave Green,
a GM assembly worker who previously led a local
UAW branch in Ohio, told me at the time.
The green transition will also displace oil, gas,
and coal workers. Entire cities in flood and fire
zones will be dislocated. Diseases will spread more
quickly. How will society manage such problems,
accounting for a diverse array of interests, with-
out a comprehensive, government-led approach
to the transition? Not well, if past transitions are
any indicator. Inequality soared during the Indus-
trial Revolution, and the U.S. is still dealing with
the economic fallout of globalization in the 2000s,
when many blue collar jobs were outsourced.
To make up for the slow pace of government
policy to guarantee an equitable transition, many
activists have set their sights on influencing cor-
porations directly, using their leverage as employ-
ees and consumers. “It’s not perfect,” says Michael
Vandenbergh, a professor at Vanderbilt University
Law School who served as chief of staff at the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency under Clinton.
But “it will buy us time until the public demands
that government actually overcome some of the
democracy deficits that we face.”
As challenging as it may be in these polariz-
ing times, overcoming that democracy deficit is
necessary, not just to accelerate the transition
away from fossil fuels but also to protect those
most vulnerable to the effects of climate change
and to the necessary changes ahead. It’s for
that reason that the upswing in climate-activist
movements—from youths marching for a Green
New Deal to union members joining with climate
activists to push for a just transition—matter be-
yond any policy platform. Climate change will re-
shape the lives of people everywhere. A truly just
transition will require people to engage in the
fight to fix it. —With reporting by Nik PoPli and
Julia ZorthiaN □
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