Labor Network for Sustainability

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

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What does the global Greentech revolution mean for the American people? It could open new vistas of a Greentech New Deal. But as long as the US opposes rather than joining the Greentech revolution, it portends not only climate catastrophe, but economic catastrophe as well.

Collage (Art: alonesbe, Envato | Photo Credit of Trump: Gage Skidmore, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)

As we have seen throughout this series, the Greentech revolution is transforming energy production and use worldwide. Along with its other advantages, fossil free energy has become radically cheaper than fossil fuel energy. More than 90% of utility-scale renewable projects commissioned in 2025 delivered power below the cost of the cheapest new fossil-fuel plant built in their market. Natural gas energy is currently 3–4 times more expensive than solar and wind. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are increasingly vulnerable to disruptions like the Ukraine and Iran wars, which destabilize whole economies with shortages and higher prices for energy, food, and other necessities of life.

Donald Trump and the US government are doing everything possible to shut down fossil free energy and to expand our dependence on fossil fuels. That is already having a devastating effect on American workers and communities, and it is likely to get far worse in the future. We are being marooned on what two energy experts call a fossil fuel “energy island” as the rest of the world turns to an “electric world order.”

If Trump and his fossil fuelers succeed in defeating the Greentech revolution in the US, the result is likely to be a growing affordability crisis; devastation for the most fossil-fuel dependent industries like autos, coal, iron, and gas; a general decline of the fossil-fuel intensive US economy; disinvestment; a loss of international competitiveness; and macroeconomic effects like inflation and recession or both.

These trends can sometimes be seen in the day-to-day operation of markets, like the decline of the US and European auto industries or the worldwide shift to renewables after the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. But paradoxically, they can also be concealed by short-term fluctuations. For example, the sharp rise in the cost of oil after the closing of the Strait of Hormuz produced a boom in oil company profits. Similarly, the rising demand for electricity for data centers created a boom for natural gas generators. Such developments might appear to refute the argument that the fossil fuel-based US economy is increasingly uncompetitive and in danger of becoming a stranded asset. However, amid all the price gyrations, nothing seems to refute the fundamental underlying fact: Fossil fuel energy is and will remain more expensive and less secure than fossil free energy. I have seen nothing that indicates otherwise.

The long-term decline of the fossil fuel-based economy is manifested in many ways. In this commentary I will examine two impacts on Americans of our country’s failure to join the Greentech revolution:

• It makes prices higher for Americans
• It makes US-produced goods and services more costly and therefore less competitive at home and abroad

Crashing autos

Electric Car at Charging Station | Photo credit: sofiiashunkina, Envato

The headline example of eschewing the Greentech revolution is the US auto industry. For decades, the industry – supported by US government policies — failed to invest in EVs and concentrated instead on its highly profitable gas-guzzling cars and trucks. Briefly under the Biden administration the federal government invested in EV charging infrastructure and a $7,500 consumer tax credit. Electric vehicle sales grew 60%.

Then Trump abandoned pro-EV policies and subsidized fossil fueled vehicles with a panoply of strategies. EV sales plummeted. The industry began shutting down its EVs factories. In 2025 Stellantis wrote down $26 billion in EV-related losses; Ford reported a $19 billion loss. The auto journalist Martin Padgett told the New York Times, “We pulled a U-turn while the rest of the world was pushing forward.”

Fossil fuel dependence is costly for American car owners. Here’s what gas dependence means in dollars and cents for auto drivers: In January 2026, before the disruptions caused by the Iran war, the cost to drive 100 miles in an electric car was $5.77; in a gas car it was $11.23. By summer — after the closing of the Straight of Hormuz — to drive 100 miles in the electric car cost almost the same as before, $5.89, but in the gas car it cost $16.69 –three times as much as the EV.

Its failure to develop EVs and its addiction to gas guzzlers has made the US auto industry non-competitive domestically.  In 1965, US companies produced more than 90% of new cars purchased in the US; today, barely a third are built by the Big Three.

