A sustainable transition (Part V): How and why

If you’ve read the preceding blog posts in this series, thank you for sifting through my life as I try to sift through these issues. Here is the crux of it all: 

I offer three main reasons by which localized renewable infrastructure situated on brownfield sites is a legitimate—and possibly necessary—component of the green transition.

First, giving local control of renewable sites to rural communities would allow these communities the financial wiggle room to transition. There is no payment plan directed only directed at the individuals affected, which may prove problematic if it incentivizes individuals to merely stockpile that money as they search for other employment. The primary benefit of this program, if properly enacted by the local government, would serve as a form of Universal Basic Income to the entire community. This mirrors the Alaska Oil surplus payment program, which has been well-received by the community and has been compared to a “Universal Basic Dividend.” Such a scheme would also not require an application process and a congressionally allocated stockpile of dollars, which has doomed the other federal transition policies. 

Furthermore, now that this community has a bit of a financial windfall, it could stock its own coffers and be more protected from fiscal spin. It could also use that excess energy to improve the quality of life of the area by subsidizing air conditioning and heating or alternatively diversify its economy into more energy-dependent fields like coding, telecommunication, and business. Finally, the community could even sell the excess energy as a source of local revenue. 

Second, by benefiting cities, any city initiatives in funding nearby rural areas will be seen as investments in a collective future, not a bailout of “the other.” Not only would a decentralized grid lower costs for cities, but it would also reduce the strain on the grid for times of emergency. While an isolated power grid can be disastrous, one that is independent but still connected could provide necessary power in times of strife but cut back on the possibility of overextension. This is further bolstered by the fact that many fossil fuel communities are located where things have died, not where there live. While humans tend to settle along water, arable land, and protection, fossil fuel communities spring up around and because of a resource, including Death Valley. 

Third, by harmonizing rural-urban relations, communication is fostered between rural and urban areas, instead of a game of telephone between corporations who have every interest in disrupting this transparency for their benefit. By eliminating the corporate middleman, we can start to have an honest conversation of what we both need, and what we can both provide. Yes, rural areas provide the majority of food, energy, and natural resources, to urban areas. But they do so through corporations. In this proposed solution, cities and rural areas would be able to negotiate with each other and see each other. And yes, the conversation may not always be fully amicable, but I believe that to be necessary to establishing a more proper relationship between these social units. 

What I advocate is not necessarily a just transition. I do not have a plan to introduce similarly lucrative jobs into a community. What I advocate is not necessarily environmental justice, as pure environmental justice would balk at neutering brownfields that might otherwise be more fully remediated, and argues for some degree of infrastructure in places that have been heavily damaged by industry. But what I advocate is some consideration that as we transition, we need a safety net, and as we pursue environmental justice, we cannot paternalistically deny a community’s decision to take on the costs of such a project. What I advocate is a fully transparent, remedial, and voluntary middle ground between just transitions and environmental justice, and a way to harmonize the Economy and Environment components of the sustainable development triangle. A transition can’t happen overnight, and justice forced on an unwilling participant is rarely just. So, there it is, and there I’ll let it lie.

A sustainable transition (Part IV): Extraction and investment

I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is surrounded by mountains. In my time there I occasionally drove south, out of the valley, into the midlands of the state. It gets so flat out there that every nub and knot on the horizon feels like a wrinkle on your eyeball. And if you’re driving in the afternoon, the sun skims in so bright down in front of you that even with sunglasses, you find yourself blinking away blindness every few minutes. At other points, it feels like traversing an alien landscape. It’s a wonder that anything lives out there. Luckily for us, a lot of things have died there too. 

My dad started running rivers for Holiday Expeditions when he was a teenager. One of their main hubs is the town of Vernal, also known as “Dinosaurland.” Dinosaur National Monument is located 20 minutes away and contains over 800 paleontological sites. My twin brother and I learned to drive in Vernal on the runway of an airport under what I still consider impossibly bright stars. We would refuel at the Sinclair gas station, whose mascot is a green dinosaur. 

South of Vernal is the Uinta basin, which the Green River bisects. The Uintah basin is where most of the oil reservoirs in Utah are located. Every trip we took down there, we saw great ranges of oil derricks grazing on the simmering hardpan of the land. On the way back, we would pass by Dinosaur, Utah, occasionally stopping to check out the fossils. 

Before coming to law school, I worked a number of service jobs. I like talking to people, and getting paid to do it felt like I was committing a heist. My favorite place where I worked was the Grand America Hotel, an alabaster mass of angles and glass among the uneven skyline of downtown Salt Lake City . The building is worth one billion dollars. It has marble sourced from a specific quarry in Italy. Chandeliers cut from the same set of natural glass. It is the eighth tallest building in Salt Lake, with 775 rooms and 75,000 square feet of conference space. I met James Harden, Frank Abegnale, and Rick Steves when I was there, let alone the other unspoken millionaires who politely complied with the awkward mating dance of a clerk performing highly specialized check-ins as the hotel sought its fifth star. 

The Grand America is owned and operated by the Sinclair Oil Company. The same one that operates the gas station in Vernal that we used to refuel at. Last time I was there, I think it had a plywood sheet as a bathroom door. It's been a long time since I've been there. 

