fracking

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 4, 2015

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.

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

Lead Stories:

• Beyond Extinction: Transition to post-capitalism is inevitable (A response to Margaret Atwood's, It’s Not Climate Change It’s Everything Change) - By Nafeez Ahmed, Medium.Com, July 28, 2015
• The Hurricane Katrina Pain Index: 10 Years Later - By Bill Quigley, Portside, July 20, 2015

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Flood the System - Fall 2015: Flood, blockade, occupy and shut down the systems that jeopardize our future! | #FloodTheSystem
• People’s Climate Strike - November 26 - December 12, 2015
• Railcon15 - Chicago, Illinois Saturday, September 19, 2015 | #Railcon15
• Trade Union Climate Summit - September 14 & 15, 2015 Paris | #unions4climate

Bread and Roses:

• Strike Suspended in Potosi, Bolivian VP Declared "Persona non Grata" - By EFE, Earth First! Journal, August 3, 2015
• Farmworkers score big in new tomato deal - By Eve Andrews, Grist, July 29, 2015
• Farmworkers Walk Out Again in Organic Blueberry Fields Over Continuing Unattainable Production Standards Under Sakuma’s New Pay Scale - By Staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, July 24, 2015

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, July 27, 2015

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.

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

Lead Stories:

• Reports of capitalism’s death have been greatly exaggerated - By Kate Aronoff, Waging NonViolence, July 22, 2015
• Capitalism, Green or Otherwise, Is "Ecological Suicide" - By David Klein, TruthOut, July 21, 2015
• Ecological Crisis and the Tragedy of the Commodity - By Stefano B. Longo and Brett Clark, CounterPunch, July 21, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• Slave in the Fields: A Reporter Goes Undercover in the San Quintin Valley - By Kau Sirenio Pioquinto, Truthout, July 25, 2015
• For Illinois Farmers, Damage From Coal Mines Can Span Decades - By Lizz Giordano, TruthOut, July 22, 2015
• New report reveals retiring toxic farmland would save water, money - By Dan Bacher, IndyBay, July 20, 2015
• Imagine farming that actually heals the earth - By Sami Grover, Tree Hugger, July 21, 2015; and Could better soil management reverse global warming? - By Sami Grover, Tree Hugger, February 12, 2015

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• Mining, militarization and criminalization of social protests in Latin America - By Cesar Padilla, Papua New Guinea Mine Watch, July 23, 2015
• Talvivaara Mine Environmental Disaster - By Mike O'Brien, Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities, and Trade, July 23, 2015
• An Open Letter to Warren Buffett: Put Public Safety Before Profit and Prioritize Oil Train Regulation - By Mike O'Brien, Huffington Post, July 22, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Anglo American to axe 53,000 jobs, put 15 assets up for sale - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, July 24, 2015
• Weatherford takes “brutally realistic” approach to U.S. job cuts - By Jordan Blum, FuelFix, July 23, 2015
• Weatherford to boost job cuts to 11,000 - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, July 22, 2015

Just Transition:

• Don’t leave clean energy tax credits blowing in the wind - By Staff, BlueGreen Alliance, July 24, 2015
• The EPA’s Clean Power Plan, Jobs, and Labor - Labor Network for Sustainability, July 24, 2015
• Yancoal job cuts follow expansion approval: systemic adjustment needed - By Georgina Woods, Lock the Gate Alliance, July 24, 2015
• What Happens After the Coal Plant Closes? - By Christopher Flavelle, Bloomberg View, July 22, 2015
• The Problem With the Fight for 15 - By Boots Riley, Creative Time Reports, July 20, 2015
• Cooperative/Solidarity Economics and Advancing the Development of Worker Co-ops - By Michael Johnson, Grassroots Economic Organizing, July 2015

Other News:

• Inspectors find dozens of rail bridges need repair - By Dan Gunderson, MPR News, July 23, 2015
• Kropotkin on the Hudson - By Polly Howells, In These Times, July 22, 2015
• We may have already committed ourselves to 6-meter sea-level rise - By Systemic Disorder, Systemic Disorder, July 22, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW

By Dan Bacher - Daily Kos, July 21, 2015

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.

In yet another carefully choreographed photo opportunity to tout his "green" image while he promotes the expansion of fracking, Governor Jerry Brown today urged the world's mayors to "light a fire" and "join California in the fight against climate change."

Brown was speaking on the first day of the Vatican's symposium on climate change and modern slavery hosted by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences.

"We have fierce opposition and blind inertia," Brown claimed. "And that opposition is well-financed, hundreds of millions of dollars going into propaganda, into falsifying the scientific record, bamboozling people of every country. We have to fight that propaganda and overcome the inertia and the tremendous opposition."

