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.