Uintah County has a population of 35,620 people and  a median income of $69,821. Its poverty rate is just 11.1%, which is pretty incredible—there are plenty of rural places which have lower income and higher populations. But Uintah County is large, clocking in at 4,500 square miles. This is nearly the size of the Diablo mountain range at 5,400 square miles. As a Utahn, I’ve been staggered by the fact that California’s top 100 cities (by population), as listed by population, tapers out with Livermore with 85,000. Delving deeper, Oildale California has a population of approximately 35,324 and a poverty rate of 26.9%.  It is 8 square miles, and its median income is $50,000. So, Uintah County has a lot going for it, even considering the transportation costs of just getting around. 

Uintah County has an economy partially driven by mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction. Within that sector, the median wage is around $121,000. Taken in a vacuum, this sounds amazing. But fossil fuel salaries don’t often represent the full picture. 

To get a sense of what it’s like to chase oil as a worker, rather than an investor, I could not more highly recommend Michael Flanagan Patrick Smith’s article detailing his experience joining the oil rush in Bakken, North Dakota. He is now a folksinger, and while he’s likely bled his fingers into the strings of a guitar, he’s also bled his experiences into a book called The Good Hand. While it is not a simple issue, I took away the sense that the two most serious problems with these hyper-competitive extractive economies are as follows.  First, a significant increase in income in an area like this leads to a significant increase in cost of living expenses, wiping out what we presume to be a windfall for the risk and demands of these kind of jobs. Second, these economies are not aberrations, but serve oil company interests far more than they do their workers, and oil companies are incentivized to keep the damaging components of these economies (such as scarcity, competition, high hours, and local strain on infrastructure) in place. 

Because here’s the kicker—even with that high income and low poverty rate, if you multiply Uintah County's population by its median income, you can estimate an annual income is $2.4 billion. Sinclair Oil’s 2024 revenue is reportedly $28.58 billion. That does not include other income from the hotels and resorts which the Holding family was able to invest in due to their oil profits. 

Vernal, Utah, is both a fossil town and a fossil fuel town, but it could end up a fossil of its own. 

The billions of dollars pumped out of town translate more to corporate profits than they do to community benefit. These resources don’t replenish, meaning that while the town’s economy is maintained, even healthy, due to this extraction, when the last drop of oil is squeezed out of the stone, there might be no Vernal left. 

Extraction is not limited to the extraction of material. It can also be thought of as extracting value from a community in a disproportionate degree to that which it contributes. Utility-scale renewables projects echo many of the predatory practices and extractive effects of the fossil fuel economy. 

Ann Eisenberg’s forthcoming paper, due to be published in Volume 59 of the UC Davis Law Review, applies internal colony theory to the current practice of siting utility-scale renewable energy projects (which require thousands of acres of land) in rural areas. Some 99.8% of utility-scale renewable energies are sited in rural areas. While this does create some jobs, the benefits of those jobs disproportionately go to the cities that receive that power. While not physically extracting the resource, it is still forcing the majority of costs on a community while benefitting another area. That is the same mode in which fossil fuel extraction has operated. 

Nearly six percent of the land area of the United States has to be dedicated to renewable infrastructure for our nation to be truly climate neutral. The United States has about 2.27 billion acres, and six percent of that is 136 million acres. There are more than 450,000 brownfields in the United States. In fact, the EPA already funds Land Revitalization Projects to encourage communities and land owners to reuse and redevelop land that was previously contaminated and turn it into public parks, restored wetlands, and new businesses. Why not invest in a community’s ability to use that land for solar farms or other renewable projects, instead of prioritizing corporate profits and interests while damaging great swathes of otherwise usable land? 

This is yet another component of the green transitions that should be managed wisely; while just transitions should shift to incorporate community transitions, environmental justice should be refined to incentivize voluntary development. If a fossil fuel community is going to lose its jobs, it should be the first one offered to host renewable infrastructure. Therein lies the beauty of the brownfield. By seizing a brownfield, the government ensures that a landowner is compensated but cannot further profit from their poisoning of the land.

At the same time, installing renewable infrastructure in these communities helps to decarbonize the community. I think that we often overlook the fact that decarbonizing America doesn’t mean that we just have to decarbonize cities; we have to decarbonize rural areas, too.  If it is so important to decarbonize, this should represent sufficient justification to seize, transfer, and repurpose land. If that is not an acceptable solution, then maybe the problem isn’t as serious as we think. But you, and I, and everyone else, know that it is.

This is not fog, or snow, but engine exhaust and other emissions, caught between the warmed-up valley floor and a layer of cold atmosphere. 

Original picture by Eltiempo10, and posted under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 4.0 International License. Unfortunately unaltered. This is how my home looks every winter. 

A sustainable transition (Part III): A common interest

The tragedy of the commons is the theory that all common-pool resources (CPR) are finite and are thus in danger of exploitation and eventual destruction, and without governance individual users will exploit these resources to maximize their own benefit, and if their rate of use is faster than the time it takes for the resource to replenish their actions will lead to the eventual overuse and destruction of the CPR. 

The tragedy of the commons also leads to a conversation about the commons, and if people can recognize the value and vulnerability of the commons, to a coordinated effort of preservation.

This concept can best be understood in the binary of two birds. The passenger pigeon was a bird endemic to North America, and with an estimated population of five billion, was so abundant that their passage across the sky could obscure it as if there was an eclipse. While economic interests, such as protecting crops, were instrumental in their decline, they were also extensively used for trapshooting (before the advent of the clay pigeon) and as a source of food for a burgeoning New York City. 2014 marked the 100 year anniversary that they were entirely eradicated. On the other hand, the northern spotted owl was protected.1,200 pairs of these owls still live in Oregon, 560 pairs in Northern California, and 500 pairs in Washington, today. It is not an animal that is hunted or sought. But it is intolerant to shifts in its habitat, and threats to its livelihood gave rise to the President’s Northwest Plan, which barred logging in areas richly primed to do so, throwing “between 60,000 and 100,000 people out of work.” 