The failure of the US auto industry to adopt Greentech is at least equally significant internationally. A quarter of all vehicles sold globally in 2025 were battery powered. (That figure is projected to reach 29% in 2026 due to high gas prices caused by the Iran war.) Bloomberg analysts predict that by next decade fewer than half of cars sold globally will be gas-powered. China, which provides 30% of the global car market, has seen sales of internal combustion vehicles plummet by nearly two-thirds since 2017. China now makes 75 percent of all EVs sold worldwide; the United States makes around 5 percent. Susan Helper, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who was chief economist at the Commerce Department under President Barack Obama, told the New York Times that in the worst-case scenario the US auto industry will become a “shrinking island of ICE (internal combustion engines),” churning out outlandishly large trucks and not much else. At which point, the Times noted, the obsolescence of the mighty U.S. automobile industry” would be “all but guaranteed.”

About three million Americans work for automobile and parts manufacturers and dealers. About 24 million jobs depend on spending by car manufacturers, their employees, or car owners.

Vehicle and parts makers shed about 21,000 U.S. jobs in the last year, despite Trump administration tariffs designed to force them to manufacture domestically.

The fossil fuel island

Wind farm Shanxi, China, November 4, 2015. Photo credit: Hahaheditor12667, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The global shift from gas guzzlers to EVs is part of a more general long-term shift from fossil fuels to fossil free energy which is rendering the US a fossil fuel island. Two energy experts summarized the current phase of this process:

“Global clean energy investment reached a record $2.2 trillion in 2025, twice the flow into fossil fuels. In 2024, 91 percent of newly commissioned utility-scale renewable projects produced electricity more cheaply than the cheapest new fossil fuel alternative, and battery storage costs have fallen 93 percent since 2010, allowing utilities to use batteries to store solar and wind power even when the weather is uncooperative. In 2025, fossil fuel electricity generation fell in both China and India.

“Before the Iran war, this green transition was also spreading beyond wealthy markets. In 2024, Chinese solar exports to developing economies surpassed shipments to advanced economies. Pakistan imported approximately 17 gigawatts of Chinese solar modules that year, equivalent to almost half of its grid-connected capacity. In Indonesia, Thailand, and Mexico, the cheapest Chinese-made EVs have reached price parity with the cheapest internal combustion options.”

In July, China announced binding targets to increase wind and solar power generation by more than 50% over the next five years.

How the Greentech transition will develop in the future is of course a matter for speculation, but BloombergNEF’s (BNEF) New Energy Outlook2026 provides one plausible projection:

• Solar will become the world’s single largest source of electricity in the next six years, due to a major supply glut, technology advances, and falling prices.
• If countries continue on their current path of rapidly deploying economically competitive clean technologies, they stand to cut their reliance on imported fossil fuels and ultimately strengthen their energy security.
• Many countries that depend on fossil fuels are now able to reduce their economic exposure to energy commodity imports by adopting low-carbon technologies.

Energy investor Rob Carlson recently drew the implications for the US economy: Continuing to burn fossil fuels is a “self-imposed financial penalty” which will “ultimately degrade the country’s long-term global competitiveness.” The same applies to any nation or polity that “chooses to continue burning fossil fuels in any application in which electricity could instead be provided more competitively with renewables.”

The replacement of fossil fuel energy by Greentech has been greatly accelerated by the war in the Persian Gulf region. According to a June 30 report by NPR, “The Iran war and high oil and gas prices have supercharged the adoption of renewables and EVs worldwide. Global investors say these technologies make financial sense and increase energy security.” As fossil fuel prices soared, countries are “turning to these technologies that are basically impervious to whatever happens in the Strait of Hormuz. Solar batteries and EVs have gotten a lot cheaper.” Chinese battery exports rose 69% in March compared to 2025; their solar exports in March are up 84% compared to 2025.

The NPR report concluded,

“It doesn’t look good for oil long term. With all these new EVs, that means a lot less people filling up their cars with gas around the world. Before the war in Iran, the International Energy Agency was expecting global oil demand to rise this year. But the disruptions caused by the Strait of Hormuz led them to downgrade expectations to a decline in oil demand this year. In some ways, the U.S. is becoming an outlier in the global energy transition.”

In the face of the Iran war energy shortages some countries have been turning to coal. But analysis by the thinktank Ember found that even a worst-case return to coal would raise global coal-fired generation by no more than 1.8 percent in 2026 relative to a no-crisis baseline; indeed, global coal generation could still fall this year.

Currently there is little reason to expect the Straight of Hormuz to be reopened any time soon, or for fossil fuel prices to return to their levels before the Iran war. And there are plenty of reasons to expect further disruptions with further fossil fuel gyrations in the future.

