Breaking Free

By Kara Moses - Red Pepper, June 14, 2016

Something truly incredible is happening. We're only half way through it, but 2016 is a record-breaking year. The second week of May was extraordinarily spectacular, with records being smashed left right and centre. As tens of thousands of people took direct action in the biggest ever global wave of civil disobedience targeting the world's largest fossil fuel infrastructure projects, energy produced from renewables soared to new heights while coal collapsed to an all-time low, multiple global temperatures records were smashed by the biggest margins ever and Arctic sea ice fell to its lowest ever extent for May.

The 'Break Free' fortnight of action kicked off with Reclaim the Power shutting down the UK's largest opencast coal mine, and went on to see 4,000 people shut down one of Germany’s largest coal mines and power plants for three days; 2,000 people brought the world's largest coal port in Australia to a standstill, and major refineries, rail infrastructure, pipelines, power stations and banks were shut down and disrupted. People took bold action in countries with repressive regimes; Turkey, Nigeria, Brazil, South Africa. The Philippines and Indonesia saw some of the biggest mobilisations, with 10,000 people marching to oppose a new coal-fired power plant in Batangas.

Historic turning point

As thousands stepped up to demand an end to fossil fuels and a switch to renewables, across multiple countries their demands were lived out in reality. In remarkable synchronicity, and what some experts have described as a 'historic turning point', coal generation fell to zero in the UK for the first time in over 100 years. This happened four times in a week (the same week as Break Free) having previously never happened since the first coal-fired generator opened in London in 1882. (This follows a record-breaking day one month earlier when, for the first time, solar produced more power than coal for a full 24 hours). In the same week, Germany's renewables supply met the country's demand (on the third day of occupation of the coal mine and power station), while Portugal ran on renewables for more than four days straight.

Stark reminder

It wasn't all good news though. As a stark reminder of why this sea change is so urgently needed, that same week NASA declared that 2016 was set to be the hottest year ever, probably by the largest margin ever, as April was confirmed to be the hottest April on record - the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records, and smashing the previous record for April by the largest margin yet. This was the third month in a row that the monthly record had been broken by the largest margin ever. When the string of record-smashing months started in February, scientists started talking about a 'climate emergency'.

This came just days after news of the world reaching a 'point of no return' with global concentrations of carbon dioxide reaching the 400 parts per million (ppm) milestone at two important measuring stations, one of which (Cape Grim, Australia) sits in a region of stable CO2 concentrations – climate scientists believe it will never again fall below that point. There is no going back now, a grim forecast indeed.

The record temperatures of recent months are wreaking havoc with ecosystems across the world; a more literal sea change triggered the third recorded global coral bleaching, affecting 93% of the Global Barrier Reefs. In the northern parts of the reef, it’s expected the majority of coral is dead. Meanwhile Arctic sea ice falls to its lowest ever extent for the month of May, prompting fears that this year could set the record of worst ever summer sea ice melt.

Remarkably also during the Break Free fortnight, Shell spilled nearly 90,000 gallons in the Gulf of Mexico - the largest amount of oil since BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster - just shy of qualifying as a 'major' spill under the Coast Guard’s classification system.

All this happened in the space of one fortnight. The fortnight the climate justice movement has been talking about for nearly a year, just the beginning of the promised 'escalation' after the Paris agreement which was predictably inadequate to address the scale of the problem. World governments may have agreed to limit warming to 1.5C but with no legal obligations and no commitments to end fossil fuels, it’s up to us to keep it in the ground. And around the world, people are doing just that and taking matters into their own hands.

On Sunday, May 15th in Whiting, Indiana, former RWU Co-Chair Mark Burrows was invited to speak to a group of community members and environmental activists about rail safety. Mark touched on the Lac Megantic tragedy and frame-up of railroad workers in Canada, crew fatigue and single employee train crews.

By Desiree Hellegers - Counterpunch, May 23, 2016

On Sunday, May 15, more than a hundred climate change kayaktivists took to the waters of Padilla Bay in Anacortes, Washington, risking arrest to land on the banks of the Tesoro oil refinery. In the shadow of the refinery smoke stacks, they unfurled banners calling attention to the potentially lethal risks that fossil fuel workers confront each day on the job. “Seven Dead, No More Casualties, Tesoro Explosion April 2, 2010” read one banner focused on Tesoro’s checkered workplace safety record. “Solidarity is Strength, We are all workers,” read another banner. Yet another called for a “Just Transition,” as kayaktivists knelt on the ground, paddles in hand, in what organizers described as a demonstration of respect for the workers killed at the refinery, and for those still working in the refinery. The messaging on the banks of the refinery signaled the central challenge that climate change activists confront in trying to find common ground—if not common cause–with refinery workers.

The Anacortes actions were part of a global two-week wave of activism spanning six continents under the shared rallying cry to “Break Free” from fossil fuels. As actions unfolded in the U.S. from Albany, NY and Washington, D.C. to Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles, more than a thousand activists converged on Anacortes, just south of the Canadian border. The aim of activists was to confront, by land and sea, the role of big oil in rising global temperatures and sea levels–and to disrupt the flow of oil to the Shell and Tesoro refineries.