A commons was not threatened in the traditional sense—this was not a treaty about who can whale and how much. But it was a secondary commons—the typical tragedy of the commons has two elements: (1) a resource that can be extracted for the benefit of the extractor, that (2) the full extraction of which is a net and unrecoverable loss to the community—here, what was preserved for the benefit of the whole is the tradition and ecological system of the Pacific Northwest, and the reluctance to extinguish an entire form of life for the pursuit of profit. In sum, the “extraction” of the owl did not motivate the decision of timber companies to engage in logging, but its loss would still have been a net negative for the surrounding area, sparking a rule to protect the loss of a “common resource—the ecological, traditional, and moral benefit of the spotted owl. 

Now obviously an ecological tragedy of the commons is different from one of fossil fuels. There is no replenishment in fossil fuels; while the the stock is so vast that they are not likely to ever be fully
exhausted, there is an inevitability to the fact that they will be. There is only one way that coal can be “exhausted” and that is extracting all of it from the ground. That inures a benefit to the extractor, but it will not replenish, thereby distinguishing it slightly from the typical tragedy of the commons.  If we continue to extract coal, at any rate, it will inevitability be exhausted. While compelling, it is beyond the scope of this blog post to reconcile whether fossil fuel represents a tragedy of the commons (we could still have it if we didn’t exhaust it more than it could replenish) or something like an “inevitability of the commons” (it was never going to replenish anyway, but we could have gotten more out of it if we had just been more careful in which we extracted). But regardless, the commons still represents a common resource. 

The current push to site renewables at all costs means a push for utility-scale renewable energy installation. This has two major downsides. First, these projects are overwhelmingly sited in rural areas. Second, they benefit a sliver of the community’s social strata (wealthy, often absentee landowners, with extensive real estate holdings) while spreading the cost across the entire community. Third, without meaningful planning, the community may bear far more cost than benefit and may be strained to the point of collapse, much like the passenger pigeon. It is a prototypical example of the tragedy of the commons. 

I discussed in Part II the problem with transitional payments (a flat amount of money paid to displaced workers), and how they are unsuccessful. But the flip side of the argument considers the state surplus payments made every year by Alaska to its citizens. Why is it different? Primarily because it is distributed without red tape, but almost more importantly, because it is distributed equally. It is easier to accept the exploitation of a resource if you are receiving a benefit too—ironically, because the commons becomes common. No longer are a few small entities siphoning away something that belongs to all of us: we’re getting to sup on that straw too. In the tragedy of the commons, the costs accrue to everyone. Here, so do the benefits.

While rural America has borne the brunt of extraction, they now possess a somewhat perverse resource in spades: superfund sites. One of the major concerns with utility-scale renewable energy siting is that they will corrupt otherwise usable land (See Part I). But what if the land to be corrupted is already so? 

The term brownfield typically refers to land that is abandoned or underused, in part, because of concerns about contamination. The federal government defines brownfields as “abandoned, idled or underused industrial and commercial properties where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination.” 

In the mid 1990s, the EPA began providing seed money to local governments to launch hundreds of two-year pilot projects and developed guidance and tools for cleanup and redevelopment of brownfield sites. The 2002 Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act codified many of EPA's practices, policies and guidance. The 2018 Brownfields Utilization, Investment and Local Development (BUILD) Act reauthorized EPA’s Brownfields Program and approved changes that affect grants, ownership and liability provisions, and State and Tribal Response Programs. 

Under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Congress provided major funding to support planning, construction and operation of various public infrastructure improvements. Brownfields are continuously developing in both their characteristics and the government’s approach. It seems more than viable that a government could seize a brownfield through eminent domain and then remediate it enough to house solar farms. I want to stress here that there are two caveats. First, this must be a voluntary process undertaken with the consent of the community. Otherwise, it perpetuates an internal colony as better examined in Part IV--this would be the opposite of taking care of a commons. I It would be extractive. Second, this should not be the fate of all brownfield sites. These sites should still be cleaned up, but in the meantime, with climate change looming like it never has before, this land use could provide a temporary solution to a dire problem. 

Repurposing “bad land” into something better has already proven to be successful in rural communities, to some capacity. In Kentucky, hilltops blown out in search of coal have been repurposed to elevated communities, both reusing the land and relocating a flood-risk community to higher ground. 

When you think about rural America as a common resource, it is easier to justify what I think is a crucial component of the green transition. Compensating and rehabilitating these communities without benefitting the people who exploited them. I would advocate for governmental seizure of brownfield sites and other superfund sites through eminent domain, and construction of localized renewable energy projects. 

One main benefit of this is decentralizing the grid. If rural areas are able to achieve energy independence, not only can those communities prosper but the energy rate for the rest of the country goes down, and the durability of energy demand goes up. 

By conceptualizing rural America as a commons, we don’t only seek to protect it but justify investment in ensuring its continued existence—if not for them, then for us. Which cuts nicely antithetical to the current rhetoric of considering fossil fuel towns as backwards and standing in the face of progress. But what does extraction really mean to a community?

On rural legal deserts, this time in the Bench + Bar of Minnesota

Shaun Jamison of Purdue Global Law School writes (excerpting just a little here, but don't miss the full column): 

It won’t come as news to lawyers living and working in rural areas, but many of the people who live there are challenged by a lack of access to solutions to their legal needs. The access to justice issues have grown so acute in many places that a relatively new term of art—“legal deserts”—has grown up in legal aid circles to describe them. This article will offer a brief discussion of some of the key issues as well as possible solutions. 