The US trend towards ever greater fossil fuel dependence and the consequent rise of its energy prices is being further aggravated by the expansion of gas, oil, and even coal to provide energy for hyperscale data centers. That is likely to further increase the isolation of the US as a high-cost fossil fuel island.

If the US becomes ever more a fossil fuel island in a Greentech world, the consequences are likely to be dire. Bill Hare, chief executive of the thinktank Climate Analytics, said, “Any investment in new fossil fuels now is a fool’s gamble, while joining the race to renewables can only bring benefits – not just jobs and cheaper energy at stable prices, but energy independence and access where it’s needed most.”

Is the US doomed to be a fossil fuel island? Our next series of commentaries will lay out an alternative: The Green New Deal 2.0.

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The post America’s Future: Fossil Fuel Island in a Greentech World? first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Date & Time:  Tuesday, September 22, 2026 | 07:00 PM EDT 

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The future of the Republic and more will be at stake when voters go to the polls in November.

Can Trump, who this month celebrated the neo-Nazi AFD’s victory in East Germany, and his allies sufficiently rig the elections to reinforce their power & privilege, further undermine constitutional democracy, and continue their unprecedented economic corruptions?

Will Democrats, divided as they are, win control of one or both houses of Congress, hold those who have ruled illegally and brutally accountable?

Come election day, what can we and our movements do to defend and restore the rule of law, economic security, racial justice, and peace?

Our webinar is designed to help frame priorities, including actions as well as policy commitments, that state and community-based movement leaders should be thinking about as we approach November’s elections.

The post WEBINAR: Building and Defending Democracy in November’s Elections first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

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

Listen to the audio version >>

The threats presented by hyperscale data centers are galvanizing resistance in hundreds of communities around the country. How are those movements developing? What is their significance? And how might they help shape a “Greentech New Deal” to address our climate, affordability, and democracy crises? 

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

Artificial Intelligence (AI), and data centers in particular, are generating an unprecedented resistance – in Texas they call it the Texas Data Center Rebellion. Robinson Meyer of the climate news website Heatmap recently told the New York Times,

“Every quarter, we poll about 4,000 Americans and we ask: Would you support or oppose a data center being built near where you live? We asked that question in August of last year, and Americans were very split. They were about 43 percent in support and 42 percent against. We asked again in the spring, and this time, 21 percent of Americans said they would support a data center being built near where they live, and 71 percent said they would oppose it. So it is a staggering shift, basically, in how Americans feel about this industry and about this form of land use in their communities.”

In the latest poll from Heatmap three-quarters of Americans now say that they would oppose a new data center being built near where they live. Just 4% say they would “strongly support” a data center proposed in their area. 

A June poll from Data for Progress finds that a majority of voters (63%), including 67% of Democrats, 66% of Independents, and 58% of Republicans, support pausing the construction of all US AI data centers nationwide for at least one year. Most voters think AI will increase unemployment in the U.S. and support regulations to give workers decision-making authority over how AI is used in the workplace.

Data centers are meeting unprecedented local resistance. According to a recent report, data center opponents blocked or delayed at least 75 projects around the country worth about $130 billion just from January through March 2026. Active opposition groups have grown from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 by the end of March 2026. 

According to Brad Johnson of Hill Heat, “a strong pattern has emerged of hyperscale data centers causing popular revolt at the ballot box. 

“After the city council of Festus, Mo. voted in favor of a $6 billion hyperscale proposal, voters promptly kicked out all four incumbents on the ballot in an April election. On the same day in April, voters in the Milwaukee suburb of Port Washington WI. showed their irritation with a massive $15 billion hyperscale facility by overwhelmingly approving a ballot measure to restrict future hyperscale projects from receiving tax-increment financing. 

“In May, supervisors in Meridian, Mich. voted to put a six-month pause on data center proposals. Meanwhile, in the Grand Rapids suburb of Lowell Township, township board members refused to adopt a data center moratorium, with the majority of the council opting to court a $1 billion proposal from Microsoft instead. Now, recall petitions are circulating against the board members who voted against a moratorium, with the chair of the effort accusing Lowell board members of ‘representing Microsoft more than the people who elected them.’”

Some, even on the left, have portrayed the Data Center Resistance as affluent NIMBY-ism. Data scientist Geoff Holtzman analyzed a dataset of current and proposed data center projects alongside US census data and came to these startling conclusions:

1. The poorest neighborhoods resisted data centers at nearly five times the rate of the wealthiest (19.0% vs. 3.8%).

“The highest rate of resistance comes from neighborhoods with a median income of between $8 thousand and $72 thousand. The lowest rate of resistance is in neighborhoods where the average household makes between $133 thousand and $250 thousand per year.”

