A2. Green Unionism

By Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Listen to the audio version >>

The startling growth of hyperscale data centers for processing artificial intelligence threatens to exacerbate the climate crisis, the jobs crisis, and the affordability crisis. This commentary presents an overview of the data center explosion and its likely effects. The next commentary in this series will examine the emerging “Data Center Rebellion” and how it can become a major force promoting a Greentech New Deal.

Aerial view of data centers intermingled with other commercial buildings in Loudoun County, near Ashburn, November 26th, 2025. Photo credit: Theodore Christopher, Wikipedia Commons, CC0 1.0 Public Domain.

Data centers are large warehouse-like structures filled with digital electronics that process artificial intelligence (AI). According to the International Energy Agency, “conventional” data centers can use between 10 and 25 megawatts of electricity while “a hyperscale, AI-focused” data center can use 100 megawatts or more. Hyperscale data centers can encompass more than a million square feet. Today there are 4,149 data centers in the US, with 2,788 more under construction or planned. Data center construction rose more than 34 percent between March 2025 and March 2026.

The explosive growth of data centers is already having a significant impact on the energy system. It will have an even greater impact on the transition from climate-destroying fossil fuel energy to climate-protecting Greentech energy in the future. So far, those effects are overwhelmingly negative.

The future of data centers, and AI more broadly, is filled with unknown unknowns. AI is pretty clearly both a technological revolution that will change the way we do things in many spheres of life – but also a technological bubble based on extreme claims that are unproven hype at best. Google CEO Sundar Pichai says artificial intelligence is “more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire.”

Decisions and investments based on such dubious claims are speculative at best. For example, Chinese AI, with its far cheaper energy system and its cheaper and less energy-intensive strategy, is widely seen as less than a year behind the AI frontier. The AI boom depends on a debt bubble similar to many in the past marked by colossal overinvestment followed by collapse. Tech giants are using other people’s money to make huge investments in hyperscale data centers that have not yet shown they can be even marginally profitable. All of this is developing in the context of Polycrisis 2.0, with its unlimited warfare, unlimited arms races, energy crises, climate crises, galloping inequality, destruction of democracy, and overall prevalence of folly. Finally, the AI bubble is largely driven by the colossal egos of “hyperscalers” like Elon Musk whose megalomania and struggles with each other for dominance will have unpredictable ramifications.

Data centers and jobs

Anti-data-center sentiment in rural Kansas neighborhood, May 24th, 2026. Photo credit: Catboy69, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

AI is clearly affecting employment, but estimates of its employment impact vary wildly. S&P Global’s recent executive survey showed that 42 per cent of organizations abandoned most of their AI initiatives in 2025, compared with 17 per cent in 2024. And a 2024 RAND report indicated that more than 80 per cent of industrial AI projects fail, mainly due to process complexity, poor data quality, and lack of real-world context. The vice president of vehicle hardware engineering at Ford, Charles Poon, explained, “Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product.” Ford recently brought back 350 experienced engineers it had fired and tried to replace with AI.

The building of data centers will undoubtedly create jobs for a sector of construction workers. Nobody knows how many. Like most construction jobs, these jobs are temporary. In a Cologix data center in Columbus, Ohio, construction lasted on average six and a half weeks, with about 146 workers on site at a time. Jobs building data centers often are taken not by local workers but by workers from all over the country who come in temporarily to take the temporary jobs. The Industrial Development Agency in Genessee County, New York anticipates that 60% of the construction workforce at a proposed Stream US Data Centers Project will be from outside of the 14-county region.

Data centers create few permanent jobs. According to Kartik Hosanagar, codirector of the Wharton Business School’s AI research center, “Most data centers employ about one hundred to 200 people. In fact, when Apple created a $1 billion data center in North Carolina, the news stories reported that there were less than a hundred permanent jobs created as a result.”

A study of data centers in Texas found, not surprisingly, that when a data center opens there is a gross increase in data center jobs in a county. But, more surprisingly, these job increases are “offset by job losses in other sectors.” In other words, “though there are gross job flow changes, there is no discernable net change in jobs associated with the data centers in Texas.”

How many jobs will be destroyed by the AI that data centers power? The answer is, nobody knows. Some of the claims made by the AI industry seem extravagant.

“Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, has warned that A.I. could eliminate 50 percent of entry-level white-collar jobs within years. The tech investor Vinod Khosla predicted last year that A.I. would replace 80 percent of jobs by 2030. Elon Musk has said the technology will render work ‘optional.'”

Non-industry accounts indicate that the impact of AI on workers will be extensive. For example, researchers at Boston Consulting Group estimated that more than half of the jobs in the United States would be “reshaped” by artificial intelligence over the next two to three years, though far fewer would be replaced entirely. Amazon delivery driver Jonathan Rosenblum gives a vivid description of what that reshaping can mean:

“When I’m in the Amazon truck, every movement I make is tracked with technology and evaluated by AI programs — where I am, which packages I’ve delivered, and whether it’s keeping pace with the algorithm that Amazon has determined I must meet. Readouts at the end of every shift show how each of my deliveries compared to the timing prescribed by Amazon’s algorithmic standard. We are evaluated every week on whether we took accurate photos on delivery, delivered the packages exactly where the customer requested, and got good or bad customer feedback. Through the system, drivers who don’t “make rate” or who don’t meet Amazon’s prescribed standards don’t stay employed.

“Employers everywhere are seeking to imitate the behemoth’s labor model of exploitation, job instability, and — terrifyingly — the deployment of AI technologies to discipline and disempower workers. This workplace dystopia is being perfected at Amazon, then exported to other employers — in factories, grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, construction sites, laboratories, and offices.”

AI-related layoff of tech workers at tech firms have made big headlines. But tens of millions of “back office” jobs are also threatened, such as customer service representatives, bookkeepers, payroll clerks, human resources specialists, and many others. These jobs are predominantly, or overwhelming held by women. Says Molly Kinder, a former researcher on AI at the Brookings Institution, “I worry that A.I. will be to high-school-educated women what deindustrialization was to high-school-educated men.

Whatever the future holds, AI is already destroying jobs right now. Researchers at Stanford University found that employment is already declining for entry-level workers in jobs that were highly exposed to A.I. “Early-career workers (ages 22-25) in AI-exposed occupations experienced 16% relative employment declines.”

Derailing the Greentech revolution?

Roof of a data center featuring cooling towers and backup generators, November, 23rd, 2025. Photo credit: Rsparks3, Wikipedia Commons, CC0 1.0 Public Domain.

Data centers use massive amounts of energy. They already used 448 terawatt hours globally in 2025, more electricity than all but 10 countries. That is on track to double within four years. Some data centers consume more energy than a mid-size city. According to Kartik Hosanagar of the Wharton Business School’s AI research center, in some US states data centers are already consuming up to 5% of all energy used in the state. In two to three years that is projected to be over 10% in most states. By 2030, data centers may consume enough electricity to increase the annual growth in electricity demand nearly five-fold. This July, BloombergNEF’s estimate of projected U.S. data centers’ power capacity by 2035 increased 83% compared to their estimate just half a year earlier. Data centers would account for about 20% of total US electricity consumption by 2035, up from less than 6% today.

US utilities are racing to build new fossil-fuel plants and are keeping ageing gas and coal plants open to meet the swelling requirements of data centers. But often the grid simply can’t keep up. Delays are holding up data centers’ connections to the electric grid by as much as 12 years. So big tech is investing massively to produce its own power by any means available. The biggest growth is in the gas industry, including fracking firms and pipeline companies. Gas companies are building new plants solely to supply data centers, leading to the largest ever construction boom of natural gas-fired power plants.

Some of the demand for electricity is being met by Greentech. For example, Google just developed the world’s largest grid-scale battery to power a data center in Minnesota, and purchased an energy company with which it is expanding renewable development, including a new “off the grid” center in Texas that will include wind, solar, batteries, and gas.

But the new energy for data centers is coming overwhelmingly from fossil fuels. Since 2023, some communities have seen a 48% increase in greenhouse gas emissions because of data centers. An example: Mississippi Power agreed to keep burning coal at one of its plants for roughly a decade longer than planned. In Michigan and other states, data centers have effectively derailed the grid’s planned transitions to renewable energy. Meta plans to build 10 gas power plants across Louisiana for its data centers.

The AI industry and data centers represent an extraordinary concentration of wealth and power.

According to the investment firm Jeffries, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft account for more than half of the country’s data center power capacity. Due to the data center boom, Microsoft consumes nearly four times as much electricity as it did before the pandemic; Google’s electricity use has more than doubled. Amazon’s emissions increased by 16% last year; Google’s increased by 18%; Microsoft’s grew by 25%.

Data centers are dramatically increasing electricity costs for utilities’ residential and business customers. Utilities requested $18.6 billion in electric and gas increases in the first six months of this year, according to a new report from the nonprofit PowerLines. More than $9 billion of those requests were filed in the second quarter of 2026 alone, up 26% from the same period in 2025. On July 14 the nation’s largest electrical grid operator said rising electricity costs would add $6.3 billion to the bills of millions of households and businesses within the next three years as a result of the power demands of data centers. Some reports estimate electricity bills may double by 2039 if data centers continue to be built at current rates.

Unconstrained, the rise of hyperscale data centers threatens to accelerate greenhouse gas emissions and thereby put climate change on steroids. It also threatens the jobs of millions of workers, local environments, neighboring communities, and the affordability of electricity, water, and other necessities of life.