* * *

There are several reasons for the low ratio of rural lawyers, including a misperception that a lawyer cannot make a living in a rural area, the “graying” of the rural bar, and a paucity of new lawyers coming in to serve rural areas. Some will argue that more lawyers are not the solution, or at least not the only solution, but there still is a minimum number of lawyers needed to ensure the protection of people’s constitutional rights and ensure the functioning of the court system. A criminal case, for example, requires three lawyers in a county to be available—and free of conflicts in the matter at hand—to try a case: a judge, a prosecutor, and a defense lawyer. 

Here's a (nearly) one-stop shop on legal deserts and related aceess to justice issues.  And Jamison refers to Hannah Haksgaard's new book, The Rural Lawyer (Cambridge University Press 2025), an important new resource. 

A Sustained Transition (Part II): Place, Personality, and Progress

Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina opens with “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This beautiful opening, once mulled over and mulched through by a stable of intellectuals and thinkers, birthed the “Anna Karenina Principle,” which dictates that a deficiency in any one of a number of factors results in failure, while success requires that every possible deficiency has been avoided. That is, while the avoidance of failure is not sufficient for a successful condition, it is necessary. This does not deal with personal or metaphysical concepts of success, but rather individual iterations of success. In plain language, a successful outcome requires an absence of failure, as explained below. 

My favorite example of this principle is in examining why so few species have been domesticated. Six groups of reasons have been advanced, and for a species to be domesticated, all six must be satisfied. Garbage-disposal type eaters have a diet that allows fluctuations in feed;  a quick growth rate allows for slaughter or servitude; complicated mating rituals requiring privacy or protracted time will rule out a species from the day-to-day speed of human transaction; hale beasts cannot also have a hard-headed temperament; an animal that is prone to fighting or flighting with vigor will prove difficult to control; and a herd-mentality makes for a good herd—independence goes against the grain. 

As stated in Part I of this series, the current literature about a green transition fails to consider how we keep fossil fuel communities alive. “Just transitions” protect individuals from the loss of their livelihood. “Environmental justice” protects places from the intrusion of pollution and other environmental costs. But there is no meaningful discussion about how to protect the communities, once the fossil fuel aspect is removed. Just transitions could easily incentivize a worker to leave their community to find work elsewhere. Environmental justice could easily incentivize urban siting of renewable industry and infrastructure. While this reduces pollution in rural areas, it could also remove much-needed economic infrastructure in these areas. 

Furthermore, a fossil fuel town is not comprised of barracks of derrickhands. It is a community with retail workers, teachers, retirees, and so on. The concept of just transitions is insufficient in that while it compensates workers, it does not compensate the community that will also be affected by the loss of these jobs. It is one thing to ask a person to give up their livelihood. It is another to ask them to give up their life. 

I don’t mean a true death, but the death of a person’s routine, community, friendships, proximity to family, and even their home. This transition is arguably not “just” if it simply compensates workers and does nothing to preserve the community in which they live. 

Therein lies the Anna Karenina principle, as applied to the green transition:  failing to incorporate a plan to maintain these communities represents a deficiency that is simply unacceptable to rural people. Even if people are willing to accept new jobs, they aren’t as willing to accept lives that are altogether new. 

The rural concept of “place” is not wholly urban, but land use and a strong relationship between existing buildings and the landscape can be helpful in discussions surrounding what it means to be rural. Furthermore, Paul Cloke advocates, in his handbook of rural studies, that “scholars are continuing to recognize and study community as both an important social scale of analysis and a cultural unit in the discourses and social relations that shape people’s experiences.” 

This is echoed by a brilliant quip I heard earlier in the semester, that “you aren’t from a town until your great-great-grandfather is buried there.”

 On the other side of the coin is the notion of work. In academic circles, two groups of “low-status whites” are separated by the idea of work—generally speaking, “the settled working class” work consistently while the “hard living” do not. Staying on the right side of the ledger is paramount to staying in the good graces of the community. If you’re not working, you’re draining a bit of that that little we have. Back in my bartending days, I had a friend laid off. I asked him if he was pursuing welfare and he said, “No. Not only am I taking welfare, I will have had taken welfare. I don’t want that following me around. You think a wife wants a husband who has scraped by on somebody else’s dime when they still have poverty? It'm struggling, but I'm not poor.” 

I think, in some way, the social safety net is thought about as something that you grab as your falling, not as your stumbling. If you’re still vertical, your compatriots expect you to grab it and deny it, as you stay upright. The safety net is for those who have fallen, not those who are falling; and they should be the one who lands ok. If enough of us stretch out the net, landing on it is going to feel like concrete instead of cool water. 

Past transition attempts have been insufficient in mono-economic communities. For the sake of simplicity, here is what I will give as the definition: Mono-economies refer to economic systems that rely heavily on the production and export of a single crop or resource, limiting economic diversity and often leading to vulnerability. These economies are typically characterized by their dependence on external markets for a single commodity, which can create significant risks when market prices fluctuate. It is best to think of a fossil fuel economy, and other extractive communities, as a subset of a mono-economy. Detroit was the car manufacturing capital of the world, and when this industry collapsed so did the economy of the surrounding area. IBM Endicott employed the majority of the Endicott, New York in producing computers, and the decline of the manufacturing economy took its toll quickly and ruthlessly on the area, as the company transferred these operations to larger U.S. cities and overseas. 

