The mirage of a “just transition”

Nov 09, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

(Kaieteur News) – There is a peculiar dissonance at the heart of Guyana’s energy rhetoric. On the one hand, the President thunders about the necessity of a “just transition”—as if his administration were the standard-bearer for environmental equity, the noble steward balancing the scales between development and climate duty.

On the other, his government’s depletion policy is predicated on the idea that Guyana’s oil must be pumped, sold, and celebrated quickly. Strip away the varnish of moral piety, and what remains is not a philosophy of justice but a politics of expediency. The so-called “just transition” is not a moral argument but a rhetorical shield—a way to defend the right to extract oil without appearing indifferent to the planet’s decline.

There is no doubt that every sovereign nation possesses the right to pursue its development as it sees fit. There is nothing inherently immoral about a poor country using its natural endowments to lift its people out of poverty. But to dress this pragmatic impulse in the garments of global justice is to engage in semantic trickery. The President’s invocation of a “just transition” is not a plea for equity; it is a justification for oil extraction, cloaked in the vocabulary of virtue.

And now, the latest insult to logic: the charge that those who call for keeping oil in the ground are somehow protectionist. The word drips with disdain, implying a parochialism, a self-interest disguised as moral rectitude. Yet the accusation is absurd on its face. Protectionism is the economic doctrine of shielding one’s domestic industries from foreign competition through tariffs, quotas, or subsidies. It has nothing whatsoever to do with moral or environmental objections to oil. Environmentalists who call for leaving fossil fuels untouched are not guarding their own economic turf; they are warning of a planetary crisis. They seek not protection for an industry, but preservation for a species.

If this is protectionism, then what, pray, was Guyana’s own Low Carbon Development Strategy? Before oil’s seduction, Guyana positioned itself as a pioneer in environmental stewardship. That blueprint did not advocate drilling, burning, or selling; it envisioned an economy built on forest conservation and renewable energy. No one called it protectionist then. Nor was it deemed protectionist when a subsequent administration declared its ambition to make Guyana a Green State. These were visions grounded in the recognition that the future would belong to the post-carbon world.

Indeed, the very concept of Net Zero—which Guyana proudly supports—is itself a commitment to the eventual end of fossil fuel production. To reach Net Zero means precisely that: to eliminate or offset carbon emissions, which cannot coexist indefinitely with perpetual oil extraction. Yet no one brands Net Zero as protectionist. Why, then, should those who urge restraint in oil development, who argue that the only truly “just transition” is one that hastens the demise of the fossil fuel era, be cast as economic nationalists in disguise?

The government’s logic collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. Only a few years ago, the Vice President argued that Guyana must accelerate oil production because there exists but a “narrow window” before fossil fuels become obsolete in the face of renewable energy’s ascent. That argument suggested that we must drill now because soon we will not be able to do so. It was opportunism naked and unashamed. But now, the narrative has evolved. Today, we are told that this frenetic extraction is part of a “just transition.” The exploitation of oil has been rebranded as an act of environmental conscience. The same opportunism now marches under the banner of justice. The President is rewriting the narrative on just transition. A “just transition” implies fairness — fairness to workers, to communities, to nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. It implies a deliberate move away from fossil fuels, not a doubling down upon them. It is the bridge to the post-carbon world, not the justification for remaining in the old one. To invoke the phrase while expanding production and celebrating record output is to rob it of meaning. It is Orwellian in its inversion: war is peace, drilling is decarbonization, oil is justice.

Words matter, and when Presidents play fast and loose with them, policy follows rhetoric into absurdity. To call environmentalists protectionist is not merely a misuse of language; it is a distortion of moral intent. It reveals an unease, a subconscious awareness that the high ground of environmental virtue has been ceded, that the nation’s stance is now one of self-interest cloaked in sanctimony.

Guyana has every right to develop its oil. But let us at least be honest about what we are doing. We are not saving the planet; we are saving our balance of payments. We are not leading a green revolution; we are leading a gold rush in black liquid form. There is no shame in admitting this — only in pretending otherwise. The President would do well to choose his words with care. A just transition is not the fig leaf for continued extraction; it is the farewell song of the fossil age. And if Guyana wishes to be remembered as a nation that spoke truth rather than indulged in the pieties of opportunism, it must learn the difference between justice and justification.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

• Low Carbon Development Strategy, mirage, Peeping Tom, transition

---