The next commentary in this series will describe the “Data Center Rebellion” that is emerging from the grassroots around the country and presenting an unprecedented challenge to hyperscale data centers and the tech oligarchs who are attempting to impose them on American communities.

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The post Will Data Centers Derail the Greentech Revolution? first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

CIW signs an agreement with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (2010), leading to the creation of the Fair Food Program ProPublica: “(T)he gold standard for preventing worker abuse is the Fair Food Program”

Last week, we shared with you the news that the largest modern-day slavery prosecution in U.S. history, dubbed “Operation Blooming Onion,” had just wrapped up. In updating you with the latest developments in that case, which the CIW uncovered over a decade ago and helped federal authorities investigate, we also reflected on the importance of preventing the kind of abuses that occurred within the Blooming Onion operation — forced labor, sexual violence, wage theft, threats, and retaliation — before they ever have a chance to take root.

This week, for our final post in this year’s Sustainer Drive, we want to share a feature-length piece from ProPublica that approaches the problem from the perspective of prevention, and to let you know how you can help be a part of the solution.

After reporting extensively on Operation Blooming Onion and the workers who suffered under that sprawling criminal conspiracy, ProPublica reporter Max Blau set out to answer a deceptively simple question: How can any of us know whether the fruits and vegetables in our grocery carts were harvested by workers whose fundamental rights were protected?

His search led him to the Fair Food Program — a program that has demonstrated how the kinds of abuses in Blooming Onion can not only be remedied after the fact, but prevented in the first place. Below are some excerpts from the ProPublica story:

My Maddening Quest to Find Out if Blueberries Come From Farms Where Workers Were Harmed

“Over the past year, I’ve reported at length about crimes against farmworkers who have come to the U.S. legally from Mexico and Central America.

I haven’t stopped thinking about how they suffered. Their wages were stolen, guns were pointed in their faces, and one woman I met was held captive, raped and nearly killed.

As I wrote those stories, there was something else I couldn’t stop thinking about — something I keep thinking about: Whenever I go to the grocery store, I have no easy way of knowing if the fruits and vegetables I put in my cart are part of the problem I’ve documented…

That case, which I wrote about at length, revealed that thousands of foreign farmworkers had been illegally charged fees by labor contractors to work in the U.S. Some were forced to pick crops for little to no pay in what prosecutors described as a form of modern-day slavery.

This wasn’t the first case of the abuse of farmworkers at the hands of labor contractors. Or the last. Many of these harms might have been prevented if the workers had received the protections they were promised by the U.S. government. And there have been no substantial reforms to address the abuses, either…

I spoke with experts to see if there are ways for consumers to know if the people picking their blueberries are being mistreated.

Those experts, who study farm labor conditions and food supply chains, said the gold standard for preventing worker abuse is the Fair Food Program. Under the program, supermarkets and other corporate buyers commit to paying a little more for produce — a cost so negligible, at a few pennies per pound, that one expert said it shouldn’t drive up prices.

For those few pennies, grocers get crops from farms that offer their workers stronger protections.

Fruits and vegetables from those farms are labeled with a green sticker of a woman holding a basket of tomatoes. The stickers give consumers like me a clear indication that the workers who picked that produce were treated fairly.

When I’ve found these tomatoes in my grocery stores, they don’t cost measurably more than others without the label.

Dozens of farms have signed on to the Fair Food Program, and participation in it has been shown to prevent abuse in the fields.

But only a few small blueberry farms participate in the program.

Until that or something else changes, consumers will know virtually nothing about the farms their blueberries come from. And they won’t be able to make choices that could make a difference in the lives of the people who pick them.”

The question ProPublica leaves us with is the same one that has driven the CIW’s work since the launch of the Fair Food Program nearly two decades ago:

Now that we know how to prevent these abuses, how do we make those protections available to every worker who needs them?

The Fair Food Program has already demonstrated what prevention looks like in practice. But for true prevention to become a reality across U.S. agriculture, the Program must grow dramatically — reaching countless more farming operations, crops, and communities, and ultimately protecting hundreds of thousands more workers every year.

The need to scale is only becoming more urgent by the day. Outside the protections of the Fair Food Program, workers remain vulnerable to the very abuses documented in Operation Blooming Onion. To make matters worse, the growing pressure on the country’s existing immigrant worker community is driving more and more growers across the country to turn to the H-2A “guestworker” visa program to recruit farmworkers, a program with a long and documented history of labor abuse and the same program the Blooming Onion ringleaders exploited to control and mistreat thousands of workers over nearly a decade. As the risks facing workers multiply, the life-saving protections of the Fair Food Program — protections created by workers themselves and backed by real, enforceable consequences — will only become more essential.

And that is why your support matters so much.

Monthly gifts help ensure that the FFP’s protections can reach more workers, on more farms, in yet more distant corners of the agricultural industry from Florida to California.

Today, the Fair Food Program is like the earliest days of the electrical grid in this country. In those early days, the electric grid, in the rare community where it existed, worked beautifully and transformed everyone’s lives, from great industries to the smallest households. But it only covered a small percentage of the entire population, and great swaths of the country remained in the dark. With time, significant resources, and great effort, however, a mass electrification movement was mounted to bring the miracle of electric light to homes across the country, and a social and economic revolution ensued.

The Fair Food Program today covers tens of thousands of farmworkers in 23 states, which sounds great… until you realize that those tens of thousands are only a small part of a population estimated to be more than one million across the country. And, yes, just like electricity, where the FFP operates it transforms everyone’s lives — from the individual farmworker to the grower and even the billion-dollar retail food giant alike. Indeed, like the electrical grid, the Fair Food Program is a shared infrastructure that operates in the background to meet everyone’s needs, ending labor abuse for workers, eliminating regulatory and reputational risk for growers and buyers, and providing ethically grown and harvested produce for consumers. It is a true miracle, one that transformed fields that federal prosecutors famously dubbed “Ground Zero for Modern-day Slavery” into what human rights experts called “The best workplace environment in American agriculture” on the front page of the New York Times in the space of just three years.

But as it was with electricity in the early days of the last century, the challenge before us today isn’t inventing the FFP; it’s building its protections out so that its life-changing power can be experienced by everyone, on every farm, big or small, in every corner of the country. We stand on the doorstep of great change, but we are not there yet.

So, as we close this year’s Sustainer Drive, we are asking you to help us take the next step. If you are not yet a Sustainer, become one today. If you already give monthly, consider increasing your sustaining gift.

The solution to human rights abuse exists. Together, we can make sure it reaches the hundreds of thousands of workers who still need it.

Together, we can complete the human rights revolution in the fields that started in Immokalee 30 years ago this year.

Become a Sustainer today.

Save ourselves from the climate crisis or prepare for war – it’s either, or…

Please note: the figures in these graphics refer to the budget of the EU as an institution. The budgets of individual member states are far higher.

By Paul Atkin

This graphic from Stop Rearm Europe deserves wide circulation in the climate, labour and anti war movements.

The militarist tunnel vision evident in the EU budget is also a risk in UK spending priorities – where the evident and immediate threat of climate breakdown is downgraded and played down, while the “whole society approach” that we need to combat it is instead cranked up to prepare for war; and resources sucked from one into the other.

We need clarity in all three movements – in responding to the acute crisis of fossil fuel prices caused by the war on Iran and the chronic impacts of heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and floods driven by the climate crisis, we should be campaigning on all of these three principles.

1. To stop the crisis we need to stop the war, tax war profits and transfer military spending
2. The transition to renewable energy and energy conservation is the solution.
3. Crisis measures must be social justice measures.

A draft motion for union and Party branches can be accessed here.

Please put it and lets shift this debate.

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The post Save ourselves from the climate crisis or prepare for war – it’s either, or… first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

Canada’s public health care system, which provides essential health services without regard to ability to pay, is one of our most cherished social achievements. Indeed, public opinion polls consistently show that medicare is the single feature Canadians most associate with our national identity. Support for universal public health care is thus an important element of Canadians’ response to the challenges to our economy and sovereignty posed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

However, the medicare system is under threat from inadequate funding, long wait times for some services, and ongoing pressure from investors to privatize services. In Alberta, new laws allow parallel private provision of key health care services (including diagnostic tests and some surgeries). Other provinces (such as Ontario) are also pushing privatization. Always underlying privatization efforts is the claim that Canada simply cannot ‘afford’ the big costs of the public health care system.

At the recent summit meeting of Canadian premiers held in Charlottetown, P.E.I. in July, premiers discussed the challenges of financing health care and called on the federal government to hold a national summit on future health funding. At the summit, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford made a presentation to the premiers on the economic benefits of public health care. He stressed that health care ranks as one of the most important industries in Canada: it creates jobs, generates incomes, supports widespread economic spillovers, and is one of Canada’s leading sources of innovation and new technology. These benefits have to be considered alongside the costs of providing essential health services.

Here is the presentation which Stanford gave to the premiers. It drew on findings from a recent report Stanford prepared for the Canadian Federation of Nurses’ Unions, titled The Economic Benefits of Canada’s Public Health Care System. The report quantified the important ways in which public health care supports employment, incomes, economic growth, and government revenues. Seen this way, health care should be redefined as an investment—not just a cost item on provincial budgets.

