Integrating environmental, climate, and energy justice with consumer sovereignty : highlighting consumers’ moral and legal responsibilities

The literature on a ‘just transition’ has grown exponentially over the last decade. The success of the just transition scholarship is due to the earlier endorsement and dissemination of a common analytical framework borrowed from justice-related theories, which has allowed a multidisciplinary dialogue on problem-based concerns. The earlier distinction between distributive, procedural, and corrective justice was progressively enriched to incorporate other perspectives—namely, restorative, recognition, and cosmopolitan justice. This article aims to navigate the scope of this research agenda from a consumer sovereignty perspective, underlining the under-appreciated consumer moral responsibility towards a just transition, which has similarities to the idea of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ in international law. To implement this moral responsibility, the law uses a mix of legal approaches: empowerment, protection, and legal responsibility. The latter, in particular, is emerging from just transition-related policy and legislation and focuses on cost internalization and product regulation. This article shows that the moral and legal responsibility of consumers is justified by the concept of consumer sovereignty and that the international debate over a just transition and on Sustainable Development Goal 12 risks having two distinct negative effects on consumers’ legal responsibilities, which we call perverse and blinding effects. However, the risk of a perverse effect seems less significant than in the discussion about a green transition in the European Union.