2. Recently proposed data centers that faced pushback were canceled or suspended at more than five times the rate of data centers that didn’t (28.2% vs. 5.2%).
3. Cancellation rates are highest in lower-income areas, a fact fully explained by their higher rates of pushback.

“The odds of cancellation are six times higher in neighborhoods that fight than in neighborhoods that don’t. Increased cancellation in low-income areas is fully explained by high rates of pushback in these neighborhoods, so continued proposals in these areas may stoke outrage, drive resistance, and increase cancellation rates.”

The Moratorium Cometh

According to a new review of public records conducted by Heatmap Pro, more than 500 counties or municipalities now actively restrict or block new data centers. These constraints, such as steep setback requirements, impossible noise limits, or outright bans on permit approvals, all but forbid the construction of data centers. The overwhelming majority of these restrictions have been enacted since the beginning of 2026. Nearly 190 have been passed since June 1.

Earlier this year the New York state legislature passed a one-year moratorium on new data centers. The law would block data center permits for “hyperscale” facilities, which it defines as those with a peak load of more than 20 megawatts. Soon thereafter, New York governor Kathy Hochul imposed the nation’s first-ever statewide freeze on new “hyperscale” data centers that can use 50 megawatts or more of power. A recent report found that bipartisan proposals for moratoriums on constructing data centers were introduced in 14 states from January through March.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed a national data center moratorium that would temporarily ban the construction of data centers in the U.S. to “buy time to create strong, federal guardrails for AI.” Sen. Ed Markey and others have made other proposals for reigning in data centers. More surprisingly, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, recently called for a nationwide halt to data center construction.

Efforts to constrain data center impacts have taken a variety of forms besides moratoriums. Michigan, Oregon, and Minnesota passed laws in the last 18 months designed to protect their pre-existing requirements that electric utilities use only emissions-free energy sources by 2040. Minnesota and Oregon ordered regulators to ensure that the energy that supplies data centers is in line with their emissions-reduction goals, while Michigan required hyperscale data centers to use 90% clean energy within six years to receive its lucrative sales tax exemption. Ohio, Illinois, and Arizona paused subsidies and tax incentives for data center developers.

The Data Center Rebellion and the Greentech New Deal

Servers, Photo credit: Victorgrigas, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

However ludicrous the more extreme claims made for AI’s impact, that impact is too great to ignore. The continued growth of AI and data centers at current rates threatens to derail the Greentech revolution. Unrestrained they will lead to aggravated climate change, local ecological devastation, unaffordable electricity, and a substantial growth and centralization of oligarchical power. It’s hard to see who they will benefit except a handful of the world’s richest men. 

Just as there is little precedent for the explosive proliferation of hyperscale data centers, so there is little precedent for the data center rebellion. David Wallace-Wells and Robinson Meyer discussed in the New York Times whether the gathering coalition of Americans against data centers “could be the next Occupy Wall Street movement or Tea Party.” Perhaps the closest we have to a historical precedent is the anti-toxics movement that followed the exposure of toxic chemical dumps under low-income neighborhoods at Love Canal and the nationwide explosion of protest that followed as hundreds of communities around the country discovered that they too were exposed to toxic dumps. They created a nationwide movement against toxic dumps and won the landmark Superfund law which established unprecedented accountability for corporate polluters.

The local anti-data center movements are about as close as you can come to true grassroots rebellion. While many organizations are providing support, they are not the result of an organizing campaign or national call. Close examination shows that they are being created by people talking with their neighbors, banding together in their neighborhoods, packing meetings, confronting politicians, and throwing out officials who don’t take a stand against local data centers. Red and blue communities are joining together across party and ideological lines. Participants are overwhelmingly non-affluent – working class if you will. While there is little common ideology, there is certainly a widespread ethos based on the idea that wealthy, powerful elite forces are threatening the livelihoods and wellbeing of ordinary people and that people must force government to put a halt to such threats. 

The outcome of any such movement is unpredictable. It could, like the Tea Party, be captured by rightwing populist elites. It could, like Occupy Wall Street, dissipate in the face of repression and lack of clear direction while leaving a transformed political landscape behind. It could, like the post-Love Canal anti-toxics movement, impose significant limits on corporate depredations through local campaigns and federal legislation. Or it could become part of a far deeper transformation of the political, economic, and social landscape.  