"Mayors, you are at the bottom of this power chain and you have got to light a fire. We have to join together. We have to make a change. It's up to us to make it happen," Brown said.

Without a hint of irony, Brown also gushed about the "interconnectedness of all beings" as his administration rushes the construction of the Delta tunnels, potentially the most environmentally destructive public works project in California history, and presides over water policies that have brought winter run Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and Sacramento splittail to the brink of extinction.

"The role of nature, the interconnectedness of all beings, these are ideas that while implicit, have never been so clear as they have been made in this encyclical," stated Brown.

The Vatican's symposium aims to drive awareness, dialogue and action at the local level on climate change and modern slavery – two interconnected issues highlighted in the pope's recent encyclical, according to an announcement from the Governor's Office.

Governor Brown will address the symposium again during tomorrow's program.

You can expect the mainstream media and some corporate "environmental" groups to gush over Brown's grandstanding at the Vatican with little critical analysis of the Governor's actual environmental record, a toxic legacy that I have documented in article after article.

Fortunately, faith leaders from Brown’s home state and environmental experts introduced a critical note to the narrative about Brown's visit to the Vatican when they commended the Pope for his leadership and urged him to take this opportunity to call on Brown and other leaders to ban fracking and take every possible measure to protect "our climate."

“We in the faith community applaud Pope Francis for highlighting the moral imperative of addressing climate change and protecting creation, and appreciate that he is bringing leaders like Jerry Brown to the Vatican to highlight the issue,” said Rev. Ambrose Carroll, a senior pastor at the Church by the Side of Road in Oakland, Calif., and a member of Faith Against Fracking. “We hope he will be able to get Governor Brown to see the indisputable incompatibility of his attempts to fight climate change while enabling the worst climate polluters to continue fracking.”

By Alex Lotorto - Energy Justice: Shale Initiative, April 3, 2015

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.

UPDATE: Dimock PA families with water contamination will finally have their day in court against Cabot Oil & Gas, but only with your help. The federal jury trial will start on November 30, 2015 in the Scranton Federal Courthouse and will be the highest-profile court case related to shale gas development in history. Donations accepted here.

From the Introduction:

Desperate to avoid climate regulation that may affect profits, polluting corporations are working hand-in-hand with governments, presenting a dizzying array of false solutions that deepen inequalities in our societies. There is a clear agenda: Manage the climate crisis without compromising profits, the power structures or the economic system that got us here, even if that means exacerbating the problem. Wall Street financiers, the synthetic biology industry, “green” venture capitalists and a host of others are jumping on the “we care about the climate, too!” bandwagon.

These actors have reduced one of the clearest consequences of an unsustainable system into a mere technical problem that can be “efficiently” dealt with through market-based solutions. This market fundamentalism diverts attention away from the root causes of the problem, encouraging us to imagine a world with price tags on rivers, forests, biodiversity and communities’ territories, all in the name of “dealing with the climate crisis.” At the heart of all false solutions is an avoidance of the big picture: the root causes.

False solutions are constructed around the invisible scaffolding that maintains the dominant economic, cultural and political systems—the idea that economic growth is both desirable and inevitable; that progress means industrial development; that Western science and technology can solve any problem; that profits will motivate and the markets will innovate. Most of us in the Global North, whether sensitized to it or not, are participants and, at times, even take comfort in this world view. Sadly, many find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of a globalized economy built upon the unsteady legs of expanding empire, ecological erosion and exploitation of workers and communities.

We can take steps, large and small, to stop the climate crisis. What we cannot afford to do is go down the wrong road. Hoodwinked in the Hothouse is an easy and essential guide to navigating the landscape of false solutions—the cul-de-sacs on the route to a just and livable climate future.

--Gopal Dayaneni, Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project

PDF File

By Dan Bacher - IndyBay, July 2, 2015

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.

The Governor Jerry Brown administration, known for its subservience to Big Oil, is gearing up for a massive expansion of fracking and other extreme oil drilling techniques that will contaminate California's groundwater supplies, pollute rivers and streams, and devastate coastal ecosystems, including so-called "marine protected areas" implemented under his helm.

On July 1, anti-fracking, environmental and watchdog groups responded to the release of final fracking regulations developed under Senate Bill 4, pointing out that the rules promote more fracking and pollution of water supplies in the drought-plagued state.

Senate Bill 4, the green light for fracking bill, was signed by Governor Jerry Brown on September 20, 2013. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the California League of Conservation Voters, the Environmental Defense Fund and other corporate "environmental" NGOs provided green cover for the odious legislation. They backed the bill until the very last minute when they finally decided to withdraw support because of amendments from the Western States Petroleum Association and other Big Oil interests that further weakened the already weak legislation.

