global warming

By Jeff Marshall - Labor Notes, December 15, 2023

Last summer I was working at the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, on a four-man electrical crew, replacing the existing lights with new LEDs. Our work area was 90 feet off the ground, maybe 20 feet below the roof decking, with no air circulation. You could feel the heat radiating from the ceiling pan.

Our crew has safety discussions every morning. Back in May we had discussed Washington’s heat laws—exposed workers are entitled to water and, if the temperature goes above 90 degrees, an additional rest break.

As the summer heated up, one of our crew members brought in a digital thermometer to check the actual temperature where we were working, not just the weather app. We paraded it by the foreman, as if to say, “We’re keeping a close eye on the situation.”

All summer we never crossed the 90-degree mark, though we came within two degrees. Still, one day a crew member reached his own limits. He notified the foreman and was allowed to come down and take a break, then redirected to a task in a milder climate.

Our time up there is very valuable—management has to coordinate with Boeing day by day for access to the “crane space” above the factory floor. Credit to our foreman: he toed the line on our behalf, prioritizing safety over production.

By staff - Fair Square, December 9, 2023

The image of climate-friendly menus being pushed at this year’s global climate conference, COP28 in Dubai, UAE, clashes with the stark reality faced by vulnerable communities in the host country, and its impact on the environment, a new report released today unveils.

The official COP28 website proclaims that, “Our focus is to deliver sustainable, affordable, delicious, and nutritious food. COP28 UAE will deliver a catering menu which is largely plant based, emphasizing local and regional produce and promoting environmentally-friendly food consumption.” The site also describes how the COP28 Presidency is “striving to show the world how climate-friendly food can be tasty, healthy and affordable.”

However the team of investigators behind the report – who are based in the Gulf and remaining anonymous to protect their safety – found that outside the venue, the reality for many workers in the UAE was in stark contrast to “environmentally-friendly food consumption”.

The 40-page report, Harvesting Disparity: Climate Change, Food and Water Security, and Migrants of the UAE, explores pronounced disparities in access to quality, nutritious food for migrant workers who grapple with working hours and wage theft that hinder their ability to secure proper meals, while also examining the broader impacts of UAE food supply chain practices on climate and vulnerable communities abroad.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Union Jake, Isabella Escalona, Amy Stager, David Story, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 7, 2023

By Union Jake, Steve Early, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, November 30, 2023

By Alan Thornett - Ecosocialist Discussion, November 29, 2023

COP28 (along with planet Earth itself) is faced with “an absolutely gobsmackingly bananas increase in the global temperature”

COP28 – the annual UN global summit on global warming – is taking place from November 30^th until December 12 – under the auspices of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that was launched in 1992 to protect the planet against “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”, which now takes place annually. It is the 28^th UN climate change summit since 1992, and will take place in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

COP28, along with other recent such summits faces a deadly, and indeed existential, contradiction between the relentless acceleration of global warming ­ i.e. of the average global surface temperature of the planet – and the inability of the COP process to bring it under control, or even hold it to a maximum increase of 1.5°C in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.

It became clear in August that 2023 would be of a different order of magnitude in terms of temperature when July turned out to be the world’s hottest month ever recorded.

The UN Secretary General António Guterres – the most radicle the UN has had on climate change – responded rightly by declaring that this meant that “the era of global warming had ended, and the era of global boiling has arrived”. It meant, he said, that: “Climate change is here, it is terrifying, and it is just the beginning. It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C (above pre-industrial levels), and avoid the very worst of climate change, he said, but only with dramatic, immediate climate action.”

The September figure, however, was a whole lot worse. It was a staggering 0.5°C above the previous such record. The Guardian’s environmental editor Damian Carrington quoted climate scientist Zeke Hausfather who had tweeted that: “This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. It beat the prior monthly temperature record by over 0.5°C, and was around 1.8°C warmer than preindustrial levels.” He noted that datasets from European and Japanese scientists confirmed the leap.

It’s worth noting that the difference in the average global temperature between now and the depths of the last ice age when these islands were under a kilometre of ice is around 5.0°C.

In mid-November Guterres went further warning that. “Present trends are racing our planet down a dead-end 3C temperature rise. This is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the vulnerable, and a massive missed opportunity. Renewables have never been cheaper or more accessible. We know it is still possible to make the 1.5 degree limit a reality. It requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.”

He added: “Leaders must drastically up their game, now, with record ambition, record action, and record emissions reductions. No more greenwashing. No more foot-dragging.”

By Kevin Krajick - Columbia Climate School, November 20, 2023

A global study of major crops has found that farmworkers are being increasingly exposed to combinations of extreme heat and humidity during planting and harvest seasons that can make it hard for them to function. Such conditions have nearly doubled across the world since 1979, the authors report, a trend that could eventually hinder cultivation. The most affected crop is rice, the world’s number one staple, followed closely by maize. As temperatures rise, the trend has accelerated in recent years, with some regions seeing 15-day per-decade increases in extreme humid heat during cultivation seasons.

