EcoUnionist News #102

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, May 3, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

• Heatwaves will hit workers’ health in warming world, warns UN - By Arthur Neslen, Climate Change News, April 28, 2016
• Rail workers dispute lobby group’s take on Lac Mégantic disaster - By Grant Robertson, Toronto Globe and Mail, April 28, 2016; [related] As Lac-Mégantic proved, braking procedures matter - By Ron Kaminkow, Toronto Globe and Mail, April 28, 2016
• Fossil Capital: the rise of steam power and the roots of global warming - By Irma Allen, The Ecologist, April 27, 2016
• Loservilles and Ghost Dance - By George Wuerthner, Counterpunch, April 26, 2016
• Misunderstanding the Leap, critics fall flat - By Christopher Majka, Rabble.Ca, April 26, 2016

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Break Free 2016 - May 2016
• Convergence In Support of Eco-Prisoners & Against Toxic Prisons - June 11-13, 2016
• Flush the TPP - Ongoing through 2016 | #FlushtheTPP
• March for a Clean Energy Revolution - July 24, 2016, Philadelphia | #CleanEnergyMarch
• TWAC Cascadia 2016 - August 8th-15th 2016

The Thin Green Line:

• Northern Arizona U. Students Launch Sit-In as Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement Sweeps Country - Michaela Mujica-Steiner and Karina Gonzalez by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, April 29, 2016
• Reclaim the power! Progress towards a fossil-free UK - By Guy Shrubsole, The Ecologist, April 29, 2016
  

Just Transition:

• Solidarity Sunday celebrates community resistance to opencast coal mining - By Staff, Reclaim the Power, May 1, 2016
• Devil capitalism sending us to hell - By Gary Engler, The New Commune-ist Manifesto, April 29, 2016
• USW response to 350.org’s ‘Break Free from Fossil Fuel’ actions targeting oil refineries - By Staff, United Steelworkers, April 26, 2016; [counterpoint] Can the Climate Movement Break Free From the 'Jobs vs. Environment' Debate? - By Kate Aronoff, Common Dreams, April 30, 2016; [related] Using the “Public Trust” to Frame “Break Free From Fossil Fuels” Actions - By Jeremy Brecher and David Solnit, Labor Network for Sustainability, April 29, 2016
• Benefits of Community Energy in Canada - By Elizabeth Perry, Work and Climate Change Report, April 24, 2016
• Demanding a Just Transition for Peabody Coal Workers - By Elizabeth Perry, Work and Climate Change Report, April 24, 2016
• Employment in Canadian Clean Tech and U.S. Clean Energy - By Elizabeth Perry, Work and Climate Change Report, April 24, 2016
• The Leap Manifesto is a path to jobs and justice - By Crystal Lameman, Toronto Globe and Mail, April 22, 2016
• Comment: Switched On London launch bid for new municipal energy company - By Archie Davies, Greenpeace Energy Desk, April 21, 2016
• As Oil Jobs Dry Up, Workers Turn to Solar Sector - By Lynn Cook, Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2016

Bread and Roses:

• March For Dignity International Workers Day - By staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, April 28, 2016
• National boycott of Wendy’s spreads westward during Month of Outrage… - By staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, April 28, 2016
• Peasants in Asia give inputs to ‘UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants & Other People Working in Rural Areas’ - By staff, La Via Campesina, April 28, 2016
• Migrant agricultural workers dreaming a better future - By Scott Neigh, Rabble.Ca, April 27, 2016
• Farm Defenders Occupy the Gill Tract Again to Halt Construction Indefinitely - By staff, Earth First! Newswire, April 26, 2016
• Back to the future: Wendy’s shows 20th century disdain for consumers’ intelligence with 21st century marketing push… - By staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, April 25, 2016
• Food Products Industry and their Supply Chains - By Elizabeth Perry, Work and Climate Change Report, April 25, 2016
• Student Activists Confront PepsiCo Executive on Conflict Palm Oil - By Jessica Serrante, The Understory, April 25, 2016

