
Academic research, business strategies, and government policy can accelerate this movement. Such transitions to sustainability are frequently analyzed in terms of processes of technological change, such as advancing from innovative ‘niches’ to ‘landscapes’ ( Geels, 2002). To power the world without violently warming its atmosphere, we need to design workable carbon capture and storage technologies, and to manufacture solar panels and wind turbines more cheaply ( Gibbons and Chalmers, 2008 Ellabban et al., 2014). To feed the world’s rapidly burgeoning population, technical experts tell us, we must intensify agricultural production to provide 50 to 70 percent more food by 2050 ( Royal Society, 2009 Godfray, 2010). Sustainability transitions tend to be seen as technical, not social, affairs.

How should we live in a climate-changed world? What role does racial and social subordination play in destroying the environment? What are the dangers of hubris in seeking out a fundamental change through science and technology that cannot be readily controlled after all? How should we think about Earth itself? I conclude with some thoughts on how Earth could be made ‘unbroken’ again through integrating recognition, humility, renewal, and redistribution into transitions.

She interrogates four themes relevant to transitions. Jemisin explores Earth through the lens of racial and ecological injustice. By contrast, some recent ecological science fiction writing has begun to place these issues at the center of transitions. Nor do they query whether they are exaggerating the reach of scientific and technological solutions. They seldom recognize rights for racially marginalized people, or the possible existence of rights of Earth. Mainstream scholars and practitioners do not very often acknowledge environmental and social justice in their transitions work.