Much in the same way, an economy predicated primarily on fossil fuel extraction will leave itself open to collapse if that resource collapses. While there are numerous examples, the “boomtown” model represents the stark dangers of a mono-economy, where a massive influx of workers to extract a natural resource of an area can lead to the wholesale collapse of a town when such extraction is no longer feasible, Analyzing these examples together reveals the same patterns of transitional insecurity. Pardon my French, but how do you pull piglets off a sour tit? I think in our calculations of what to do, we miss that there are fathers on the foot of beds, stinking of coal and oil and gas, and telling their sons that they have the same opportunity to keep the family afloat if they just start working in these industries. 

I will be as brief as I can here, because if you really want to get a masterful analysis of these policies, you should read Ann Eisenberg’s Just Transitions article. Within it, she analyzes four federal transitional policies— (1) The Trade Act of 1974, (2) The President’s Northwest Forest Plan, (3) The Tobacco Transition Payment Program, and (4) the POWER initiative. There were common problems with all of these programs, but there are four that I want to highlight. 

First, the Trade Act did not meaningfully combat the increased competition for displaced workers, resulting in nearly forty percent of those workers unable to find new jobs within one to two years after job loss.  Second, the President’s Northwest Plan did not create any meaningful jobs—it paid out money to individuals but did little to “provide long-term economic growth and security” for former timber counties. 

Third, the Tobacco Transition Payment Program paid out compensation to those engaged in the trade but ended up compensating large tobacco corporations (the same ones that invested aggressively in science-denial) far more than they did individual farmers. Fourth, the POWER initiative, though focused on direct payments to workers affected by the coal and power industry, has failed to make its way out of congress.  Even when there is a way to compensate workers, other warring interests can prevent that compensation. 

Further complicating this relationship is a deep shame inherent in some rural communities associated with engaging in social safety nets like welfare. This is described in depth in Arlie Hochschild’s “Stolen Pride” as well as J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy.”  There is also Jennifer Sherman’s book, Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t. In these highly proud communities, it is not enough to tell a breadwinner that “those who work, just can’t anymore.” By providing a payment, you are injecting much-needed money into a family unit. But that is a spitball of gauze aimed nicely into a mortal wound. A lot of these people consider work their worth, and a government payout is not only insufficient, but can even be insulting.

So, a transitionary process that merely pays out money to individuals (especially any payment plan which has to be sought out instead of merely given) will not be sufficient. 

Finally, there is also the problem of “fiscal spin,” wherein communities that hemorrhage people are stuck in a tailspin. As people leave, there are less taxes to support local infrastructure and improvement. With less taxes, these projects are abandoned or delayed. As these projects are abandoned or delayed, the quality of life in the area deteriorates. As the quality of life deteriorates, more people leave. As more people leave, the cycle continues. Similarly, when jobs evaporate, so too can labor unions. As labor unions evaporate, so too does their connection to the Democratic party. Furthermore, governmental regulations can disallow local governments from retaining revenue from new wind and solar projects, while exempting oil and natural gas revenue, thus incentivizing both profits and dependency. 

People cling to what they have and viciously defend what they once had. Thus, any just transition has to incorporate employment but also livelihood. How do you approach this problem fairly when the green transition is not only taking away jobs, but the primary jobs associated with a community? All this rigmarole dictates the following simple premise: the green transition must compensate communities as much as it aims to compensate individuals.

A sustainable transition (Part 1): Sustainable development and the green transition

Up until mid-twentieth century, miners would carry bright yellow canaries down into coal-blackened tunnels to carve out a meager living from the walls. Canaries are particularly sensitive to carbon monoxide, an odorless gas which can cause drowsiness, weakness, loss of consciousness, and death. Mining is hard, physical work, and miners would often fail to recognize the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. The common canary exhibits distress in the presence of carbon monoxide poisoning and will die well before a human would begin to feel the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. Thus, miners began to bring canaries down to warn them of the presence of the gas and thus escape its effects.

Although canaries helped save the lives of miners, the miners’ livelihoods are not threatened. Climate change and the pursuant public pivot away from fossil fuels, market volatility, the inconsistent distribution of mineable materials, and an increasingly globalized economy, can all contribute to significant job loss amongst miners. Furthermore, a miner's livelihood is tied to the amount of material present in the mine

A mine exists to extract a metal or mineral, and when the supply is exhausted, the mine is worthless supply, it is worthless. In addition, global politics and shifting market demand can lead to sudden and premature closure of otherwise stable mines, with with the workers the first to feel the impact of these shifts.  While whole swaths of miners lose their jobs, the owners of the mines feel relatively little impact. Ironically, coal workers can function as the “canary in the coal mine” for the coal industry itself. This is true for many extractive industries such as timber, oil, and natural gas. 

Furthermore, there are entire communities that depend on fossil fuel production to sustain their existence. But the world is facing a climate crisis that will require an energy transition on an unprecedented scale. We are left with a predicament: while we need to transition away from the fossil fuel industry, doing so requires the communities of workers that rely on that industry to sacrifice their way of life and their economies. Corporations have also perpetuated these extractive industries and have a strong interest in delaying this transition. 

So, here’s the trillion dollar question I will take up in this series of five posts: how do we transition a national urban-centric economy away from fossil fuels without destroying the rural communities that produce them? 

There is substantial literature on two aspects of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies, widely known as the “green transition.” First, the idea of “environmental justice,” and second, the idea of a "just transition."