One constructive outcome might be for the Data Center Rebellion to converge with an emerging Greentech New Deal. For the past eight years, the Green New Deal has provided a highly popular vision and program that would protect the climate in ways that would create good jobs for working people, end poverty, and alleviate injustice. 

The original Green New Deal called for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal.” The Green New Deal aimed to save the climate by meeting scientific targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases. It would seek to end the epidemic of poverty by mitigating deeply entrenched racial, regional, and gender-based inequalities in income and wealth and distributing federal aid and other investment equitably to historically impoverished and marginalized communities. And it would provide good jobs constructing a just and climate-safe economy. A poll soon after it was initially proposed in 2018 found that 40% of registered voters “strongly support” and 41% “somewhat support” the concepts behind the Green New Deal. Another poll five years later in 2024 found that “the Green New Deal is still incredibly popular.” 

Since the original proposal for a Green New Deal, the “Greentech revolution” has transformed the cost and viability of fossil free energy. Today a “Greentech New Deal” can be driven forward by an entirely different economic environment – one in which the transition to fossil free energy is not a costly and painful duty, but rather a “free lunch” that the American people can use to make a happier, healthier, and more just society and world. Indeed as I have shown elsewhere, that Greentech revolution is driving forward at local and state levels despite opposition from Trump, MAGA, and the fossil fuel industry.

While a convergence of the Data Center Rebellion and the Greentech New Deal is far from inevitable, we can envision some steps that might help lead in that direction:

• Continue and expand the local struggles against data centers. Those struggles have put the issue squarely in the public eye, shown that communities are not powerless, and already blocked a remarkable number of data center proposals. They can take heart from the local struggles to shut down coal-fired power plants which have led to retirement commitments for over 70% of coal plants since 2010.
• Continue and expand the burgeoning coalitions promoting data center bans and moratoriums at city, state, and national levels. Force politicians and elected officials to impose such policies with no ifs, and, or buts.
• Encourage the broad array of forces that backed the Green New Deal, and continue to implement it at local and state levels, to use their considerable power and resources to champion the struggle against data centers. 
• Steadily broaden the Data Center Rebellion’s implicit– and often articulated – goal of replacing oligarchic with democratic control of the economy.
• Demand that the “precautionary principle” – that new innovations not be permitted until they are proven harmless — be applied both to data centers and to fossil fuel infrastructure.
• Prioritize the blocking of fossil fuels for data centers. 
• Present the Greentech New Deal as an alternative to the billionaire plan to dominate our communities, our economy, and our lives. 
• Promote the Greentech New Deal as at once the solution to the climate, the jobs, and the affordability crises. 

A handful of hyperscalers are trying to shape the future through AI and the data centers on which they depend. But the future may also be shaped in part by the unprecedented popular mobilization against data centers.

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Sanchioni Butler is a veteran labor organizer, policy advocate, coalition builder, and leadership development professional with more than three decades of experience advancing workers’ rights, workplace democracy, racial and economic justice, and community empowerment.

Sanchioni began her career at Ford Motor Company in 1988 and later became an organizer and International Representative with the United Auto Workers. She organized workers and supported campaigns across Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, and other parts of the South. Her international collaborations with trade unionists in South Africa, Brazil, France, and Japan strengthened her commitment to advancing worker and human rights globally.

After retiring from the UAW in 2018, Sanchioni expanded her work in public policy, political engagement, education, and community organizing. Her professional roles have included Senior Organizer with Jobs to Move America, Political Campaign Coordinator for the Mississippi AFL-CIO, and American Rescue Plan Coordinator for the Mississippi Association of Educators.

Sanchioni is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Impact Strategies and Consulting LLC, where she provides strategic planning, leadership development, team building, workforce advocacy, coalition building, organizational support, and youth engagement services. She also remains active in labor and civil-rights leadership through the Central Mississippi Central Labor Council and the NAACP Jackson Branch.

A skilled facilitator, trainer, and strategist, Sanchioni is committed to preparing emerging leaders and strengthening partnerships among labor, community, education, faith, and social justice organizations. Her work is grounded in the belief that lasting change occurs when people have the knowledge, confidence, and opportunity to advocate for themselves and their communities.

