EcoUnionist News #84

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 29, 2015

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• These Will Be The Biggest Climate Fights Of 2016 - By Natasha Geiling, Think Progress, December 23, 2015
• What this California department’s racist emails could mean for the communities it’s supposed to protect - By Aura Bogado, Grist, December 23, 2015
• Ailing, Angry Nuclear-Weapons Workers Fight for Compensation - By Jim Morris and Jamie Smith Hopkins, TruthOut, December 22, 2015
• Whistleblower Speaks Out Against USDA, Corruption and Systemic Pesticides - By Maryam Henein, TruthOut, December 22, 2015
• The Empire Strikes Back: the Return of the WTO - By Polly Jones, CounterPunch, December 14, 2015

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Flush the TPP - Spring 2016: | #FlushtheTPP
• Railcon15 - Next Conference TBA | #Railcon15

COP21 and Paris:

• Climate Terror From Paris Could Endure for Generations - By Patrick Bond, CounterPunch, December 25, 2015
• Ground zero of climate change - By Tarique Niazi, Climate and Capitalism, December 23, 2015
• The Climate Movement is Dead: A Report Back from COP21 - By Ducky Slowcode, Medium, December 21, 2015
• This Climate Solution Could Cool the Planet and Feed the World - By Kiss The Ground, EcoWatch, December 21, 2015
• Talks in the city of light generate more heat - By Kevin Anderson, Nature, December 21, 2015
• And the Climate Pretender Award Goes To… - By Sandra Steingraber, Readers' Supported News, December 20, 2015
• Paris Was Just a Way Station in the Climate Change Fight - By Antonia Juhasz, Newsweek, December 18, 2015
• The problem with REDD+ - By Vijay Kolinjivadi, Uneven Earth, December 17, 2015

The Thin Green Line:

• In Ohio, Communities Work to Defend Themselves Against Fossil Fuel Industry - By Simon Davis-Cohen, TruthOut, December 27, 2015
• Forest Service Pushes for Coal Mining on Protected Lands in Colorado - By Eric Galatas, Public News Service, December 24, 2015
• Labor's Positive Progress - By Jay Youngdahl and Darwin BondGraham, East Bay Express, December 23, 2015
• It's Time for Jerry Brown to Break His Silence on Coal - By Robert Gammon, East Bay Express, December 23, 2015
• Paul Ryan Just Made The Case For Why Lifting The Oil Export Ban Is Really Bad - By Samantha Page, Think Progress, December 22, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• Food Sovereignty: This is What Anarchy Looks Like - By Boyan Atzev, Popular Resistance, December 27, 2015
• #ENDWTO: Developing Countries return Empty Handed from WTO’s Nairobi Ministerial - By Afsar Jafri, Focus on the Global South, December 26, 2015
• Biting the Hands That Feed: New York's Immigrant Farmworkers Face Appalling Treatment - By Leanne Tory-Murphy, TruthOut, December 22, 2015
• G7’s ‘New Alliance’ deal is failing farmers in Africa - By Aisha Dodwell, New Internationalist, December 22, 2015
• Standards without enforcement are nothing more than empty promises to workers, consumers alike… - By staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, December 22, 2015

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• SFMTA workers struggle to meet basic needs - By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, San Francisco Examiner, December 28, 2015
• Black lung: Queensland underground coal mines warned to reduce dust levels below safety standards - By Matt Peacock, Austalian Broadcasting Company, December 23, 2015; [related] Coalminers call for inquiry after return of black lung disease in Queensland - By Australian Associated Press, The Guardian, December 23, 2015
• OSHA Finds $12,000 Worth of Citations at Hotel Where Workers Report Dealing with Blood, Needles - By S E Smith, In These Times, December 23, 2015
• Dr says heavy metal poisoning from Tolukuma mine causing genocide - By Gloria Bauai, Post Courior, December 22, 2015
• Golden Misabiko on the Exploitation of Uranium in Congo - By Gideon Gottfried, TruthOut, December 22, 2015
• China’s Latest Crackdown on Workers Is Unprecedented - By Michelle Chen, The Nation, December 18, 2015; [related] Global unions demand release of Chinese labour activists - By Staff, IndustriAll, December 21, 2015
• Northeast China sees two coal mine disasters in two days - By Staff, China Labor Bulletin, December 18, 2015
• The Black Dust You Breathe on BART - By Julia Carrie Wong, San Francisco Weekly, December 16, 2015

Disaster Capitalism:

• FOIA Request Shows Govt Lied About Lead in Water - By Andrew Emett, Earth First! Journal, December 28, 2015
• ‘Nuclear Gypsies’ Risk Their Lives to Clean Up Fukushima - By Cole Mellino, EcoWatch, December 28, 2015
• Alabama Governor Uses BP Spill Money To Fix Up A Second Mansion For Himself - By Alice Ollstein, Think Progress, December 27, 2015
• Wrong track: Authorities lack manpower to inspect rail lines - By Rick Rouan and Laura Arenschield, Columbus Dispatch, December 22, 2015
• What Went Wrong at Porter Ranch? - By Gene Maddaus, LA Weekly, December 22, 2015
• Proof that Bhopal Gas is Now Claiming its Third Generation of Victims - By Rakesh Dixit, The Wire, December 8, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Smyth: B.C. Liberals deny unions an exclusive deal for Site C megaproject - By Michael Smyth, The Province, December 24, 2015
• Opec faces a mortal threat from electric cars - By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, December 23, 2015
• Pemex oil production hampered by accidents, budget cuts - By Bloomberg, FuelFix, December 23, 2015
• Rig count tumbles three as oil prices refuse to budge - By Rhiannon Meyers, FuelFix, December 23, 2015
• Study shows 96% of some mining jobs can be automated - By Frik Els, Mining.Com, December 22, 2015
• Dresser-Rand plans to shutter plant, lay off 72 workers - By Rhiannon Meyers, FuelFix, December 21, 2015
• Mass Layoffs in China’s Coal Country Threaten Unrest - By Jane Perlez and Yufan Huang, New York Times, December 16, 2015

Just Transition:

• Time To Transition To 100% Clean Energy: The Wind Is Now At Our Backs - By Mark Ruffalo, Popular Resistance, December 22, 2015
• Can coal-hungry Appalachia take any lessons from Australia’s new solar farm? - By Clayton Aldern, Grist, December 21, 2015
• Australia’s powerful web of grassroots climate resistance - By Nicola Paris, Waging Nonviolence, December 17, 2015
• Earth to Labor: Dispatches from the Climate Battleground - By Sean Sweeney, New Labor Forum, December 17, 2015

Other News:

• 10 Incredible Moments in 2015: A Landmark Year in Climate Action - By May Boeve, EcoWatch, December 26, 2015
• How Fossil Fuel Divestment Can Rewrite the Climate Narrative - By Geoffrey Supran, Common Dreams, December 23, 2015
• Argentines March to Defend Workers Against Macri's Pro-Business Policies - By Staff, Telesur TV, December 22, 2015
• Christmas at the Mines - By Chris Mullins, The Thoughtful Coal Miner, December 22, 2015
• Inspection of Vast Federal Biological Collections Slated - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, December 22, 2015
• When the Workers Become the Owners: Taking the Co-op Movement to the Next Level - By Brian Van Slyke, TruthOut, December 21, 2015
• Starbucks' Deforestation-Free Pledge Is a Total Joke - By Elliott Negin, Alternet, December 18, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW. Please send suggested news items to include in this series to euc [at] iww.org.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.