Key findings from the report include:

• Health care is one of Canada’s largest and most dynamic industries.
• It employs 1.9 million waged or salaried employees, and hundreds of thousands more self-employed practitioners, specialists, and contractors.
• Health care production accounts for about 8% of Canada’s total value-added (GDP), and over 10% of total employment.
• Health care workers earn $120 billion per year in wages and salaries.
• The health care system purchases $51 billion worth of supplies and inputs from a complex and far-reaching supply chain (composed mostly of private businesses).
• Health care accounts for over $7 billion in annual research spending, the second highest of any Canadian industry.
• Because health care is not highly integrated in international trade, it is relatively protected from global disruptions and shocks (like the effects of U.S. trade policies).
• Universal access to quality health care unlocks many other economic benefits including: more flexible labour markets (workers are able to change jobs without fear of losing health coverage), enhanced longevity and well-being (supporting more labour force participation and higher productivity), and improved ‘social capital’ (safe and inclusive communities where interactions can occur more securely and efficiently).

In sum, health care cannot be understood solely as a ‘cost.’ It is also a powerful economic engine: a source of growth, jobs, incomes, tax revenues, and well-being. Understanding and appreciating the economic benefits of the universal public health care system can reinforce public and fiscal support for its maintenance and improvement.

Please see the full report here.

The post Health Care is an Economic Engine, not Just a Cost Item appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

On August 7 both Statistics Canada and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released their monthly labour force reports (for July). The stark contrast in the two trends certainly strengthens Canada’s hand in ongoing trade talks with Trump. Canada created 75,000 jobs in July. The U.S. lost 23,000 jobs by one measure (the payroll survey of employers), 87,000 by another (the household survey of workers).

But the longer-term trends also refute Trump’s chaotic economic and geopolitical policies. Since January 2025 (his second inauguration), US employment has declined by 1.0% (by the household survey), the unemployment rate has grown, and the participation rate (which has been much lower than Canada’s for years) has fallen much more.

In Canada, employment rose 1% in the same time, the unemployment rate fell, and the participation rate (which reflects both demographic and cyclical factors) declined 0.4 percentage points (one third as much as in the US). Even in manufacturing, the target for Trump’s tariffs, the US has lost more jobs than Canada since Trump returned to office. This is also true in the high-profile auto sector, which Trump claims should completely relocate to the US: it is losing jobs much faster in the US than in Canada.

Real wages are growing in Canada, but falling in the US. This reflects both strong wage growth here, and slower inflation. 

Trump’s policies were never about protecting American workers. They are about weaponizing popular discontent and misdirecting it against foreigners—rather than against the billionaires whose interests he promotes. The longer he’s in power, the weaker the US economy becomes, the worse off are American workers, and the more dismal do his mid-term prospects appear.

Also, the worse the US economy gets, the weaker is Trump’s bargaining position in trade talks (including with Canada and Mexico). With Republicans down badly in the polls as mid-term elections approach, Trump’s tariff war is losing credibility at home quickly.

In short, Trump’s pledge to use “economic force” to annex Canada is backfiring badly. Labour market trends show both that Canada’s economy is more resilient than most expected, but also that Trump’s bargaining position will weaken as more US jobs are lost to his misguided tariffs.

Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford discussed the July employment numbers, and the contrast between Canada and the U.S., on CBC News Network with host Lien Yeung.

One nerdy data note: The US releases its payroll and household surveys the same day. The series differ for various reasons, such as self-employment & agriculture (not counted in the payroll data), and multiple job-holding (which inflates payroll employment). US household data has been weaker than payroll data under Trump’s second term, in part because it does count agricultural employment (which has been hurt badly by Trump’s repressive immigration policies).

Canada’s payroll data (from the SEPH series) comes out a few weeks later than the household survey data discussed above, so we can’t make a direct Canada-US comparison for payroll employment in July yet. For May (the most recent Canadian payroll data), Canadian payroll employment was up 0.5% from January 2025, vs a 0.4% increase in the US (both seasonally adjusted). That gap will have widened since May, which will be confirmed when the July data comes out for Canada.

The post Canada-U.S. Employment Contrast Shows Trump’s Tariffs are not Working appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s misguided war against Iran has caused another shock in global oil prices – the 14th such shock in the last half-century. World oil prices rose 50% or more after the war started, and have stayed high despite Trump’s repeated promises to stop the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. These price increases are is driving massive increases in profits for petroleum companies around the world – including Canada.

Canada produces three times more oil than it consumes. And while Canada imports small amounts of oil to the eastern provinces, almost none of that is sourced from the Persian Gulf. Hence there is no significant impact of the war on our domestic supply volumes or costs.

Nevertheless, because of a policy choice to tie domestic oil and petroleum product prices to global benchmarks (allowing oil producers to charge Canadians world prices for their own oil, on pain of diverting supply to more lucrative foreign markets), Canadian petroleum prices have soared in tandem.

The combination of sky-high prices with stable production costs is producing a profit windfall for Canadian petroleum companies. This is confirmed by the recent release of financial reports by publicly-traded Canadian oil companies for the second quarter of 2026.

The table below summarizes after-tax earnings and other metrics for the four largest publicly-traded Canadian producers. Their combined revenues (net of royalty payments) grew almost 50% in the April-June period, compared to the year-earlier period, thanks to the effect of Trump’s war on world prices.

After-tax profits rose more dramatically, since production costs remained largely unchanged. After-tax profits at the big four more than doubled: rising 144% compared to the second quarter of 2025, reaching a combined total of $13.3 billion. That’s almost $150 million per day in after-tax profit over the three-month period.

These four companies represent only a portion of the Canadian petroleum sector. Financial results for many companies (including wholly-owned subsidiaries of foreign oil companies) are never publicly reported. However, Statistics Canada publishes helpful financial data on an industry-wide basis. That data for the second quarter of 2026 will be released later in August.

Extrapolated to apply to the broad Canadian petroleum sector (upstream and downstream), the big four’s results suggest that second-quarter industry-wide profits could reach $30 billion (up from $12.6 billion in the second quarter of 2025). Canadian oil profits for the full year could reach $100 billion. That would set a new all-time record, smashing the peak $68 billion after-tax profit the industry recorded in 2022 (when oil prices were similarly shocked following the Russian invasion of Ukraine).

What are the oil companies doing with this record profit flow? There is no robust pattern of reinvestment in new Canadian projects. In fact, excluding acquisitions of other companies and properties (which does not represent an increase in real investment), capital spending by the big four companies actually declined slightly in the second quarter (compared to the year earlier period).

Instead, their main priority is to pay out so-called “excess cash” to company owners, in the form of increased dividend payments and share buy-back programs. Companies buy back their shares as a way of boosting share prices (this benefits company executives, too, through share-based compensation systems). The four majors spent over $6 billion on share purchases and dividend payments in the second quarter, up by almost $2 billion from like period 2026.

Hopes that booming oil profits will lead to new investment and jobs in the petroleum sector are being dashed by the priority these firms are placing on cash payouts, rather than reinvestments.

But the combination of record profits and rapid share buybacks has been great for company owners. Share prices at the big four majors have increased by an average of 45% since the start of the year. Most of those gains are captured by the wealthiest minority of the population. Other Canadians experience only higher costs and declining real incomes.

Research on the distribution of global oil profits during the 2022 price spike confirms that each oil shock further redistributes income upward. Global oil profits almost doubled that year, to nearly $1 trillion (U.S.). In the U.S., 50% of those gains were received by the richest 1% of the population; the bottom 50% of the population got almost none. A less extreme, but similar, pattern prevails in Canada.

In the meantime, oil-fueled inflation remains a threat to living standards and economic performance for most Canadians – those who do not own significant equity holdings in oil companies. Inflation has increased again in Canada since the Iran war started (just as it did in 2022 after the oil shock accompanying the invasion of Ukraine).

Spillover price increases for other goods and services (whose costs of production also increase due to high petroleum prices) will amplify inflationary pressures. And if the Bank of Canada responds with higher interest rates (as it will if above-target inflation persists), Canadians will be punished further with higher interest costs, on top of sky-high gasoline prices and faster broader inflation.

The current oil price shock, just the latest in an ongoing pattern of global price volatility, confirms that fossil fuel prices are the greatest threat to affordability and living standards for Canadian workers and consumers. Please follow the Centre for Future Work’s False Profits project for more details on the impact of oil prices on prices, real wages, and inequality in Canada.

The post Iran War, Soaring Prices Drive Record Oil Profits appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

A photo submitted to the court by federal prosecutors as evidence in the ongoing “Blooming Onion” prosecution shows a shrine to the Santa Muerte found in the home of Javier Sanchez Mendoza Jr., a farm labor contractor convicted of Conspiracy to Engage in Forced Labor and sentenced to 30 years in prison earlier this year. La Santa Muerte, or the “Angel of Death”, the skeletal figure located in the middle of the photo and shown here holding a scythe, is known to be widely celebrated by violent narco-traffickers in Mexico. Forced labor convictions are cause for celebration, but alone they cannot end modern slavery. Together, with the Fair Food Program, we can prevent the next slavery operation.

This summer, federal prosecutors concluded the criminal forced labor case known as Operation Blooming Onion—the largest modern-day slavery prosecution in the history of U.S. agriculture.

But while the convictions mark an important victory, they also leave us with an urgent question: How many more trafficking operations are still out there, hidden in far reaches of our food supply chain today?