In the face of activists’ resolve to blockade the oil shipments to the port, both Shell and Tesoro suspended tanker and rail transport for the duration of the three-day action. Nonetheless, an estimated 150 activists camped out on the rails for two nights before the police moved in in the early hours of Sunday, May 15, arresting 52 activists and charging them with criminal trespassing.

In a phone interview, Eric Ross, organizing director of the Backbone Campaign out of Vashon, Island, WA, which handled much of the logistical planning and coordination for the water-based Break Free events in Anacortes, indicated that the workers at Tesoro, who daily face toxic exposure on the job, are among the many “casualties of extractive industries” and the byproduct of the “reckless endangerment” that defines the behavior of multinational corporations, whose main focus is on “extracting money.” “They’ve chosen to make their billions by extracting resources from communities that don’t consent to that reckless endangerment of our children, our communities and our climate,” Ross observed. Ross heralded the three-day cessation of oil transportation as a victory for Break Free: “I think it’s a really impressive show of the power of our movements and just how afraid these extractive industries are of organized people.”

Zarna Joshi, an activist with the grassroots group Women of Color Speak Out, was one of several speakers who addressed kayaktivists on the banks of Fidalgo Bay before they struck out for the banks of the Tesoro refinery. In a phone interview, Joshi described the Break Free action as the culmination of “a real building of momentum” over the past two years. She indicated that in the Pacific Northwest, climate activists have been “building relationships with people in labor, building relationship with people in the First Nations—particularly Salish Sea First Nations—building community and building trust.”

In fact, an entire day of the three-day event was devoted to a Native-led march and ceremonies at March Point in the shadow of the Shell refinery. While the 1855 Point Elliott Treaty included March Point within the boundaries of the Swinomish Reservation, an executive order by President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s redrew the boundaries of the reservation to exclude March Point, ultimately opening it up for development by Shell and Tesoro. Last year, Shell was “fined $77,000 by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries for an uncontrolled release of toxins that sickened residents and sent at least two people to the hospital.”

Skagit County, Joshi observed, “has one of the highest levels of cancer in the entire state, and those levels of cancer are linked to the pollution coming from the refineries.” Activists, Joshi said, “were standing in solidarity with workers, and not just with workers at these refineries, but with workers around the whole region whose jobs are being threatened by the fossil fuel empire, by climate change, by health crises.”

Among the participants in the Anacortes actions was Laurie King, former long term organizer with Portland Jobs with Justice, now retired, who planned to attend one of a number of workshops focused on effecting a “just transition” for workers currently employed in the fossil fuel industry. “I’m a union activist, so I’ve been asking a lot of questions about what do the workers think and what kind of jobs do people think of fighting for for the workers. I think that this whole movement has to be a two-pronged movement and that the same energy that goes into the desire to save the planet for everyone also has to be into a just transition with the same fervor, the same degree of planning and we have to figure out really concrete ways to have a just transition.” Over her decades of union organizing, King observed, “I’ve talked to many, many workers, and if they had a choice, of course they’d rather be doing things that are not hurting themselves or the planet. The thing is that it isn’t easy to find another well paying job, and we environmentalists have to deal with that in the most deep way and not just slough it off.” King went on to observe, “I think we have to be just as fervent about fighting for jobs for the workers who are in the fossil fuel industries at the same time that we’re fighting against fossil fuel structures.”

By John Paul Wright - RailroadMusic.Org, May 17, 2016

There is a suggestion called a Just Transition that is floating around parts of the labor and environmental communities. To fully understand this term, we as workers, community members, union members and activists would need to explore,

1. What we used to have.
2. When and how we transitioned historically.
3. Where we want to go.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson, shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, commissioned a U.S Army expedition called the Corps of Discovery. The task was to map and claim the west before Britain and other European powers tried to claim it. Part of the mission was to find a water transportation route to the Pacific Ocean. In 1805, the Lewis and Clark expedition set sight on the Pacific Ocean. After finding no direct water route, they returned to St Louis in 1806. it took industry and the U.S Government sixty-four years after Lewis and Clark returned, to connect the nation by rail, from sea to shining sea.

In 1869, Leland Stanford, railroad baron and co-founder of Stanford University, drove the “golden spike” that connected the rails of the first transcontinental railroad. The railroad spike sits in the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Before the spike was driven into the ceremonial railroad cross tie at Promontory Point, Utah, the United States had not yet been connected, ocean to ocean with a transportation policy.

As the railroad companies grew and people moved at speeds never before traveled across land, small communities were rapidly becoming connected to larger markets. Farming communities had access to rail transportation and industries popped up in the railroad towns. In 1913, Ford starts mass production on his first assembly line. On June 29^th, 1956, the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act was enacted. It took industry 43 years to get a policy in place, that would give the automobile industry the green light to further transition this country from rail transportation of people, to personally owned vehicles.

The trucking industry was born, the railroad transitioned from steam to diesel fueled locomotives. The movement of industrial commodities replaced the passengers that were owning personal transportation. The nation’s population rapidly grew with the workers needed to build these new innovations and dreams. New industries were created with investment and taxation. The nation was more, so called secure, or was in a better position militarily, hence the name of the government policy that created the nation’s highway system.

Of course, this is a broad over simplification of many ideas, policies, historical facts and timelines. There were many other policies that were discussed and pitched. There were many laws, taxes and industrial failures and successes, as well as, iconic brands, dreams and ways of life that were transitioned or simply disappeared as one industry won favor over another.