CounterPunch.org California Can Lead a Just Climate Transition

Wind turbines in the Sierra foothills. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Long-standing tensions between labor and climate movements have hamstrung the fight to phase out fossil fuels. Climate movements have historically overlooked the social and economic impacts of decarbonization while workers have been unwilling to give up union jobs in the oil and gas sectors with better wages and benefits than those in clean energy industries. A California labor group has a new proposal to bridge this divide and bypass a hostile federal funding landscape.

United Auto Workers (UAW) Region 6 recently released a report rallying state agencies and unions to advance clean energy projects across California, titled “Organize, Industrialize, Decarbonize!: A Pro-Worker, Green Industrial Policy for California. From catastrophic wildfires, to dangerous heat waves, to chronic drought, California is already paying the price for climate change. The UAW Region 6 report urges the state to decarbonize its infrastructure to address the worsening impacts of climate disasters.

Even though California has a $4.1 trillion economy and more clean energy capacity than most states, deep inequality means that climate adaptation and energy transitions are unlikely to reach all of its residents uniformly.

While just five Californians increased their wealth by $200 billion last year alone, most Californians are hurting, and climate change is only exacerbating their economic vulnerability. One in three workers earn less than $20 an hour, and low-wage jobs are projected to make up half of all jobs by 2030. Black and Latino workers will be hit hardest by this unstable and exploitative labor market. Yet, the costs of adapting to climate change are falling on the shoulders of working-class people. California’s largest utilities, like PG&E, are driving up consumer costs to offset spending on climate resilience projects. Since 2019, electricity bills have increased by 50 percent, and one in five customers are behind on payments. While the ultra-wealthy can absorb rising costs, poor and working-class people fall further behind.

As J. Mijin Cha, author of A Just Transition for All puts it in a recent Inequality.orgQ&A, a clean energy transition is not inevitable, and even if one happens there’s no guarantee that it’ll be a just one. Unlike countries like Germany and Japan, where robust government social welfare protected workers during clean energy transitions, the U.S. ‘s already meager social safety net is being weakened even more. This summer, the Trump administration gutted programs like SNAP and Medicaid. Now, a government shutdown from partisan gridlock over the very social programs needed to help workers and communities weather a fossil fuel phaseout, signals that relying on our federal government to aid pro-worker and pro-climate policy is a dead end.

The UAW Region 6 report offers a blueprint for a new green industrial policy in California that empowers local and state-level organizing to ignite just energy transitions. The report calls for an industrial policy that deliberately shapes which goods and services the market produces, how they are produced, and how they are distributed. To put it simply, states should reclaim their power to push for clean energy over fossil fuels, enforce just and equitable labor conditions, and facilitate in-state supply chains. Yet California currently relies on its weakest policy tools, like subsidies, effectively ceding control of economic development to powerful corporations whose only metric of success is their bottom line. “Call it industrial policy by omission,” says UAW Region 6.

The result is energy markets driven by corporate profit, neglecting the long-term well-being of people, the environment, and the economy. But states have real power. The barriers to building a decarbonized future that lifts working-class living standards are largely self-imposed, argues UAW Region 6. Restrictive laws, limited technical and administrative capacity, political opposition from entrenched corporate interests, and lawmakers’ reluctance to mobilize the necessary resources to achieve their own policy goals all impede major green economic transformations.

This policy toolkit provides strategies for how the California state government can build institutional capacity to shift energy market power from private industry to public institutions, unions, and communities. This marks a stark departure from the Inflation Reduction Act’s reliance on subsidies for investors and consumers. Instead, it urges California to implement strong industrial policy reforms, such as public financing, public interest conditions, industry regulation, price management, public procurement, and public ownership and production of energy. But California still lacks a centralized authority to coordinate private market regulation or facilitate a pro-worker, green industrial strategy.

That’s where SB 787 comes in. Jointly developed by UAW Region 6 and Senator Jerry McNerney of Stockton, SB 787 would create the infrastructure necessary to oversee and implement in-state supply chains, decarbonization, and affordability in three key sectors: zero-emission vehicles and batteries, offshore wind, and heat pumps. This bill marks the first bold move for workers and the state to reclaim control from corporate interests dominating California’s industrial economy.

SB 787 prioritizes these industries as critical clean energy solutions for California. The state is home to robust renewable and clean energy resources, including enough lithium in the Salton Sea to produce 375 million EV batteries, and 200 GW of OSW potential. California also plans to install 23 million heat pumps to help decarbonize buildings, which generate a quarter of its emissions. SB 787 would establish state institutions to coordinate, invest in, and fund these projects, ensuring that community and labor voices are placed at the forefront. This includes holding companies accountable for environmental and community commitments, consulting Indigenous tribes, developing local supply chains, and expanding state-funded job training.

California can push forward bold industrial policies to give workers and frontline communities a seat at the table. But the first step, UAW insists, is building the state institutional power necessary to guide both the state and the private market toward a just and sustainable future. California has the resources. Now it needs the political capacity to build up economies that are mutually beneficial for workers, economic development, and our environment in the long-term.

“The oligarchs in Washington D.C. would have us believe it is impossible, that there’s no hope. In the labor movement, we’re used to the rich and powerful telling us what is and isn’t possible. And we’re used to proving them wrong,” the report concludes.

This first appeared on Inequality.org.