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• New Jersey Transit union rejects deal that averted strike - Associated Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 30, 2016
• 11 dead in Statoil copter crash off Norway - By Associated Press, Fuel Fix, April 29, 2016
• The fight for health and safety at Samsung in South Korea (audio) - By Piergiorgio Moro, Rabble.Ca, April 29, 2016
• High risk of injury for young workers prompts B.C. schools and students to act - By Sarah Beuhler, Rabble.Ca, April 29, 2016
• Blankenship: Waiting on the 4th Circuit - By Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette Mail, April 28, 2016
• Insightful Parkland study of how media covers workplace injuries helps put yesterday's tragedy in perspective - By David J. Climenhaga, Rabble.Ca, April 28, 2016
• National Day of Mourning: Unions urge us to mourn the dead and fight for the living - By Teuila Fuatai, Rabble.Ca, April 28, 2016
• Working and dying in the sharing economy - By Nora Loreto, Rabble.Ca, April 28, 2016
• Join Workers in Bangladesh: Enough with H&M’s Broken Promises! - By staff, United Students Against Sweatshops, April 27, 2016
• Learning from the frontlines - By Liam Barrington-Bush, London Mining Network, April 27, 2016
• Oil and gas workers are 5 times more likely to die on the job - By Xian Chiang-Waren, Grist, April 27, 2016
• Prosecutors oppose Blankenship bail during appeal - By Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette Mail, April 26, 2016
• South Ayrshire refuse workers keep up defiance - By Graeme Cummings, Socialist Worker (UK), April 26, 2016
• Internationational Gathering of ”Berta Caceres Lives On” Ends in Violence - By Gloria Jimenez, Counterpunch, April 25, 2016
• Labor finalizes black lung benefit rule - By Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette Mail, April 25, 2016
• New Goodwin Blankenship ad: ‘Take it back, Jim’ - By Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette Mail, April 25, 2016
• Steelworkers, Workers Uniting Bring Message of Solidarity to Los Mineros - By Staff, United Steelworkers, April 25, 2016
• Thompson on Sills, ‘Toxic War: The Story of Agent Orange’ - By Max Liboiron, Discard Studies, April 25, 2016
• Charges in Northern Ontario Mining Death Validate Campaign for Enforcement of Westray Law - By Marty Warren, et. al., United Steelworkers, April 21, 2016

Green is the New Red:

• Finland: Police Attacked the ‘Stop Fennovoima Camp’ at Pyhäjoki - By staff, 325, April 28, 2016
• Talking Africa: Podcast on Mining in South Africa and Issues of Violence and Community Engagement - By Joseph Ochieno, et. al., Yes to Life No to Mining, April 21, 2016

Whistleblowers:

• “It changes who you are—forever. What you do with that change is what defines who you are.” - By Will Potter, Green Is the New Red, April 28, 2016
• Railroad whistleblowers face retaliation, urge OSHA prosecutions, heftier fines - By Mark Gruenberg, People's World, April 28, 2016
• The honorable history of whistleblowing - By staff, Progressive Review, April 22, 2016

Greenwashers:

• Conservation efforts in the Congo Basin are “mostly failing” says new Rainforest Foundation UK report - By Chris Lang, Redd Monitor, April 28, 2016
• James Cable, director of Beta Commodities, disqualified for 14 years for selling carbon credits as an investment - By Chris Lang, Redd Monitor, April 25, 2016
• Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Interview with Daniel Tanuro, Ecosocialist - By Daniel Tanuro, New Politics, April 25, 2016
• Will the Paris Agreement Save the Earth? - By Chris Williams, Real News Network, April 22, 2016
• Certified nonsense - By Chris Lang, New Internationalist, April 2016

Capital Blight:

• A Public Lashing - By Joe Womack, Bridge the Gulf, April 30, 2016
• What's yours is mine: Against the sharing economy - By Redeye Collective, Rabble.Ca, April 29, 2016
• Acusan a mineras Peñoles y Penmont de fabricar delitos para despojar a ejidatarios | Mining Company Fabricates Absurd Charges, Sends 11 Campesinos to Prison - By Juan Alberto Cedillo, Proceso MX | translated by Earth First! Journal, April 28, 2016
• "Nestlé Is Trying to Break Us": A Pennsylvania Town Fights Predatory Water Extraction - By Alexis Bonogofsky, Truthout, April 25, 2016
• Even the ‘Good’ Gold Mines Are Pretty Bad - By Kendra Pierre-Louis, Vice, April 24, 2016

Disaster Capitalism:

• Two People Connected To Flint Water Investigation Found Dead - By Claire Bernish, Your News Wire, April 29, 2016; [related] Woman Leading Flint Lead Poisoning Lawsuit Found Shot Dead in Her Home - By wire report, Latest.Com, April 22, 2016
• The Flint Chess Game: The Politics of the Battlefield - By Dr. Marsha Cole, Black Agenda Report, April 26, 2016
• 30 Ways Chernobyl and Dying Nuke Industry Threaten Our Survival - By Harvey Wasserman, Counterpunch, April 26, 2016
• Police Caught Spying on Social Media to Track Anyone Who Talks About Flint Water Crisis - By Claire Bernish, TheFreeThoughtProject.com, April 25, 2016
• Flint is about how we treat the poor - By Leonard Pitts Jr, Miami Herald, April 22, 2016

The Man Behind the Curtain:

• Marc Morano's Climate Hustle Movie "Amateurish" and "Not Very Watchable" Says Filmmaker - By Graham Readfearn, DeSmog Blog, April 29, 2016
• CNN Viewers See Far More Fossil Fuel Advertising Than Climate Reporting - By Kevin Kalhoefer, EcoWatch, April 26, 2016
• Exxon Using Tobacco’s Failed Free Speech Defense for Decades of Deception on Climate Change - By Climate Denier Roundup, EcoWatch, April 26, 2016
• Panama Papers Prove America Has the Money to Transition to 100% Clean Energy - By Vien Truong, EcoWatch, April 26, 2016
• “There is no doubt”: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s - By Brendan DeMelle and Kevin Grandia, DeSmog Blog, April 26, 2016
• TTIP: Chevron lobbied for controversial legal right as 'environmental deterrent' - By Arthur Neslen, The Guardian, April 26, 2016

Wobbles:

• Petition Calling For Employers To Offer Fossil-Free Retirement Options - By James Ayre, Clean Technica, April 30, 2016
• For a REAL International Workers’ May Day - By John Reimann, Oakland Socialist, April 28, 2016
• Sitting in to save the planet - By Bennet Wilcox, Socialist Worker, April 25, 2016
• Rosh Pinah miners end protracted strike - By Luqman Cloete, The Namibian, April 19, 2016

Other News:

• The incomplete, true, and wonderful history of May Day - By Peter Linebaugh, ROAR Mag, May 1, 2016
• Lucy Parsons: The Anarchist and Intersectional Feminist Who Inspired May Day - By Laura Flanders, Common Dreams, May 1, 2016
• Pirates, Peasants and Proletarians - By Joris Leverink, ROAR Mag, April 30, 2016
• Casper's Sinclair Refinery hires hundreds of workers for massive overhaul - By Greg Fladager, Casper Star Tribune, April 28, 2016
• ‘City of Trees’ Provides a Look Into the Promise of Urban Green Jobs Programs - By Jason Kozlowski, In These Times, April 26, 2016
• 500 jobs lost after Cameco shuts down Rabbit Lake - By Andrew Topf, Mining.Com, April 24, 2016

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.

* Due to the sheer volume of news items, we have given "Carbon Bubble" it's own, separate node this week, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

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.