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• This paper presents the first on-the-ground study of attitudes towards just transition ideas in Australian coal communities. • It highlights the range of specific anxieties and reservations that workers and individuals in these communities have about these ideas. • The study highlights the dire need for local autonomy and control over any transition planning in these regions. Over the past several years, numerous actors across Australian society have increasingly advocated 'just transition' policies to help coal communities move beyond their reliance on fossil fuel extraction. As part of this, individuals from the environmental movement, trade unions, various NGOs and the private sector have called for a range of initiatives designed to help maintain the social and economic integrity of these regions as coal inevitably declines. Yet while just transition ideas have grown in popularity in these numerous forums in Australian society, it remains unclear how they are being understood by the very workers and communities for whom they are being proposed. To shed light on this question, we conducted interviews with residents of coal communities throughout Eastern Australia. We found that respondents had several key anxieties about just transition ideas and their impacts on their lives. In this paper, we break our findings down into five main themes that help explain these anxieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Australia's abundant coal resources' contribution to the escalating climate emergency. Topics discussed including a broad distribution of coal resources across Australia's landmass; effects of lost jobs, declining tax bases, shrinking service provision, and diminishing populations; and strategy for tackling the dual challenges of climate change and looming economic stagnation.