In a statement, Food and Water Watch said, "Today the Brown Administration finalized regulations on fracking and other dangerous oil extraction techniques that will allow oil and gas companies to continue to conduct these techniques at the expense of California’s water, air, agriculture and public health."

By Judy Rebick - Rabble.Ca, June 29, 2015

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.

Jobs, Justice, Climate is the slogan of what we hope will be a massive march in Toronto on July 5 and Vancouver on July 4. To my knowledge it's the first action in Canada that has linked jobs with the battle for climate change in a context of social justice.  While turtles and teamsters have marched together in the past, it has usually been with a focus on social justice, against corporate globalization and trade deals.  This is not only the first time climate change is a focus in a march co-sponsored by the labour movement, it's the first time that the links are being made to the struggles of Indigenous peoples, immigrants, and people of colour and the first time our cross-sector movement is not just saying what we are against but what we are for. Check out the video promoting the march.

In May I attended a cross-country meeting called by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis to begin the work of building a broad movement to fight climate change by presenting a new vision where reversing climate change can be done in the context of increasing social justice and good jobs. A movement where Indigenous Peoples, the first defenders of the land, are in the lead. A movement that reaches out to immigrant communities whose countries are already drowning, baking, or collapsing in face of climate catastrophes. A movement where unions realize that climate change is as much a threat to their members as austerity and find ways to link both struggles. A movement where environmental activists understand that it is the peoples of the earth not the corporate overlords who will save the planet. 

There were divisions at that meeting and they continue.  Unions, for example, support certain pipelines that environmentalists oppose. 350.org, a key organizer of the march wants the bitumen from the Alberta Tar Sands to stay in the ground. The unions don't agree yet. There remains deep scepticism among Indigenous activists about how solid is the solidarity expressed by settlers. There is concern from activists of colour that support for their issues is only present when their support is needed. There is still the gap of knowledge and sometimes solidarity between Quebec and the rest of Canada. All of these divisions were present in the May meeting and we talked about them. 

I pointed out another powerful movement where the differences were just as great. In the anti-Viet Nam War movement some of us supported the victory of the Viet Cong. We used to chant “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Cong are gonna win;” while others were only in the demonstration because they didn't want their sons to be drafted.  In those days we didn't have facilitators to help us through negotiating those differences in a positive way.  We pretty well hated each other but we marched together because the stakes were high and we contributed to stopping that terrible war. This time the stakes are much higher.

As Naomi argues in her book, This Changes Everything, those of us who have been fighting for social justice all our lives now have an opportunity to create a new vision of a just and caring society. A society where caring for each other, the land and the creatures that share it with us is a powerful transformative idea that can appeal to a majority of people around the world. 

Join us on July 5 in Toronto at Queen's Park at 1 p.m. for the Jobs, Justice, Climate March or you can participate in actions sponsored by 350.org in various cities across the country .

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 30, 2015

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.

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

Lead Story:

• With union support, indigenous people confront fracking in Argentina - By Adolfo Aguirre, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, June 25, 2015
• Someone Has to Sort Your Recycling, and It’s a Disgusting and Dangerous Job - By Michelle Chen, The Nation, June 24, 2015
• Report: Recycling Workers Exposed to Safety Failures, Needles, High Injury Rates - Press Release, Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, June 23, 2015
• Resistance Is Needed to End Corporate Toxic Zones - Eric Loomis interviewed by Mark Karlin, Truthout, June 21, 2015

Green Bans:

• Labor, community unite in protest against Monster in the Mission - By Tim Redmond, 48 Hills, June 23, 2015
• Union workers to rally at ParkMerced - By Tim Redmond, 48 Hills, April 22, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• Fruit Company Will Pay $330,000 To Farmworkers Who Got Fired After Reporting Sexual Abuse - By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, Think Progress, June 26, 2015