Environmental Justice

As we all heard growing up, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” But that is a maxim that should be invoked in times of disaster and crisis, not in city planning.

“Environmental justice” asks that the environmental costs associated with renewable energies be borne fairly instead of concentrated within low-income or majority-minority areas. Environmental justice is not a concept limited to the green transition; it has become increasingly relevant in discussions about where to site renewable energy industry and infrastructure.

I first came across the concept while working for the Department of Toxic Substances Control in Sacramento. Consider the car battery recycling process, which can infinitely recycle the lead component of the battery, melt and reform a substantial amount of the plastic casing, and neutralize the sulfuric acid or convert it to sodium sulfate, a product used in laundry detergent. Ninety-nine percent of car batteries are recycled. However, the recycling plant produces air emissions and a risk of lead contamination in air, soil, and groundwater. Battery recycling is an industry that benefits the community as a whole, but the smaller community near the plant suffers. For example, Exide Technologies shut its plant in May 2015, after years of fines and citations by the Department of Toxic Substances Control, leaving a five-square-mile brownfield site with elevated lead levels, near predominantly working-class and Latino neighborhoods. The cleanup in Vernon is ongoing. 

Another example of this conundrum is found in solar panel production. While the energy created by renewable energies is “clean,” the production of solar panels requires silicon, which must be mined, refined, and disposed of if the panel fails or is irreparably damaged. This both threatens health and safety due to emissions and environmental contamination and impacts the quality of life in an area through habitat destruction and a loss of natural beauty. 

Just Transitions 

A “just transition,” as articulated by Ann Eisenberg in a phenomenal law review article with that title, is a labor-driven principle of easing the burden that decarbonization poses to those who depend on high-carbon industries. It emphasizes a fair distribution of the risks and rewards of the green transition. Privately and publicly driven transition attempts have met varying degrees of success. 

In 2017, a nonprofit called Mined Minds came to West Virginia with promises to teach West Virginians how to write computer code, and then get them well-paying jobs. Many West Virginians quit their jobs or dropped out of school to participate, but almost none who signed up for the program are working in programming now. 

Alternatively, there are retraining programs that exist to train wind and solar installation technicians, and workers involved in zero-emission vehicle construction. However, these programs are not widespread and presently are neither widely targeted nor made free to fossil fuel workers. This may hamper their use as a transitional tool. 

In the past, the United States has provided some form of financial benefit to workers displaced by federal policy, such as compensating workers displaced by the Trade Act, the President’s Northwest Forest Plan, the Tobacco Transition Payment Program, and the POWER program. These payment programs have their own problems, which are discussed later in the series. 

Even successful non-fossil fuel climate transition projects, such as the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (which uses grants and loans to pay for clean energy projects for farmers and small business owners) and Climate Smart Commodities Program (which helps participating farmers implement production practices that help build soil health, sequester carbon, and enhance productivity) have been shut down or delayed by Trump’s USDA, casting some doubt on the integrity of long-term federal transition programs. 

California is “committed to achieving a just and equitable transition to carbon neutrality by 2045.” Although this will create a significant amount of jobs, only 56% of current fossil fuel workers will have “promising employment opportunities outside fossil fuel industries.” This number is likely to rise as renewable energy industry increases, but not enough to provide for all workers.

So, What’s Missing?

Nestled within the concepts of “environmental justice” and “just transitions” is the sustainable development triangle, a nexus between competing issues and interests like environmental stewardship, economic growth, and human well-being, to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Equity, Economy, and Environment lie at the three corners of the triangle. For example, “sustainably developed” housing can be pursued in a way that minimizes environmental impact in the surrounding area, drives improvements in Human Development Index and Multidimensional Poverty Index outcomes, and multiplies community jobs while improving household stability and providing opportunities for home-base. In this example, the issues considered can range from “good health and well-being” and “climate action” to “industry, innovation, and infrastructure” and “responsible consumption and production.”

Eisenberg explains that the existing policies of “environmental justice” and “just transitions” can be seen as lying on the sides of the triangle between ‘Equity and Environment’ and ‘Equity and Economy,’ respectively. 

What, then, lies between ‘Economy and Environment’? 

Extractive economies are unique in the fact that their economy is inextricable from their environment—these communities are ‘stapled’ to the resources they extract. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mill towns sprouted as forests were clearcut for the burgeoning timber industry. Mining towns cut into the rock to extract coal. Oil towns drilled down to start drawing up crude oil. However, the fate of many extractive economies is the same—once the resource has been fully extracted, the town fades away.

And What Comes Next? 

While environmental justice asks to distribute the costs of industry equitably, it may also take away the benefits from communities that find the costs acceptable. While just transitions aims to compensate individuals who will lose their employment in the green transition, that same person may be forced to relocate to find employment. 

This series of blog posts aims to discuss complex issues such as place, pride, and progress, and home in on a crucial aspect of the transition—how do we keep these communities intact? 

Here is a quick view of what’s to come: 

Part II of this series will cover the rural concept of “place” and how it factors into the identity of fossil fuel towns, even when there has been a past exploitative relationship with fossil fuel corporations, as well as how past transitions away from rural mono-economies have failed to adequately acknowledge this concept. 

Part III will examine Ann Eisenberg’s concept of rural America as a “commons,” and how this can help drive governmental investment in local communities instead of corporate investment in utility-scale renewable energy projects. 

Part IV will expose how the current renewable energy industry echoes past extractive economies like fossil fuels, and how localized renewable energy production could help decentralize the United States energy grid. 