According to federal prosecutors, the Blooming Onion conspiracy exploited tens of thousands of farmworkers for more than a decade. The ringleaders maintained their power to abuse their workers and steal their wages through the repeated use of violence, threats against their families, and involuntary confinement. One woman was held in sex trafficking for two years, and two workers died from heat exhaustion while trapped in the operation.

The case began in 2015, when the Coalition of Immokalee Workers received a call from a guestworker who had witnessed horrifying abuse while harvesting onions in southern Georgia. The worker described an operation that recruited hundreds of H-2A guest workers each year, charged illegal recruitment fees, confiscated workers’ documents, stole their wages, threatened workers and their families with violence, and confined workers who resisted.

The CIW documented the allegations and shared its findings with federal authorities, helping launch the federal investigation in 2016. Over the following years, CIW human rights investigators continued working with federal law enforcement to expose the full scope of the trafficking ring. In 2021, more than 200 federal agents executed over 20 search warrants across southern Georgia, rescuing hundreds of workers. Nearly two dozen traffickers have now been convicted.

An editorial cartoon published by the Naples Daily News in the 1990s following the successful slavery prosecution US v Cuello, one of more than a dozen such cases where the CIW uncovered forced labor operations and helped law enforcement agencies prosecute the ringleaders.

The CIW’s work in uncovering the Blooming Onion operation and helping federal authorities bring its ringleaders to justice was not a first. For more than 30 years, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has helped uncover and combat modern slavery in U.S. agriculture, assisting in the liberation of thousands of workers trapped in forced labor.

Yet, with each successful prosecution, the same conclusion only grows stronger: We cannot prosecute our way out of modern slavery. We must prevent it.

That initial realization led farmworkers to launch the Campaign for Fair Food in 2001, educating consumers about the abuses at the bottom of the food supply chain in this country and mobilizing students, people of faith, the labor community and others to call on the billion-dollar food brands to ensure their supply chains are free from forced labor and other abuse.

Throughout the 2000s, farmworkers from Immokalee and consumers from Florida to California marched, protested, and pressured brands from Taco Bell to Whole Foods to support their demands, winning agreement after agreement for “Fair Food”. With that growing market power behind the farmworkers’ vision, the CIW was finally able to launch the Fair Food Program in 2010—a unique human rights enforcement program designed to stop abuse before it happens by changing market incentives that have long rewarded the lowest-price producers at the cost of often brutal exploitation, and failed to punish abuse, even when the abuse manages to make headlines.

Today, tens of thousands of farmworkers across 22 states and three countries are protected by the FFP’s worker-led mix of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms: worker-to-worker education, a 24/7 complaint line, independent monitoring, rigorous audits, and legally binding agreements with major food retailers that create swift market consequences for human rights violations. Human rights experts have credited the Fair Food Program with effectively eliminating forced labor, sexual assault, and other zero-tolerance abuses from participating farms.

The Program is also growing. Worker organizations in industries ranging from construction and sugarcane to bananas and plant nurseries are partnering with the CIW to bring this proven Worker-driven Social Responsibility model to millions of more workers in the United States and around the world.

How you make all this possible

But whether or not the Fair Food Program—and its invaluable impact on the lives of workers and their families—continues to grow truly depends on people like you.

Every worker who learns their rights and overcomes their fear of standing up against abuse. Every complaint investigation that establishes the facts and remedies an injustice. Every new employer or corporate buyer that joins the Fair Food Program and expands the program’s power to ever more workers. Every new industry transformed by workers empowered to serve as an army of frontline monitors of their own rights.

None of that happens without your sustained support.

We are asking all who can to become Fair Food Sustainers—monthly donors who help ensure the Fair Food Program can continue to guarantee unparalleled protections for farmworkers on existing FFP farms. And we are asking all who are already Sustainers to consider increasing their commitment—to help the Fair Food Program meet the surging new demand for its services, both here in the US and around the globe.

With your support, we will not only ensure the continued growth of the Fair Food Program, but we will also keep the pressure on companies like Kroger—the food industry giant and Fair Food Program holdout that has been connected to the Blooming Onion prosecution—through the Campaign for Fair Food.

To quote Jon Esformes, CEO of Sunripe Certified Brands and the first major tomato grower to join the FFP in 2010, in speaking with the national news outlet Axios for their in-depth report on the Blooming Onion prosecution:

“If all retailers joined the Fair Food Program, the most egregious criminal behavior would end, and lesser crimes would be quickly uncovered.”

With Kroger’s massive purchasing power behind the FFP’s unique enforcement expertise, we can stop the next slavery operation in Kroger’s supply chain before it gets started… because four slavery cases in five years is enough.

To do that, we need your help.

Become a Fair Food Sustainer today.

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By Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Listen to the audio version >>

The Greentech revolution makes it possible to pivot rapidly away from fossil fuels. But realizing that possibility requires actually halting and reversing fossil fuel extraction and burning. President Trump is doing everything possible instead to expand such fossil folly – and to crush any efforts to restrain it. But the fight to reduce fossil fuels continues from below.

Oil well along U.S. Route 6 in Railroad Valley, Nevada, July 17, 2014. Photo credit: Famartin, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The previous commentaries have described how people in cities, states, and communities have been expanding fossil free energy production and reducing energy use through Greentech initiatives.

These are essential aspects of reducing climate-destroying greenhouse gas emissions, but in themselves they will not halt the destruction of the climate through the burning of fossil fuels. That requires halting new fossil fuel infrastructure and accelerating the closing of existing fossil fuel facilities. That is often referred to as a “phaseout” or “managed decline” of fossil fuels. It’s often summed up in the slogan, “Leave it in the ground!”

Greentech and fossil fuels can increase at the same time – indeed, they are doing so today. But the cheapening and improvement of Greentech can have a crucial impact on fossil fuel use. For every decision on future energy use, fossil fuels are worse and renewable energy is a better deal in almost every way (unless you are a fossil fuel company). But we must make the choice not only to create more fossil free energy, but to relentlessly reduce fossil fuel extraction and burning.

Many such actions are now being taken by local and state governments and grassroots activist groups to phase out fossil fuels. Although national and global action will be necessary to phase out fossil fuels completely, in their absence action from below is forming the tip of the climate protection spear.

However desirable a “big bang” shutdown of fossil fuel production and use might be, what is more likely is a persistent squeezing that reduces the value and profitability of fossil fuel investments. Each incremental squeeze on fossil fuel production and use tips the balance toward replacing them with Greentech. The remainder of this commentary will present just a few examples of how this is being done at the local and state level. (The next two commentaries describe another important set of examples — the movement against data centers.)

Facebook reel from Crain’s Detroit Business

One day Ken Klovski, a resident of Lima township in rural Michigan, noticed boreholes on the farm across the road from his home. Klovski checked county records and discovered the farm had a three-year option agreement with the utility Consumers Energy. Then he found a filing with a map showing a proposed 1.4-gigawatt power plant near the farm. A town official called a public meeting where representatives of Consumer Energy denied that they had optioned the land specifically for a power plant. Klovski accused them of lying. The Lima Township Board of Trustees passed a 12-month moratorium on new power-generating facilities. A resident of a nearby town organized Neighbors United Against Noxious Consumers Energy, or NUANCE. On the group’s Facebook page, he began a daily podcast “Dear Garrick,” expressing the concerns of the group’s 1,400 members directly to Consumers Energy CEO Garrick Rochow. Weeks later, the company issued a statement that, “We will release the option on the land back to the property owner and withdraw our application.”

Fossil fuel use can simply be banned on a compulsory timetable. The city of Los Angeles, for example, has committed to get all of its energy from fossil-free sources by 2035 – that is, to ban the use of fossil fuel energy. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, the city halted use of all electricity produced by coal. Electricity was shut off from Utah’s largest coal-fired power plant to Los Angeles. The plant is being converted to hydrogen. Then it will supply power to Los Angeles that will initially be produced from a mix of natural gas and hydrogen. According to the city’s municipally owned utility, LA intends to transition to 100% green hydrogen made exclusively from water and renewable energy, ending its burning of fossil fuels.

When President Trump ordered old, highly polluting coal-fired power plants scheduled for retirement in Colorado to reopen or remain in operation, the legislature passed “Manage Emissions from Electric Generating Units” law to halt or circumvent the order.  While the state did not have the authority to directly nullify the president’s order, it took multiple pathways to render it less effective. It requires more transparency on the costs incurred from running coal units past their retirement dates; directs the Public Utilities Commission to approve new resources to help the state reach its 2030 climate targets; and requires modern pollution controls for any coal plants operating after 2033. According to a Sierra Club analysis, the Trump Administration’s coal orders have already cost Americans over $330 million, directly affecting ratepayers and the public health of surrounding communities. The Colorado legislation keeps the state aligned with its clean energy goals by curbing coal emissions and reinforces critical retirement dates of coal-fired plants, while also directing Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission to set limits on pollutants like nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide. Other states are also challenging Trump’s coal orders.

