What about people employed in the coal industry?

Here is where we have to start the discussion: the vast majority of coal has to stay in the ground if we are going to avoid a disaster. Given current trends (if we keep burning coal), we're likely facing the impacts of runaway climate change by the time our preschoolers have their first kids. We all need to start the big transition off of fossil fuels immediately; if we don't, we won't be talking about transition, we'll be talking about coping with unrelenting misery. The costs of that will be much higher than the costs of helping communities and workers shift out of fossil fuel production.

If we keep mining and using coal, everyones jobs are threatened. If on the other hand, we commit ourselves to a proactive move away from fossil fuels, we do believe that many new jobs will be generated in the renewable energy sector, in developing low emission urban infrastructure, and in a host of other areas.

In any case, our resource dependent communities all need to prepare for the time when the coal or oil or gas runs out. In effect, all we're saying is that we need to start now, so that climate change doesn't run out of control first.

This transition has to come, and we need to make it work for everyone. There is no justice if folks in Vancouver get to just keep hanging out at Starbucks while places like Elkford turn into ghost towns.

We need to work together as a society, pool our resources, and ensure that we all make it through the big changes ahead.

To make this transition just and fair we're going to need to commit to education, training, income support and mobility allowances for workers and families. All of that will cost money, and one place we can start to look for it is in the subsidies we currently hand out to fossil fuel producers. If we didn't subsidize the extraction of fossil fuels, we could use that revenue instead to help communities prepare for the transition away from the fossil fuel economy.

The Danish flexicurity model provides a good example of how these programs can work in practice. Check out this report from Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for more details on how we can develop a Green Social Contract and ensure a just transition for all.

To read more about the green jobs versus coal jobs debate in the US, check out a report on the Big Think.