The post September 2026 LNS Spotlight: Sanchioni Butler first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Joe Uehlein’s tour for his new book Three Roads: Labor, Music, Ecology rolls on. Joe says,

The book tells the story of how LNS was founded, while also tracing my life’s trajectory from growing up along the banks of the Great Lake Erie and all the intrigue of a life in the labor movement, and my dedication to worker rights and environmental justice.

At many of the early stops I was introduced by LNS ED, Joshua Dedmond, and ably assisted by LNS Development Director, Yasmin Gabriel. We’ve played Detroit, Denver, San Francisco, Berkeley, Champaign-Urbana, IL, and Chicago.

Upcoming confirmed dates include Amherst, MA, Boston, MA, Portland, ME, Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, Homestead, PA, Takoma Park, MD/Washington, DC.

For information contact Joe at joeuehlein@mac.com; 202-256-7848

The post LNS Prez Joe Uehlein Book-and-Music Tour Coming to Boston September 16 first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

By Joe Uehlein

Global warming causes climate change. Climate Change is here. Many wrongly talk about what we are experiencing now as the new normal; it is not. Think of this year as the least extreme. It will get worse every year until we stop burning fossil fuels. Not reduce, but stop burning fossil fuels; and reduce meat consumption.

If we plot out the last 10,000 years, which is when society really began to develop, carbon in the atmosphere remained stable at 280ppm. Since 1850, almost overnight, we’ve gone to 430ppm. That’s “parts per million” and that’s how scientists measure carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. The warming rate has doubled since 2015.

Our most marginalized communities are living on the front lines of climate change and in the places with the fewest resources to prepare and recover. We need climate justice. The communities need a seat at the table. And we need climate action. They go hand in hand.

A massive heat dome is sent temperatures to 126 degrees across the western US this summer. 100 million Americans were breathing toxic smoke. This isn’t weather. It’s climate catastrophe, and it was a choice. Fossil fuel executives made it. Politicians protect it. Working people are paying for it with their pocketbooks and their health. Scientists are now warning that Earth is on track to cross a climate point of no return and become uninhabitable.

Even with the incredible build-out of renewable energy over the past 20 years, carbon emissions continue to skyrocket, and the planet continues to warm. Carbon (CO2) levels in the atmosphere are now at 430 ppm (parts per million), higher than ever before in human history. Research reveals that the US accounted for 50% of the worlds increase in emissions last year.

My conviction at starting LNS was that labor is blocking action on global warming and climate change, and without labor on our side we will lose. So we dedicated ourselves 20 years ago to working with unions and allied organizations to help them better understand their self interest in the fight to end global warming and climate change, and we work with enviro and climate justice/change orgs to help them better understand and work with unions.

We need power. Unions have power. Even in their reduced state, unions have economic power, and considerable power in the electoral arena. Most importantly, the American labor movement is the most powerful counterbalance to corporate power and control.

Our core, bedrock principle in the labor movement is worker solidarity. We are now challenged to bring this core principle to everyone, everywhere, and nurture human solidarity.

The post Prez Uehlein on What We’re Really Facing first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

By LNS Executive Director Joshua Dedmond

On July 28th, representatives from the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS), alongside comrades from sister organizations including the Just Transition Alliance, The Chisholm Legacy Project, and Taproot Earth, joined the picket line in Jackson, Mississippi. The delegation stood in direct solidarity with striking transit workers represented by Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1208.

ATU Local 1208 represents 80 bus operators, mechanics, cleaners, and customer service representatives operating Jackson’s public transit system, JTRAN. This picket line mobilization took place alongside a joint planning meeting focused on aligning Labor and Environmental Justice (EJ) strategies across the region.

Following a resilient 39-day strike, ATU Local 1208—led by Local President Charles Tornes Jr.—officially ratified a new contract with private contractor MV Transportation. The agreement secured immediate wage increases, protected essential working conditions, and fully restored regular bus service routes across the city.

In a state with a 4 percent union density rate and strict “right-to-work” laws, the victory of ATU Local 1208 demonstrates the transformative power of organized labor and community-wide solidarity. LNS and its environmental justice partners remain committed to uplifting ATU Local 1208 and continuing the shared struggle for transit equity, climate resilience, and worker dignity across the South.

The post Climate Justice Leaders Support Striking Transit Workers first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

A recent article by Sasha Abramsky in TruthOut tells how “Fired Federal Employees Are Bringing Climate Change Info Back to the People.”