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• South African commission finds police to blame in Marikana deaths - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 25, 2015
• The Face of the Coal Industry - By Nick Mullins, The Thoughtful Coal Miner, June 24, 2015
• New Top Chemical Safety Board Lawyer Suing His Own Agency; Federal Lawsuit Seeking $300,000 + May Receive Sudden Sweetheart Settlement - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, June 24, 2015
• Psychosocial and musculoskeletal risk factors the most widespread in Europe’s workplaces - Press Release, European Trade Union Institute, June 24, 2015
• Department of Energy Cites UT-Battelle, LLC, For Worker Safety And Health Program Violations - By U.S. Department of Energy, Breaking Energy, June 23, 2015
• Flight attendants sue Boeing over 'toxic fumes' on Alaska Airlines jet - By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2015; [related]: Is Aircraft Cabin Air Toxic? - By Gini Harrison, The Conversation, June 20, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Exterran closing Broussard oil, gas equipment plant, laying off 76; Broussard plant laying off 76 total employees - By Bill Lodge, The Advocate, June 28, 2015
• New PBS Documentary Exposes Human Toll Of Oil Boomtown In North Dakota - By Mike Gaworecki, DeSmog Blog, June 26, 2015
• BHP cuts another 140 jobs over abandoned Olympic Dam expansion plans - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 25, 2015
• Are Coal, Oil and Gas the Subprime Assets of the Future? - By Dan Zegart, DeSmog Blog, June 24, 2015
• EIA: Oil layoffs aren’t finished yet - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, June 23, 2015
• APM Terminals to close operations, cut more than 100 port jobs near Houston - By Jordan Blum, FuelFix, June 22, 2015
• Caterpillar lets go of 50 workers - By Michael Allan McCrae, Mining.Com, June 22, 2015

Just Transition:

• Business lobbies, unions join push for zero emissions targets - By Giles Parkinson, ReNew Economy, June 29, 2015
• Ontario Teachers' Pension Expands Ownership Of BluEarth Renewables - By Staff, North American Windpower, June 26, 2015
• Toronto march to merge economic justice and climate action - By Martin Lukacs, The Guardian, June 25, 2015
• Join the actions for Jobs, Justice and the Climate on July 4 and 5! - By Andrea Harden-Donahue, Rabble.Ca, June 24, 2015
• Investment In Renewable Energy Yields More Jobs Than Fossil Fuel Sector - By Joshua S Hill, Clean Technica, June 23, 2015

Other News:

• South Africa’s gold workers 'unimpressed' with 13% pay rise offer - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 29, 2015; [related]: South African gold sector to table wage offer next week - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, June 24, 2015
• Strike at Marathon Petroleum refinery ends - By Andrea Rumbaugh, FuelFix, June 23, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW

By Jennifer Gollan - Reveal News, June 13, 2015

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.

In the early evening of Sept. 14, 2011, Jebadiah Stanfill was working near the top of an oil rig at a bend in the Missouri River in North Dakota. Jolted by a deafening boom in the distance, he swung around from his perch and saw a pillar of black smoke twisting into the sky.

Less than a mile away, another rig had exploded. “There’s men over there!” a worker below him shouted.

Stanfill, a compact and muscular man in his 30s, descended to the ground and hopped into the bed of a red pickup driven by a co-worker. Bruce Jorgenson, a manager overseeing the work of Stanfill and his crew, jumped into the passenger seat, and they raced to the explosion.

A few minutes later, they reached the burning rig and pulled up next to Doug Hysjulien, who was wandering in a valley and clutching the front of his underwear. The rest of his clothes were gone.

“They’re over there,” Hysjulien shouted, pointing toward the fiery rig. “Go help the other boys. They’re worse.”

Stanfill sprinted until he spotted Ray Hardy, who had been hurled into a patch of gravel. His skin was charred black and peeling. His nails were bent back, exposing the stark white bones of his fingers.

“How many people were on the rig?” Stanfill asked Hardy.

“He’s over there,” Hardy responded, gazing toward a field near the rig. Stanfill scrambled over a berm and waded through knee-high wheat until he found Michael Twinn, lying on his back naked and seared. His hair was singed and his work boots had curled up in the heat. He cried out in agony.

“The derrick man’s dead! The derrick man’s dead!” Twinn screamed.

“They were beyond burned,” Stanfill recalled. “Nothing but char. The smell of flesh burning. … It smelled of crude oil.”

Brendan Wegner, 21, had been scrambling down a derrick ladder when the well exploded, consuming him in a fiery tornado of oil and petroleum vapors. Rescuers found his body pinned under a heap of twisted steel pipes melted by the inferno. His charred hands were recovered later, still gripping the derrick ladder. It was his first day on the rig.

Hardy died the next day of his burns. Twinn had his lower legs amputated. Dogged by post-traumatic stress disorder, he killed himself in October 2013. Each left behind three children. Hysjulien suffered debilitating third-degree burns over half of his body. He is the lone survivor.

To this day, the explosion – pieced together from interviews, court documents and federal and local reports – remains the worst accident in the expansive Bakken oil fields since the boom began in 2006.

Beyond the human toll from that day, which continues to haunt Stanfill and others, the 2011 explosion offers a striking illustration of how big oil companies have largely written the rules governing their own accountability for accidents.

Read the entire article here.