May/June 2019

Around us, we see fear and uncertainty about the world that is coming into being. This issue of Briarpatch came from a desire to articulate a hopeful vision of the future, and a plan for how to get there by addressing interwoven social and environmental crises.

When the weight of our entire imbalance crashes down on me, I remember that, through treaties, our ancestors planned for us to remain in our homeland through another apocalypse.

This is some of the history of the just transition movement, traced across Turtle Island through three decades of struggle.

We convened a roundtable of activists from different movements to talk about what a just transition means to them, and what it looks like on the ground.

Two hours east of the Unist’ot’en camp, Wet’suwet’en land defenders from the Likhts’amisyu clan are starting a new camp in the path of the Coastal GasLink pipeline

As the Canadian government phases out coal, we set out to learn what a just transition could mean for Saskatchewan’s coal-producing communities

Just as Indigenous peoples are at the front line of climate impacts, we must also be at the forefront of climate solutions. This is where Indigenous Climate Action was born.

Environmental organizations can sometimes act as gatekeepers of environmental work. In response, the Imagining 2030 Network is creating new connections in Halifax’s climate justice movement.

The Beaver Lake Cree Nation is taking on the tarsands, arguing that they represent too much industrial development in the face of constitutionally protected treaty rights.

People in the Global South are least responsible for climate change historically but suffer most from its impacts. Here are four snapshots of struggles for just transition in the Global South.

In this world, a world where many worlds coexist, there would be no forced migration, no mass extinction.

Pour les partisans de la décroissance, il est urgent que nos sociétés rompent avec la course à la croissance économique avant que les limites biophysiques de notre planète ne nous imposent une décroissance forcée et brutale. Aujourd’hui, le mouvement fleurit au Québec.

The degrowth movement calls for a radical downscaling of production and consumption, in order to save us from climate catastrophe. Today, the movement is blooming in Quebec.

Unlike the Green New Deal, degrowth isn’t a policy platform – it’s more of a movement, or what participants call an “umbrella concept.” What would a conversation between degrowth and the Green New Deal look like?

I sat down with six economists to ask them two pressing questions: first, what are the biggest economic barriers to a just transition in Canada and, second, how do we overcome them?

Should we rely on governments to provide money for the just transition, or can we build our own non-extractive economies?

By this, I mean: a world democratic socialist republic

Generations from today, a group of young activists sends a letter to a historian of the 21st century, hoping that she will be able to settle an argument about tactics. Her letter gives us a glimpse of what life is like in the 22nd century – after a just transition.