Contesting just transitions: Climate delay and the contradictions of labour environmentalism

The notion of ‘just transition’ is an attempt to align abstract climate and energy objectives with the material concerns of industrial workers, frontline communities and marginalised groups. However, despite the potential for fusing social and environmental justice, there is growing concern that the concept is being mobilised as a form of ‘climate delayism’: a more ambiguous problem than open forms of denialism as it draws in multiple and conflictual agents, practices and discourses. We address this matter through the lens of labour environmentalism, the political engagement of trade unionists and workers with environmental issues. As tensions within the labour movement surface amidst the unsettling of the carbon capital hegemony, we assess the degree to which (organised) labour - as an internally differentiated, contradictory movement – is participating in the reproduction of climate breakdown through a ‘praxis of delay’, and, in contrast, the ways in which labour environmentalism can be leveraged for socioecological change