More than 1,500 institutions worldwide with over 14 trillion dollars in assets have divested from fossil fuels and others continue to join them. In May 2026 the Santa Clara CA County Board of Supervisors voted to divest its 10-billion-dollar investment pool from fossil fuel companies. The pool had already let $30 million in Chevron and Exxon bonds expire. The resolution means the investment pool will not buy any new fossil fuel company bonds to replace them, and the fund will remain fossil free. The decision followed a joint letter from 21 community groups, including Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action, 350 Silicon Valley, and the Pacifica Climate Committee, urging divestment. Carlos Davidson of the Pacifica Climate Committee said, “Just like with divestment from tobacco and South Africa Apartheid, by divesting we bring attention to the fact that the power of the fossil fuel industry is the single biggest obstacle to government action on climate change.” Divestment from fossil fuels has become more attractive as better Greentech alternatives have become available and as fossil fuel investments increasingly risk becoming stranded assets as a result.

Litigation and legislation

State and local governments across the country have filed at least 40 lawsuits arguing that the fossil fuel industry should be held accountable for its role accelerating climate change. For example, Multnomah County, Oregon is suing Chevron and other fossil fuel companies for $50 billion for damages resulting from a deadly 2021 heat dome that brought temperatures to 116 degrees and killed 69 people. “Our case seeks to hold the defendants responsible under Oregon law for their deceptions and misrepresentations and failures to warn about the dangers of their fossil fuel products,” said a lawyer for Multnomah County. The county is seeking $50 million in actual damages, $1.5 billion in future damages related to anticipated heat events, and at least $50 billion for an abatement fund to “weatherproof” the county.

In 2024, the Sierra Club and several community and environmental groups sued the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources, challenging the Coastal Use Permit for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project to construct a massive methane gas liquefaction, storage, and export terminal on the Gulf of Mexico — in wetlands that provide critical flood prevention and other vital ecological functions to local communities and the environment. The project would generate greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to operating 14 new coal-fired power plants or 13 million new gasoline powered vehicles. A Louisiana state court terminated the coastal use permit, finding state officials violated the Louisiana Constitution by issuing the Coastal Use Permit without considering its disproportionate effect on the surrounding communities of color and low-income communities, as well as the climate change impacts and cumulative impacts with other export facilities already in the area.

In February 2025, the state of Michigan – fabled auto capital of America – filed a federal lawsuit accusing ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute of engaging in a decades-long conspiracy to block the development of clean energy and electric vehicles in order to ensure that their fossil fuel products dominated the market. According to the complaints, acting as a “cartel,” the defendants robbed consumers of energy and transportation choices in “one of the most successful antitrust conspiracies in United States history.”

State legislation is taking multiple approaches to put the squeeze on fossil fuel production and use. For example, Vermont is the first state to pass a law to charge fossil fuel companies for at least some of the damage their emissions have caused. Vermont’s law, the Climate Superfund Act, is largely modeled on the national superfund law. It instructs the state treasurer and Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources to calculate what fossil fuel emissions have cost the state. The agency then determines the amount of emissions attributable to each fossil fuel company. Each company must then pay into a recovery fund. New York has also passed climate superfund legislation requiring payments to begin in 2028; 11 other states are considering similar legislation. A slew of lawsuits is trying to block the Vermont and New York laws. In May the Trump administration sued both New York and Vermont over their superfund laws and other states over efforts to make polluters pay for harms from climate change. US Attorney General Pam Bondi alleges the laws and other states’ planned legal challenges are “burdensome and ideologically motivated” and “threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security.”

Other legislation to put the screws on utilities is legion; the environmental research group Climate XChange tracked 63 bills in 25 states that cover performance-based pay structures for utilities, limits on utility profits and executive pay, prohibitions on using customer rates for political activity, and expanded price transparency requirements. Hawaii’s SB1396 establishes a “green fee” for transient accommodations to fund response to climate change-related disasters and environmental improvement efforts. The green fee applies to hotels, short-term vacation rentals, timeshares, and similar accommodations and cruise ships.

Such state and local initiatives are far from enough to force the fossil fuel industry to transition to clean Greentech energy. But they contribute to the squeeze on the industry’s value and profits that is already resulting from Greentech competition. And they help lay the groundwork for a future transition from – and abolition of – fossil fuel extraction and use.

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Air pollution and other climate risks – time to ramp up the pressure

Photo by fabian jones on Unsplash

In July we witnessed a flurry of activity highlighting the need for action on air pollution. With a new Labour administration there is an opportunity to stop the political foot-dragging and get on with tackling the biggest environmental health risk facing the UK.

The recent heatwaves have only served to highlight the importance of this. The link between air pollution and extreme heat has never been clearer. Wildfires are the visible product of this. Firefighters are in the frontline, but other workers face increased exposures. That is why the Trade Union Clean Air Network (TUCAN) call for a focus on occupational health is so important.

TUCAN attended a range of events in July where we made the case for greater recognition and the need for policy change.

UK 100 ‘Breathing Life’ Report – This conference launched a guide for strategic authorities and local authorities to support clean air delivery in England. TUCAN welcomes the report and supports the recommendations which include one of our demands – a new Clean Air Act with WHO-aligned statutory targets. It also calls for national government to introduce a National Indoor Air Quality strategy.  This is important but limits itself to housing, transport and planning policy. The focus is on homes. Workplaces are not directly included.  In fact, there is nothing in the guide that directly addresses occupational health.

Moving to cleaner buses will have a beneficial impact on bus drivers, but the additional exposures faced by workers are not directly covered in any policy proposals. Equally, reducing pollution in homes will help those working from home. What is needed is a lever which promotes action in both indoor and outdoor workplace settings. Local and regional authorities as employers can do this, and as advocates, they should also be calling on other employers to do the same.  The calls on national government should include amending regulations and guidance that reflect current research and standards, rather than relying on the totally outdated framework in current health and safety law.   Minister hails local leadership as research finds almost 14,000 lives saved by local clean air action | UK100

MACC Hub Conference – The Role of local authorities in climate adaptation. This conference brought together climate and sustainability officers to consider the implications of the Climate Change Committee’s ‘A Well-Adapted UK report. The need for a statutory duty on local authorities to address climate change was stressed. This is particularly important to introduce policy certainty, but it must also be accompanied by adequate funding if it is to have any meaningful impact. The priority risks in the report are extreme heat, flooding, and drought and wildfire risk. Air pollution intersects with all of these but is not referenced in the report which TUCAN sees as a weakness.    The Role of UK Local Authorities in Climate Adaptation (CAG consultants) – UK Climate Risk

CBI / CAF Report The Clean Air dividend of net-zero – This does focus on the occupational health implications and indicates that climate measures could generate an estimated £7.7 billion in productivity gains by 2050 through improved workforce health, reduced illness-related absences and longer working lives. The report touches on the social justice aspects of air pollution but still fails to call for employers to conduct air pollution audits and risk assessments. A duty to identify their own contribution to the problem and ensure control measures are introduced in consultation with the workforce would provide a much-needed focus.  Net zero measures will deliver cleaner air that could provide £7.7 billion boost to UK economy by 2050 – Clean Air Fund

Labour Climate and Environment Forum – Breathe Easy report. One opportunity to address our concerns on occupational health is to intensify the lobbying of the Labour Government.  The report highlights that air pollution is not only a publicly salient and cross-partisan issue that people want to see more done to address, but that action carries political benefits for Labour – particularly among the progressive switcher groups who Labour need to win back ahead of the 2029 General Election and local and mayoral elections in between.

It doesn’t contain any detailed proposals for occupational health but does provide evidence to press for these changes, including full implementation of ‘The Well-Adapted UK’ recommendations at Labour Party Conference and other forums.  [object Object] | Publications | Labour Climate and Environment Forum

Next steps – The stage is set to push for occupational air pollution to be at the centre of the climate risk debate. This autumn the Hazards, TUC, and party conferences are an opportunity to shine a spotlight on this. The TUCAN Steering group meeting being held on August 11th will be a chance for unions to start shaping this campaign.

Graham Petersen

August 2026

TUCAN TUCAN – Greener Jobs Alliance

The post Air pollution and other climate risks – time to ramp up the pressure first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

As negotiations among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico continue over the review and renewal of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), U.S. President Donald Trump has ratcheted up his aggressive tariff threats against Canada and other countries. This follows his usual ‘Art of the Deal’ strategy, which is to create chaos, threaten harm, extract concessions (often marginal), and then claim historic victory.

Two sets of new tariffs have been announced in the last week:

• Under Section 388 of U.S. trade law, Trump announced punitive 50% tariffs against over 500 different products from Canada, supposedly in response to ‘discriminatory’ treatment of U.S.-made autos, liquor, and dairy products. His complaints about discriminatory treatment are laughable, since these so-called ‘irritants’ were counter-measures imposed against Trump’s unilateral escalation of tariffs against Canada last year. The tariffs will come into effect August 19, unless some new trade deal between the two countries is reached by then. The products covered by these tariffs constitute about 4-5% of Canada’s exports to the U.S., and there will be no exemption for products qualifying under the existing CUSMA. This will cause an incremental increase in overall weighted-average tariffs on Canadian products. The regional impact of the tariffs is quite diverse: exports from B.C., Ontario,, and Quebec are hit hardest, while exports from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland & Labrador (concentrated in energy and potash, two products which the U.S. desperately needs). Given U.S. interference in the debate over Alberta separatism, many analysts suspect this regional differentiation is quite deliberate, intended to further inflame tensions between the provinces in how to respond to the U.S. attacks.
• Days later, under Section 301 of U.S. trade law, Trump announced new across-the-board tariffs against some 80 countries, including Canada and all other top U.S. trading partners, supposedly to combat the use of forced labour in production of traded products. The affected countries supposedly have not taken adequate measures to prevent use of products made with forced labour in their own supply chains, thus indirectly facilitating the continuation of forced labour. Coming from the country which has by far the weakest protections for labour standards (including the use of prison labour in for-profit companies), this is not believable. In reality, Trump seized on this measure to justify reimposition of the across-the-board ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs that were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.

