Just Transition Alliance

History and Activities

Just Transition Alliance was founded in 1997 as an environmentalist activist organization on behalf of people of color, Native Americans, low-income communities, and workers in the service, energy, farming, and chemical sectors. ²

The organization seeks to transition to what it calls a “sustainable economy” away from an economy based on toxic chemicals which it argues disproportionately impacts minority communities and Native Americans. JTA attempts to accomplish this goal through grassroots organizing and community building efforts focused on health and safety for workers. ²

JTA criticized the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act for failing to promote sufficiently aggressive left-of-center environmental policies. The organization condemned the law for subsidizing “false climate solutions” like nuclear power and bioenergy and for claiming to promote clean energy through the creation of an electric car economy, which the JTA argues incentivizes the unsustainable mining of rare earth minerals like lithium. ³ JTA also advocates against cap-and-trade style policies, including offsetting carbon by planting trees, claiming such policies allow organizations to buy the ability to pollute. ⁴

Additionally, JTA has called for the Biden White House to declare a “climate emergency,” arguing that “our planet is burning.” ³ JTA contends that climate change will most significantly impact people of color and that climate change is the cause of extreme weather events like draughts, intense rainstorms, forest fires, hurricanes, and heat waves. ⁴ JTA takes the radical position that conventional fuels should be kept “in the ground. Period.” ⁵

Principles

Just Transition Alliance asserts six principles: First, workers have a right to clean air, water, land and food; second, there is no contradiction between having a healthy economy and a clean environment; third, environmental protection requires global coordination; fourth, economic, trade, health, safety, and environmental policies must be developed in consultation with frontline workers; fifth, the costs of sustainable policies should not be borne by the disadvantaged; and sixth, workers and communities should challenge government, the military, corporations, or any other entity that it feels hurts the environment or the economy. ⁶

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

In December 2021, the Just Transition Alliance was one of more than 100 groups co-signed an open letter opposing the nuclear power production tax credits offered in HR 5376, the House of Representatives draft of the Build Back Better Act. The groups identified nuclear power as a one of several “unproven and unnecessary technologies” and “harmful energy sources” that “would extend demand for fossil fuels.” ⁷

Nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, and as of 2021 accounted for 20 percent of American electricity production—the largest source of zero carbon electricity in the United States. ⁸  An October 2018 proposal from The Nature Conservancy noted that zero-carbon nuclear plants produced 7.8 percent of total world energy output and recommended reducing carbon emissions by increasing nuclear capacity to 33 percent of total world energy output. ⁹

People

The executive director of Just Transition Alliance is Jose Bravo. ² Bravo began as the executive director of JTA in June 2005. ¹⁰ In September 2022, Bravo was arrested in Washington, D.C. while protesting legislation that would cut red tape surrounding energy infrastructure projects for blocking the entrance to a Senate office building. ³

Affiliations

Just Transition Alliance is a member of the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum on Climate Change, a collection of 41 environmentalist organizations. JTA is also a member of Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiative, ¹¹ a climate change-focused group in North America. ⁴