How business challenges climate transformation: an exploration of just transition and industry associations in Australia

Abstract

As the consequences of a warming world intensify and actions to mitigate climate change remain persistently slow, demands for a more radical political economic transition focused on climate and justice have grown. ‘Just transition’ is one such counter-hegemony that has gained wide appeal within the field and practice of international political economy. Through document analysis and interviews with industry associations in Australia, this article seeks to demonstrate the pliability of just transition, a plasticity that allows incumbent business interests to ‘remake’ what is just within a just transition. Underpinning this analysis is a novel theoretical framework based on ‘justification of worth’, which shows that fossil capital seeks to outmaneuver calls for just transition by discursively re-aligning justice with the ‘common good’ of fossil capital hegemony. The article therefore assists scholars of international political economy to understand the discursive strategies through which powerful incumbent actors endeavor to maintain fossil capital hegemony in response to justice focused counter-hegemonies.