In online commentary, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford highlighted the hypocrisy of the U.S. invoking fake concern over labour freedoms to justify these new Section 301 trade attacks:

“The U.S. uses prison labour (incl. for private firms) more than any other country, hasn’t raised its min. wage ($7.25/hr) since 2009, and violates dozens of international labour standards every day. So Trump’s new Section 301 tariffs have nothing to do with concern for labour. They are a laughably transparent effort to replace the Liberation Day tariffs struck down by his own (stacked ) Supreme Court. They apply to all of the U.S.’s top trading partners–INCLUDING those who signed ‘deals’ with him, and those with whom the U.S. runs trade SURPLUSES. So if misery loves company, Canada should feel better. These new tariffs will hurt other U.S. trading partners as badly as the new Section 338 tariffs he announced this week will hurt Canada. But the biggest loser from this entire clown show is the U.S. Inflation, manufacturing job loss, declining real incomes, and general uncertainty will get worse. His war in the Persian Gulf is still going badly. And his mid-term prospects are grimmer than ever (hence his trying to rekindle trade wars).”

Stanford also appeared on CBC News Network’s show Ian Hanomansing Tonight to discuss the new tariffs, and how Canada should respond. He pointed out that at least 80 of the products targeted by Trump’s new Section 388 tariffs against Canada are items that Canada does not export to the U.S. They are thus ‘tariffs on nothing’, reinforcing that the threats are mostly about the theatre of negotiations more than any genuine economic goals. These ‘tariffs on nothing’ are the equivalent for Canada of the ridiculous ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs that Trump imposed in April 2025 on over 100 countries around the world – including uninhabited Antarctic islands!

Stanford also warned that even if Canada reaches a new trade deal with the U.S., we can have no confidence that he would live up to its terms. After all, many of the so-called ‘deals’ which Trump reached with various countries in the last year have been reneged on, or superseded by his new tariffs (such as the new Section 301 tariffs, which apply to all top trading partners of the U.S. – including those, like Australia, with which the U.S. runs trade surpluses). The CUSMA itself we negotiated by Trump himself during his first term, and lauded by him at the time as the greatest trade deal in history, yet he has violated its terms without hesitation in his second term. And U.S. demands to rewrite the contractual terms of the Gordie Howe Bridge (paid for my Canada under an agreement with the U.S. signed ) is further proof that any ‘deal’ with the U.S. is very fragile.

Given the unreliability of U.S. commitments on any trade issue, therefore, it is all the more important for Canadian negotiators to proceed with caution in negotiations around a revised trade deal. Complaints that Canada has not reached a quick deal with the U.S. are misplaced. Other countries which hoped they could avoid the impacts of Trump’s tariffs by giving up concessions in a ‘deal’ (like the EU, Japan, the UK, or India) have been victimized by subsequent U.S. trade actions as badly (or worse) than Canada. As our Centre argued a year ago (in the research paper, A Bad Deal with Trump is Worse then No Deal at All), Canada’s negotiators need to hold firm on the requirement that U.S. tariffs (especially the targeted sectoral tariffs that are traumatizing key industries like auto, steel, and forestry) are removed as part of any comprehensive deal.

 

The post Trump Hits Canada and Others With Still More Tariffs appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

The Centre for Future Work has co-published new research quantifying the economic and fiscal benefits being generated in Ontario from the new Canada Wide Early Learning and Child Care program.

The expansion of affordable child care services in Ontario resulting from that new program has delivered a substantial economic boost to the province. That boost would have been even stronger, if the provincial government had not lagged behind other provinces in implementing the new national program.

The report finds that Ontario’s GDP in 2024 was $13.6 Billion higher than it would have been without the expansion of child care since 2019.

That growth in GDP generated approximately $2.25 Billion in extra provincial revenue in 2024 alone. This amount slightly exceeded the provincial funding to child care that year, indicating the program effectively pays for itself through increased economic activity.

Job Creation: Over 17,000 new jobs have been created in Ontario’s child care sector since 2019, with total sector compensation expected to exceed $3 Billion in 2026.

Empowering Women in the Workforce: Core-age (25-54) female labour force participation in Ontario increased by two full percentage points between 2019 and 2026—outpacing the national trend. This shift, combined with more women moving from part-time to full-time work, added 81,500 full-time-equivalent workers to the provincial economy.

Improved Job Quality: Average weekly earnings for child care workers rose by 39% since 2019, while average weekly hours increased from 26 to 31.

“Affordable, quality child care services are a vital precondition for economic progress,” says Jim Stanford, author of the report and Director of the Centre for Future Work.

“The data confirm that even Ontario’s partial and inconsistent rollout of the national program has been an economic boon. However, the province is leaving billions of dollars in potential growth on the table by failing to meet its targets for new spaces and lower fees”.

The report comes as the Ford and Carney governments continue to negotiate a new child care agreement.

Despite economic gains, the report highlights significant concerns regarding the Ontario government’s commitment to the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care program. Ontario’s current child care agreement is set to expire in March 2027, and Ontario remains 25% behind its target for creating new spaces for children under six. Furthermore, while the national goal is $10aDay, daily CWELCC fees in Ontario currently average $19 with a cap of $22. The report also criticizes the province’s heavy reliance on for-profit providers—accounting for 44% of full-day spaces—which research associates with lower quality of care and higher staff turnover.

The report was co-published with the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario.

The report concludes with urgent recommendations for the Ontario government, including securing long-term funding through 2031, eliminating “child care deserts,” and fulfilling the $10aDay affordability promise.

“If Ontario fails to fully commit to a universal system, these historic economic gains will be squandered,” added Stanford.

Please see the full report here, and a one-page summary of its key findings.

The post New Research Shows National Cild Care Plan Already Driving Economic Benefits In Ontario appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

Motion on a transformative approach to the fossil fuel energy crisis

Photo by Emma Renly on Unsplash

Motion on a transformative approach to the fossil fuel energy crisis

This draft motion – which can be used to generate debate and commitment to action in union and political party branches – has been worked on and had input from supporters of Greener Jobs Alliance, Fuel Poverty Action, the Campaign Against Climate Change and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. 

The escalation of the war on Iran, and UK complicity in it, and the evacuation of a quarter of a million people from the Bordeaux region to escape the wildfire that is threatening the city, both underline the urgency of getting our movements to face up to reality and take action on it.

Feel free to adapt, but let’s push this change of course.

Paul Atkin

Motion on a transformative approach to the fossil fuel energy crisis

The impact of the US/Israeli attack on Iran, overlaid by the extreme weather impacts of climate change, is creating a violent upward pressure on the cost of living that is likely to be long-lasting.

Food prices and energy prices are rising. 

Shortages are likely. 

Therefore this branch/district/ward (delete as appropriate) believes 

1. To stop the crisis, we need to stop the war, tax war profits and transfer military spending
2. The transition to renewable energy and energy conservation is the solution.  
3. Crisis measures must be social justice measures.

Resolves

1. To campaign on these points alongside other unions and campaigns locally as part of the Trade Union Year of Climate Action, including local actions during some or all of the Global Week of Action for Climate Justice (Sept 14th -20th) the Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice (Sept 21 – 27th) the Weekend of action against militarisation and conscription (21/22  November) support for national anti war demonstrations and actions during the COP and help organise a local showing of the National Emergency Briefing film.
2. As part of this, to support Fuel Poverty Action’s Make Green Fair campaign for the benefits of renewable energy and new technology for heating and cooling homes, to be fairly distributed to everyone.  
3. To send delegate(s) to the conference on 31 October ‘No Non-Radical Futures Available: Winning for the Climate; Winning for Workers’ and publicise it among our members
4. To send this as a motion alongside the attached statement to 

A) Unions version

a. the local trades council,

b. our union National Executive representatives to help inform discussion at national level. 

B) Labour Party wards

our local elected representatives and Party NEC representatives. 

C) Green or Your Party branches

our local elected representatives and our Central Executive Committee representatives.

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The post Motion on a transformative approach to the fossil fuel energy crisis first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

Pictured: Entrance to the pop-up exhibition.

“Remember normal?” This is a question that resonates with many, especially those who’ve lost homes or been misplaced due to climate-related extreme weather disasters. The Museum of Unnatural Disasters pop-up exhibit, a project of the Climate Action Campaign in partnership with the Center for American Progress, Climate Power, and Extreme Weather Survivors, shares stories from families across the United States whose homes were ravaged by extreme weather events. The exhibit highlights a common recurring motif as a reason for worsening disasters, and one that environmental health researchers and scientists have been warning people about for years: Climate change is making extreme weather worse, leading to more damaging and costly disasters.

The Museum of Unnatural Disasters opened in Constitution Gardens on the National Mall from June 3rd-10th, 2026. Images on display in the pop-up museum paint a picture that people across the country are all too familiar with: the emotional and deadly toll that extreme weather events have on communities. The exhibit showcases items collected from individuals in communities ravaged by climate-related disasters, many weathered and torn apart, including street signs, asthma inhalers, and clothing pieces. Whether it be fatal flash floods in central Kansas, harrowing hurricanes on the Florida coast, or withering wildfires across California and Northern Michigan, these show the human toll that headlines often miss.