Soon after Donald Trump was inaugurated President, the government’s premier educational website on climate change, Climate.gov, was shut down and most of the staff that produced it were fired by Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). But now fired NOAA employees have resurrected it as Climate.us to bring climate information back to the people. Advised by a distinguished group of climate scientists, it is already receiving nearly a million hits a month.

Abramsky reports that their work has proven to be “an inspiration” for ex-government employees in a number of other agencies and branches of government. For example, former Environmental Protection Agency workers are preparing to resurrect climate-related EPA pages that have been taken down; Public Environmental Data Partners is rescuing specialist environmental monitoring tools; and the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative is saving specialized environmental justice screening tools.

The post Fired Federal Workers Want to Let You Know What the Government Won’t Tell You about Climate Change first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

A  new report from the nonpartisan business group E2 found that since Donald Trump was inaugurated, 216 major clean energy generation and manufacturing projects were scrapped, closed, or downsized. That led to the loss of nearly half a million potential jobs. The projects would have generated an estimated $53 billion in wages for workers during construction and more than $31 billion annually after they began operation.

For more: Trump’s clean energy attacks are costing the US jobs | Canary Media

For the full report: “One Year Since the One Big Beautiful Bill: An Economic Impact Analysis Of America’s Clean Economy”

The post Trump’s Attacks on Clean Energy Cost Half-a-Million Jobs first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Image source: Los Angeles skyline viewed from Griffith observatory at sunrise by martinm303, Envato Elements.

An AP/NORDC poll conducted in July asked people tell whether extreme heat has impacted their lives. 90 percent answered that it had.

Fifty percent of respondents said that extreme heat has had either a major or minor impact on their sleeping patterns, while only 44 percent said it has had no impact on their sleep. Fifty-two percent of respondents said extreme heat has impacted their travel or vacation plans, while only 44 percent said it hasn’t.

Two-thirds of Americans, 68 percent, said that their family’s outdoor activities have been impacted by extreme heat, while only 31 percent said their outdoor activities have not been impacted. Meanwhile, 81 percent said extreme heat over the past year has affected their electricity bills, while only 15 percent said they haven’t noticed a difference.

For More: Truthout: “9-in-10 Americans Polled Say Extreme Heat Is Affecting Their Lives”

The post 9 in 10 Americans Say Extreme Heat Is Affecting Their Lives first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Overall, climate protection policies create jobs and improve conditions for workers. But employers can try to take advantage of climate policies in ways that harm workers instead.

The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handle nearly 40% of containerized imports to the US. Most of its existing technology is mechanical – and highly polluting. California air pollution regulators have proposed that equipment like trucks, cranes, and yard tractors should be electrified to meet the ports’ targets of 100 percent zero-emission operations. But workers and local communities are concerned that employers will take advantage of the need to reduce pollution through electrification as an excuse to automate the ports and eliminate jobs that have been the backbone of the local economy for generations.

A new report from the UCLA Labor Center warns that Southern California regulators’ efforts to electrify the ports create “a real risk of driving terminal operators to pursue port automation under the pretense of meeting environmental standards.” Rich Dines, a former Long Beach harbor commissioner and member of the ILWU longshoreman’s union, who contributed to the report says, “Electrification is an excuse for automation.”

Both ILWU and the Teamsters — who represent truckers moving goods from the ports to inland warehouses — stress they’re not against electrification and other zero-emission technologies in themselves. “We absolutely support green transportation and electric vehicles,” said Peter Finn, Teamsters’ western region vice president. But the companies are trying “to conflate the issues to engage in some PR spin and imply the technology is somehow more environmentally friendly,” Finn said.

The UCLA Labor Center report points the way toward a possible resolution. Industry stakeholders questioned the immediate benefits of increased automation. Terminal operators and labor representatives alike expressed significant doubts about automation’s presumed efficiencies. Instead, they championed a wide range of possible solutions other than automation, including increasing hours of operation, investing in inland ports, better worker-training programs, optimizing existing infrastructure to achieve standardization across terminals, shifting containerized cargo to on-dock rail systems, and the planned Goods Movement Training Campus. The report found that, “unlike automation, these solutions offer a systematic approach to maximizing port productivity and mitigating job loss.”

To learn more:

Politico: “California dockworkers have a new target in their fight against automation”

For the report:

“Automation and the Future of Dockwork at the San Pedro Bay Port Complex”

The post Climate Protection vs. Jobs? first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.