Part V will examine several ways in which localized renewable energy siting could provide long-term stability for fossil fuel towns.

On the rural lawyer shortage, from the Illinois Supreme Court

Mark Palmer, Chief Counsel to the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, posted this a few days ago about the enduring rural lawyer shortage.  The item is headlined, "The Disappearing Rural Lawyer, Part IV: The Persistent Legal Desert Crisis."

I'll just include a short excerpt here: 

In previous installments of my “Disappearing Rural Lawyer” series (Part I, Part II, Part III), I have examined the alarming shortage of attorneys in rural Illinois and explored initiatives across the state and country to address this problem to better serve rural communities, from financial incentives for relocating lawyers to technology tools to easier cross geographical divides.

Legal deserts — vast geographical areas with minimal or no access to legal services — remain a reality for many rural Illinois residents. For them, finding legal representation might require traveling significant distances, taking time off work, and incurring additional expenses that make justice effectively inaccessible.

In installment IV of this series, I present the latest data on Illinois’ rural attorney shortage and consider what it means for access to justice in 2025 and beyond.
The numbers: A continuing downward trend

Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) data from November 2024 reveals that the rural lawyer shortage in Illinois has shown little improvement.

Of the 8,327 Illinois resident attorneys admitted to practice in the last four years, a staggering 7,625 (91.6%) are practicing in Cook County or its collar counties (Lake, McHenry, Kane, DuPage, Kendall, Grundy, Will, Kankakee). This leaves only 702 of those newly admitted attorneys to cover the remaining 93 counties in Illinois.

Furthermore, of these 702, only a portion serve in private practice. Many of these lawyers are drawn to essential, non-private roles, such as prosecutors, public defenders, and other government positions.

However, this means the pool of attorneys available for family law, estate planning, business matters, and other civil needs is even smaller than the already stark numbers suggest.

In comparison to previous years, the trend of the disappearing rural lawyer in Illinois is concerning: 

• 75 Illinois counties have five or fewer new attorneys (compared to 72 counties in 2021)
• 32 counties have no new attorneys whatsoever (compared to 33 counties in 2021)

While there’s been a slight improvement in counties with zero new attorneys, the overall concentration of legal talent in and around Chicago continues to intensify.

Readers can, of course, find many resources related to the rural lawyer shortage on this blog. 

As traditional media collapse, "The Epoch Times" gains a following in rural America

The newspaper racks at the Newton County (Arkansas) Library
are full of issues of The Epoch Times, along with News China 
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025.

The New York Times journalist Eli Tan reported last week from Oakdale, California (population 23,181), on the evolution of that community's media ecosystem.  The headline for Tan's story focuses on events from 2020, "It was Just a Rumor on Facebook.  Then a Militia Showed Up" but the story is about the longer-term disintegration of local media, both before and after that 2020 event.  It's a story of how the local media dried up, leaving residents reliant on local Facebook groups, eventually supplemented by The Epoch Times, a publication of Falun Gong, a group associated with right-wing views and its opposition to the Chinese government. I want to focus on that part of the story because it relates to something I observed first-hand in my home county this year.  First, I'll share a bit more background on Oakdale, which is in Stanislaus County, in California's Central Valley:   

First the nearby newspapers shrank, and hundreds of local reporters in the region became handfuls. Then came the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, and the pandemic; suddenly cable networks long deemed trustworthy were peddlers of fake news, on the right and the left.

By the 2024 election, when its county, Stanislaus, was among the 10 in California that President Trump flipped red, it wasn’t just trust in traditional media that had vanished from Oakdale — it was the media itself.

Now, in place of longtime TV pundits and radio hosts, residents turn to a new sphere of podcasters and online influencers to get their political news. Facebook groups for local events run by residents have replaced the role of local newspapers, elevating the county’s “keyboard warriors” to roles akin to editors in chief.

Many issues of News China magazine
were also on display in the 
Newton County Library

Of the 80 Oakdale residents The New York Times spoke to for this article, not a single one subscribed to a regional news site, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post.

Oakdale is not alone: Between news deserts expanding in rural areas and a growing distrust of national outlets, the town’s shift toward new sources of information is becoming commonplace in small communities across the country. 

Here is more coverage of the rural news desert phenomenon. 

As local news outlets shrank throughout the Central Valley in the 2010s, Facebook groups dedicated to local events started popping up in their place. 

* * *  

The town is still able to support a weekly newspaper called The Oakdale Leader, which shares a handful of reporters with nine other local newspapers in the Central Valley, all owned by Hank Vander Veen, its publisher and a former circulation director at the Modesto Bee.

* * *

It isn’t just local news habits that are changing in Oakdale. Since the pandemic, a wider skepticism for everything including vaccines and the price of eggs has changed the way people approach information in general: The thinking is, do your own research, and trust neither side.

Newton County Library, Feb. 2025
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025

Here is another post about misinformation influencing politics in rural communities.  Tan's story in the NYT continues:

Alternative news in Oakdale has even extended into print. In barber shops, clock repair stores and diners across town, copies of a peculiar newspaper appear on tables and bookshelves: The Epoch Times.

The media outlet is affiliated with the Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, and it is known to include right-wing misinformation with an anti-China slant. (The outlet did not respond to a request for comment.) A weekly print subscription costs less than $15 a year, but most store owners in Oakdale said they didn’t initially pay for a subscription — the editions just started showing up in the mail during the pandemic.