Pictured: Children’s artwork and notes after Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey.

The name of the pop-up exhibit, The Museum of Unnatural Disasters, calls attention to natural disasters and their unnatural causes. As climate change worsens year by year through global warming and extreme weather events, it’s becoming more stark the impact that fossil fuel emissions have on our deteriorating environment. According to the United Nations, fossil fuel emissions account for 68 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, directly contributing to a warming planet and worsening extreme weather patterns.

 At the end of the exhibit, museum guests were urged to reflect on one thing they would save if a disaster hit their home today. Many responses included pets, family photo albums, or people in the home with them. To have to even reflect on such a tragic question underscores the unfortunate reality of how every region within the United States and the world is at risk.

Pictured: Wall at end of exhibit asking guests to take a card and answer one question: What would you save in the event of a natural disaster?

The Museum of Unnatural Disasters inspired museum guests to take action for a better climate. A main goal of the exhibit was to bring attention to and urge action against practices that actively harm our environment, such as continued burning of fossil fuels for energy. One action that can be taken right now is signing on to a petition to members of Congress, demanding they take urgent action to address climate change. Sign the petition here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author: Lauren Baldwin is a junior at the University of Central Florida majoring in Health Sciences, and is an Environmental Health undergraduate intern at ANHE.

The post Catastrophic Climates and Consequences: A Dive into the Museum of Unnatural Disasters appeared first on ANHE.

Washington D.C.-  Build Back Fossil Free, a coalition of over 1,100 groups pressuring the Biden Administration to declare a climate emergency and end the federal approval of new fossil fuel projects, released the following statement in response to the Biden Administration’s plans to release resume onshore oil and gas leasing: 

“Today, President Biden violated his promise to end drilling on public lands with yet another handout to the fossil fuel industry. Black, Indigenous, communities of the global majority and poor communities are being left devastated from climate chaos and we are tired of the excuses and inaction from this Administration. The reality is simple: they said they would act to curb the climate crisis, yet they fail to do so at every crucial opportunity that is presented to them. Scientists continue to ring the alarm, there is no time to waste. 

“Families are already paying the price of decades of fossil fuel dependence, creating record profits for oil and gas CEOs who exploit the current crisis. Minor changes will do little to break Big Oil’s stranglehold on our economy and our communities. This decision sacrifices the health and future of Black and Indigenous people, and communities of the global majority – all while doing nothing to lower gas prices. Meanwhile, more drilling will poison frontline communities and deepen the climate crisis.  

“If Biden truly wants to help families and communities, he can use his executive authority to declare a climate emergency, end the federal approval of new fossil fuel projects, and deploy major investments in delivering 100% renewable energy for all. Until then, the proof is in his actions, not his words. And his actions are putting the fossil fuel industry’s profits before the health and safety of our families and communities over and over again.”

The oil and gas industry continues raking in record profits while communities pay the price. The watchdog organization Accountable.US reported in February that Shell, Chevron, BP and Exxon made more than $75.5 billion in profits in 2021, some of their highest profits in the past decade. 

The communities most at risk from new fossil fuel extraction are primarily Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples, people of the global majority and those on the frontlines of fossil fuel industry expansion. These are the same communities that turned out in record numbers to get Biden elected in 2020 and who have since been urging Biden to use his executive authority to fulfill his campaign promise and ban new federal fossil fuel projects. In March, these communities were joined by the Congressional Progressive Caucus in urging the President to ban new federal fossil fuel leases. 

Several analyses show that climate pollution from the world’s already-producing fossil fuel developments, if fully developed, would push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that avoiding such warming requires ending new investment in fossil fuel projects. Thousands of organizations and communities from across the U.S. have called on Biden to halt federal fossil fuel expansion and phase out production consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius.

Additional statements from climate, social justice and environmental organizations on moves by the Biden Administration and BLM to restart drilling: 

“As frontline community members in the Permian Basin that have been advocating for putting a stop to new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, Citizens Caring for the Future finds it extremely disheartening that BLM is going forward with these lease sales,” said Kayley Shoup of Citizens Caring for the Future. “Our day-to-day life and health is directly affected by these sales and the subsequent production that comes along with them. It would take a small army to truly enforce regulation here in the Permian, and we know that is the reality in oil and gas regions around the country. We live our lives surrounded by the industry and we understand that in order to take on climate change and make a meaningful dent in emissions the Biden administration must take action that puts a stop to new development.” 

“The West is drying up and going up in flames. Between extreme drought, the shrinking of the Colorado River, and now urban wildfires in the winter, how much more death, destruction and devastation do we have to see before this administration takes action?” said Natasha Léger, executive director of Citizens for a Healthy Community. “It’s time for climate leadership and to stop leasing our public lands for oil and gas development. We need heroes to break through the political and economic inertia that has us on a collision course to inhabitability.”

“As the Interior Department announces that it plans on continuing oil and gas leasing on federal land, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic condemns any further extraction, especially within the Arctic,” said Siqiniq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic. “Our lands are warming at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world, causing detrimental impact to the fragile ecosystems that call it home and directly impacting the rest of the world, as well. With conservative climate models predicting that we have less than 30 years to radically change our relationship with oil and gas, the future rests in the United States’ hands. We can no longer commodify our land and water, especially at the rate climate change is occurring. We are nature fighting back.”  

“It is unconscionable that the BLM will go forward with these oil and gas lease sales as we continue to see the devastating effects of climate change, particularly in the Southwestern United States,” said Deborah McNamara, campaigns director at 350 Colorado. “According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s August 2021 assessment, there is ‘high confidence’ that human-influenced rising temperatures are a direct cause of the extension of the wildfire season, increased drought, and decreased precipitation in the southwest United States. In order to curb emissions and do what scientists are telling us we must do in order to avert the absolute worst climate impacts, we need a rapid phase out of fossil fuel production by 2030. Continuing business as usual at the BLM with ongoing oil and gas lease sales will not get us where we need to be in order to solve the climate crisis and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

“How much more can Gulf Coast states endure? Most of us weren’t born with a silver spoon to get lawyers all the time to fight these civil laws aka ‘environmental acts,’ or have the luxury of property rights because it was all taken from us so long ago,” said Love Sanchez of Indigenous Peoples of the Coastal Bend. “Now here we are, working class people, simple people, 95% of the time BIPOC people, that just want to protect our land and water. Then, I’m not surprised, we now have the Interior, who decides they want to continue their projects in the Gulf Coast. It’s a very disappointing thing to hear. Fortunately, we will continue to be persistent in protecting these waters.” 

“The Biden administration’s claim that it must hold these lease sales is pure fiction and a reckless failure of climate leadership,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s as if they’re ignoring the horror of firestorms, floods and megadroughts, and accepting climate catastrophes as business as usual. These so-called reforms are 20 years too late and will only continue to fuel the climate emergency. These lease sales should be shelved and the climate-destroying federal fossil fuel programs brought to an end.”

“We have heard a lot of rhetoric from President Biden and his administration about the need to take action on climate,” said Kyle Tisdel, climate and energy program director with the Western Environmental Law Center. “But not only is the administration not doing everything it could — it is not really doing anything. Climate action was a pillar of President Biden’s campaign, and his promises on this existential issue were a major reason the public elected him. Achieving results on climate is not a matter of domestic politics. It’s life and death.”

“Candidate Biden promised to end new oil and gas leasing on public lands, but President Biden is prioritizing oil executive profits over future generations,” said Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager at Friends of the Earth. “Biden’s Interior Department has even issued permits to drill at a rate faster than the Trump administration. Now, the Bureau of Land Management is preparing to hold its first public lands lease sale, despite having no legal obligation to do so. If Biden wants to be a climate leader, he must stop auctioning off our public lands to Big Oil.”

“This is pure climate denial,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. “While the Biden administration talks a good talk on climate action, the reality is, they’re in bed with the oil and gas industry. Rest assured, with the climate crisis raging, we can and will fight back. We can’t afford not to.”

“The Biden administration fiddles while Rome burns,” said Shelley Silbert, executive director at Great Old Broads for Wilderness. “The most destructive fire in Colorado history consumed over a thousand homes last December. When your house is on fire, you act immediately. Climate disasters hit us harder each day and we’re out of time. The Biden administration must address the climate crisis now, and a vital step is stopping oil and gas leasing on public lands immediately. There is no other option.” 

“Right now, fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters make up a quarter of our greenhouse gas emissions at a time scientists are saying we must move urgently to cut emissions by at least half. Not only does it devastate our planet, it’s a handout to Big Oil at the expense of average Americans, who will bear the brunt of its societal, health, and financial ramifications,” said Dan Ritzman, Lands Water Wildlife director at the Sierra Club. “We urge the Biden administration to take advantage of this historic opportunity to make good on campaign promises, fulfill a global commitment to acting on climate, and serve American communities by phasing out oil and gas production on public lands and oceans.” 

