Introduction

This chapter explores environmental justice (EJ) in the Anthropocene by addressing the contested concept of the Anthropocene, the spatiality of EJ, just transitions, and just futures. For critics, universalist narratives serve to obscure differential responsibility for our predicament and, thus, obligation for getting us out of it. The transition from existing injustices to just futures is a process which requires properly crafted transitions whereby the means are consistent with the ends. For the meaningful inclusion necessary for just transitions to lead to just futures, there has to be a dramatic shift in the world political economy and ecology. Egalitarian researchers and activists should not be paralyzed by a Manichean choice between transformation or defeat, society, or nature. Neither should they call every change transformational and every non-transformational change a defeat.