This brought to mind what I saw in the Newton County (Arkansas) Library (in my hometown) when I visited in February, 2025:  the newspaper rack was dominated by just two publications, The Epoch Times and the local(ish) Harrison Daily Times, from neighboring Boone County.  Oddly, there was no copy of the local weekly, The Newton County Times, on display.  (It is owned by the same company that owns the Harrison Daily Times and currently operates out of the same office in Boone County--that is, The Newton County Times has no physical presence in Newton County except when the reporter comes over from Harrison, Boone County's seat, to cover events like local government meetings).  

I was back in Newton County in early April and again popped into the library.  Nothing had changed in terms of what was on display--well, the issues of The Epoch Times and The Harrison Daily Times were more recent because it was April and no longer February.  On this latter visit, the librarian was present, and so I asked her about the prominence of The Epoch Times--and why she carried it at all.  She said that a patron had requested it.  My facial response was skeptical, perhaps even as strong as an eye roll.  Though what I was really judging was her decision to display this propaganda so prominently, especially when there was so little counter-balance of real news.  Not a copy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, let alone any national newspaper, in sight.    

Now, however, that I've read this New York Times story, I'm skeptical in a different way about what the librarian told me.  I suggest The Epoch Times is being sent to lots of local libraries, and those without much else--and those who don't see how biased it is--simply display it.  After all, they have plenty of room, and it's no tax at all on their budgets.   

It seems this is an important bit of information toward understanding the media ecosystem that has led to a right-ward shift in the rural vote. 

It also reminds me of some billboards for The Epoch Times I saw on California's I-80 in the last year.  Those billboards proclaimed The Epoch Times the most trusted news source in America, a claim that made me very skeptical.   Here's a story about those billboards and how they showed up in Tampa, Florida. from Axios. 

Housing Assistance Council launches Rural Data Central

You can access this important new resource here.  It has sections on 

• Rural people and places
• Society
• Economy
• Housing
• Mortgage and Housing Finance
• Federally Assisted Housing

The Housing Assistance Council reports that the website 

is designed as a resource to help rural communities, organizations, and decisionmakers with data to inform strategies and solutions. Rural Data Central compiles over 275 million data points into one accessible and easy-to-use tool. Sign up for Rural Data Central today to get the data you need for your community.

With so little data available that teases out rural difference in various sectors, I'm excited about this new rural-focused source of quantitative data.  

Will Trump’s push to increase timber production help rural communities?

Many rural communities in the Pacific Northwest grew up around a once-thriving timber industry. Almost all timber harvesting operations are located in rural areas. Logging has, and continues to be, a source of pride in these communities. The timber industry allowed rural communities to thrive economically. However, the timber industry has slowly shrunk over the years. President Trump wants to revive the timber industry by opening more national forests to logging.

On March 1, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order directing the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to expand American timber production. The Executive Order calls for the reversal of restrictive policies and the implementation of federal policies that promote timber harvesting throughout the United States.

This executive order is meant to assist rural communities that depend on the timber industry and help gain support for the Trump Administration. Will the change in policy work, and will it help the economies of rural communities? The answer is likely no.

The timber industry has been slowly shrinking across the United States, particularly in Western states. Many sawmills near national forests have closed in recent years. With the closure of mills, jobs in the rural communities that surround local mills have disappeared. For many rural communities, the local mill was the largest employer in the area.

One example of this is the closure of the Malheur Lumber Company in John Day, Oregon. John Day has a population of 1,543 people, and the Malheur Lumber Company employed 76 people. Following the closing of the Malheur Lumber Company, two other mills in Oregon closed in 2024. This means that in Oregon alone, seven individual mills have closed in 2024.

The closure of so many mills demonstrates that the timber industry in rural areas has vanished. This means that increasing timber harvesting in national forests will be of little help to rural communities. There is nowhere to go with the logs that are harvested. This is because “logs would have to be transported longer distances, at increased costs.” Struggling mills cannot afford to pay extra transportation costs.

It is also unlikely that any of these closed mills will reopen their doors. Susan Jane Brown, an environmental lawyer and principal at Silvix Resources in Oregon, said that “‘no businessman is going to invest millions of dollars in a new mill or in retrofitting an old mill.’”

Further complicating the implementation of President Trump’s Executive Order is the recent Forest Service budget cuts and employee layoffs. I have previously discussed how the layoffs of Forest Service employees disproportionately affect rural communities, but these layoffs also hamper the Trump Administration’s goal of increasing timber production.

The Federal Government has laid off approximately 3,400 Forest Service workers. Forest Service staff are responsible for organizing and implementing timber sales. Without adequate staffing, the Forest Service will struggle to market timber sales to private companies.

The Trump Administration's ongoing tariff war will negatively affect the wood products industry as well. If the United States’ economy falls into a recession, the timber industry and rural communities will be hit extraordinarily hard. If a recession were to occur, the housing market would suffer. Since the wood products industry is intertwined with the housing market, the effects on rural communities that depend on local mills would be devastating.

President Trump’s Executive Order is unlikely to assist rural communities that depend on the timber industry. Local mills and rural mill communities have already disappeared. The industry that needed to produce wood products no longer exists. Harvesting more trees will be of little use, as there is nowhere to go with the logs.

The Executive Order appears to be an attempt by the Trump Administration to appease rural communities who overwhelmingly voted for President Trump in 2024. However, this push to open more national forests will do very little to help rural communities that depend on the remnants of the timber industry. 

For further reading on the hardships that logging-dependent communities face, please see Jennifer Sherman’s book, Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America, and Michelle Wilde Anderson’s book, The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America.