“Let’s set aside all the niceties and speak plainly on this: even people in positions of power and authority are fully aware that nothing goes unscathed in the aftermath of creating and maintaining  fossil fuel infrastructures,” said Sha Merirei Ongelungel, executive director of Pasifika Uprising. “So whether you’re trying to reopen the Palau National Marine Sanctuary for commercial fishing and potential exploratory drilling or in the United States pushing to resume oil and gas leasing on public lands, the only safe inference is that our leaders are dishonest and hungry for more money and more power. And that is wholly unconscionable. What’s legal isn’t always ethical and too many leaders, the world-over, are demonstrating this with their utter disregard for their communities and the climate. Frankly, I’m embarrassed for these so-called leaders. For all their power and authority, they will never have the true power and solidarity needed to lead us into a safer future like grassroots movements.”

“Ramping up exports of liquified natural gas to Europe in response to the invasion of Ukraine is a losing proposition that will take too long to implement to address current energy demands,” said Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project. “Instead of taking decades to build the necessary export terminals so we can keep burning fossil fuels and turning the Earth into a fiery hellscape, we should be investing in solar production in urban settings where the energy is being used, on rooftops and parking lot awnings, so Europe and the United States can both transition to clean power sources and get that production online a whole lot faster.”

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could not be more clear. It is time to rapidly transition off of fossil fuels. Increasing leasing for fossil fuels on public lands is grossly misaligned with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and ensuring that young people inherit a habitable planet,” said Zanagee Artis, executive director of Zero Hour

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Congressional Progressive Caucus Calls on Biden to Declare a Climate Emergency and Ban Fossil Fuel Leasing on Federal Lands and Waters

Congressional Progressives follow the lead of climate, frontline, and progressive groups who have been making the same demands 

Washington, D.C. – The Congressional Progressive Caucus today called on President Biden to declare a climate emergency, jumpstart just renewable energy production, ban federal fossil fuel leasing, end fossil fuel subsidies, and take executive actions aimed at advancing environmental justice and making clean air and water accessible for all.

Since Biden’s inauguration, declaring a climate emergency, igniting a just renewable energy revolution, and ending fossil fuel expansion have been the top demands from climate, Indigenous, social justice, and progressive groups, including the Build Back Fossil Free Coalition. The growing coalition of more than a thousand groups is dedicated to pushing Biden to use his executive authority to act on climate and fossil fuels. 

In October 2021, the Build Back Fossil Free coalition organized a weeklong mobilization at the White House where thousands of Indigenous, frontline, and allied activists put their bodies on the line to demand Biden declare a climate emergency and stop permitting fossil fuel projects. 

Earlier this year, the coalition sent a letter, signed by more than 1,100 organizations, to Biden urging him to quickly deliver on his campaign promises by declaring a climate emergency, stopping the federal approval of new fossil fuel projects, and initiating a just transition to a distributed, renewable energy future. 

Ahead of the State of the Union, organizers gathered at the White House with an art piece depicting a giant pen and executive order, urging Biden to act on climate “with the stroke of a pen. And last week, groups in the coalition sent another letter to Biden urging him to use the Defense Production Act to jumpstart the deployment of clean energy solutions, like heat pumps, across the country as a response to the crisis in Ukraine. 

President Biden has the authority today to use the Defense Production Act to create well-paying, union jobs building just, renewable energy technologies; begin to phase out the quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution created by fossil fuel production on federal lands and waters; and declare a climate emergency to reinstate the ban on crude oil exports, which would have health and climate gains equivalent to shutting down 42 coal plants.

Below are statements from leading climate, social justice, and environmental organizations:

Quotes:

Grassroots/Frontline Groups

“Biden must take bold action by declaring a climate emergency and investing in real clean energy and actually sever the dependence of fossil fuel economy. Indigenous, frontline, youth and grassroot led movements have been demanding that the federal fossil fuel leasing program be reformed to ensure that communities have equity access to clean energy grids and participation in planning processes. It’s important for this administration to adopt the principles Environmental justice movements have thoroughly implemented as their center frontline communities and equity to further meaningful climate solutions,” Julia Bernal, Executive Director for Pueblo Action Alliance

“Those living in the Arctic are on the cutting edge of the climate crisis. The CPC agrees with us, thousands of organizations agree with us, now is the time to declare a climate emergency and stop the expansion of fossil fuels. The Biden Administration needs to follow this grassroots-led movement and the science backing us and stop approving fossil fuel projects like the Willow Master development plan,” Siqiniq Maupin, Executive Director of Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic

“Biden is failing to support Tribal sovereignty each day he allows the Dakota Access pipeline to flow. This CPC announcement is another reminder for Biden to stand with the people, declare a climate emergency, uphold Indigenous rights and protect the water.” Waniya Locke, Standing Rock Grassroots

“The climate crisis is rooted in lack of oversight of extraction that is happening in frontline communities. It is time for Biden to go beyond performative politics and show communities of color that we will be represented. He needs to declare a climate emergency and stop fossil fuel destruction, including extraction on federal fossil fuel leases that pollute in communities like ours.” Cesar Aguirre, Senior community organizer, Central California Environmental Justice Network

National Organizations:

“President Biden has demonstrated his lack of commitment to the very communities who elected him to office. He has stalled on climate action, abandoning Black, Indigenous, communities of the global majority, and other frontline communities who don’t have time to negotiate with neoliberals, capitalists, and white supremacists because their very existences are at stake. This is why we stand alongside the CPC to demand Biden use his executive powers to declare a Climate Emergency and ban drilling on federal lands and waters. Our collective futures depend on bold climate action now.” Ashley McCray, Green New Deal Network Organizer,  Indigenous Environmental Network

“There’s no question that we’re in a climate emergency. The caucus is absolutely right that President Biden should declare it so we can build the energy security that only renewable energy can bring,” said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s energy justice program. “Biden can act quickly, without Congress and without Joe Manchin, to stop oil and gas drilling on public lands and unlock his emergency powers to end the era of deadly fossil fuels. He must answer the caucus’s call and turbo-charge the renewable energy transition with the Defense Production Act.” Jean Su, director, Energy Justice Program, Center for Biological Diversity.

“As communities across this country are facing the realities of a rigged economy, a public health crisis, racial injustice, and climate change, Congress and the Biden Administration must use every tool at their disposal to deliver comprehensive, transformative, and immediate change. The announcement of the CPC Executive Action slate is a bold and exciting phase of progressive power that demonstrates Progressives understand there is no time to waste. Declaring a national climate emergency and working to end our reliance on fossil fuels are two critical steps in addressing the climate crisis our communities are facing and Indivisible is thrilled to see these priorities included in a slate that works to address climate change, invest in good paying union jobs, and prioritize a just and equitable society.” Ann Clancy, Associate Director of Climate Policy, Indivisible

For more information or to be connected with experts and spokespeople reach out to Cassidy DiPaola, cassidy@fossilfree.media.

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For a PDF of this letter click here.

February 24, 2021

Dear President Biden,

As 1,140 organizations collectively representing millions of members and supporters, including Indigenous, Black, Brown, and frontline communities, we urge you to use your executive authority to speed the end of the fossil fuel era, protect our communities from the climate emergency, and address the severe harms caused by fossil fuels. 

Your first year in office was marked by historic climate disasters, another alarming surge in domestic greenhouse gas emissions, and increasingly dire warnings from the leading scientists around the world. From hurricanes and floods, to wildfires and droughts, tens of millions of Americans are directly confronting the dangerous consequences of a warming world. Indigenous, Black, Brown, AAPI and working-class communities are disproportionately harmed not only by fossil-fueled extreme weather, but also targeted by oil, gas, and coal corporations and suffer from toxic pollution and ongoing environmental injustices.

You have repeatedly identified the existential threat posed by climate change, calling it a “code red” for humanity, and stated in your first week in office, “In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer.” 

You further promised “environmental justice will be at the center of all we do addressing the disproportionate health and environmental and economic impacts on communities of color — so-called ‘fenceline communities’.” And you elevated the  respect of Indigenous sovereignty and ordered federal agencies to strengthen nation-to-nation relationships with Tribes.

These statements must be backed up by bolder action. You have the authority under existing law to wind down fossil fuel production and catalyze a just, renewable energy revolution to deliver healthier communities, a livable future, and millions of good-paying jobs. It’s critical that you use that authority as quickly and broadly as possible.

Together, we call on you to take these steps:

• Follow through on your promise to ban all new oil and gas leasing, drilling, and fracking on federal lands and waters.
• Direct federal agencies to stop approving fossil fuel projects, including pipelines, import and export terminals, storage facilities, refineries, and petrochemical plants. Direct the Department of Energy to halt gas exports to the full extent authorized by law.
• Declare a climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act, unlocking special powers to reinstate the crude oil export ban, redirect disaster relief funds toward distributed renewable energy construction in frontline communities, and marshal companies to fast-track renewable transportation and clean power generation, creating millions of high-quality union jobs.

The U.S. must contribute its fair share to the global effort to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with what science, justice, and equity demand. Your administration’s legislative and regulatory climate proposals have not addressed limiting the production and burning of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change. As fossil fuel lobbyists and politicians continue to block real climate action in Congress, bold executive action is desperately needed.   

President Biden, you are the chief executive with immense powers to address our communities’ concerns.

You showed what serious climate leadership could look like in your first week in office when you canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and paused oil and gas leasing on federal lands. The urgency of the moment requires you to return to that original ambition. Fully deliver on your climate and environmental justice promises by using your executive authority to keep fossil fuels in the ground and build a resilient and affordable renewable energy system.

Sincerely,

For a full list of organizations see click here.