The study was just published in the journal Environmental Research Communications.

“If this affects humans’ ability to grow food, that’s serious,” said lead author Connor Diaz, who did the research as a Columbia University undergraduate student with scientists at the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The global food chain is all connected, and the danger is, this will impact crop production.”

By staff - Equidem, November 20, 2023

Workers at the heart of the United Arab Emirates's renewable and gig sectors, and at the site that will host the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) have left homes in Africa and Asia because of climate change only to be subjected to physical abuse, heat stress, exploitation and discrimination, a new report from Equidem reveals. Serious labour violations have taken place at the site of COP28, Expo City, as well as at five renewable energy firms, including Siemens Energy. 

Based on correspondence with 248 workers, and interviews with 102, the expansive report offers unprecedented insight into the renewables, construction, security, and delivery sectors in the UAE, shedding light on both industrial and service sector working conditions for 9 million migrant workers. 

The shining facilities at Expo City Dubai boast internationally lauded solar and wind parks and a booming local gig economy. Underneath that cheerful exterior, however, women and men from some of the poorest countries on earth are falling victim to an unjust transition: Migrant workers from Africa and Asia are being subjected to serious human rights abuses in a nation whose oil and gas-powered economy is at the heart of the planet’s climate crisis. 

“Hosting this peak global conference in a climate and rights abusing state was bad enough. Equidem’s research starkly reveals that the UAE is failing on almost every metric of the UN’s own human rights benchmarks for addressing climate change through the COP process,” said Mustafa Qadri, CEO of Equidem. 

Abuses include workplace violence, wage theft, working in extreme heat and other occupational health and safety risks, nationality-based discrimination, exploitative hiring practices, understaffing and overwork, lack of opportunities for promotion, overcrowded accommodations, inadequate food allowances, and inadequate channels for workers to seek relief from these violations. 

Investigations by Equidem were carried out between February and October 2023 at Expo City Dubai and in the renewables and delivery sectors, including at Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, Al Dhafra Solar Power Project, Noor Abu Dhabi Solar Plant, Sir Bani Yas Wind Farm Project; and in the delivery sector in the UAE. 

• Together, 57% of the migrant workers interviewed come from climate impacted areas of Asia and Africa.
• 41 % of the workers reported nationality-based discrimination.
• 77.% of the workers in renewable sector reported living in overcrowded accommodations, with up to 20 people in a room fit for six or fewer workers.
• 83% of the African and Asian workers interviewed reported being unable to afford nutritious and healthy food.
• 40% of the workers said they were skipping meals.

Equidem’s research found that African and Asian workers have migrated for employment based upon climate impacts in their own country, and then find employment in the industrial and service sectors in the UAE. These migrant workers are doubly impacted by the global climate crisis—they migrate in response to climate impacts and find employment in exploitative industrial and service contexts where they work long hours in extreme heat. These rights violations take place against a backdrop of racially delineated exclusion from labour rights protections, denial of freedom of association, and authoritarian suppression of dissent in the UAE. 

Download a copy of this publication here (Link).

By Tina Vásquez - Prism, November 15, 2023

At a small press conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Nov. 3, farmworkers, activists, and advocates gathered to honor the dead. 

Steps away from the state’s Department of Agriculture, farmworker advocates transformed Bicentennial Plaza into a public ofrenda for Día de los Muertos that included images of farmworkers who recently died in the line of work—including José Arturo González Mendoza. The 30-year-old and most of the other men honored were young, fit, and in the prime of their lives—factors that make little difference when the body is exposed to extreme temperatures for long periods while deprived of water, shade, and rest. 

A tobacco worker who spoke at the event said he was there to support his colleagues who died. 

“We cannot lose any more lives,” he said. It was both a plea for help and a demand.

At one point during the press conference, an organizer yelled, “Ni una vida más,” or not one more life. The crowd followed suit, their chants bouncing off the walls of the North Carolina State Capitol and legislative buildings. 

But would the state agencies and elected officials in North Carolina’s center of power heed their call? 

By Adam Mahoney - Capital B News, November 2, 2023

It was just his second day on the job at the Modesto Junk Company in California’s Central Valley — but it was the region’s 34th consecutive day of 90-plus-degree weather.

Feeling dizzy, he asked for a break around 2 p.m. The 40-year-old never received one. Later, a co-worker found him unconscious and sprawled across the concrete. 

The nameless man in the U.S. Department of Labor’s July 2021 accident report database is one of more than 275 linked to heat-related cardiovascular deaths, like heart attacks and strokes, between May 2018 and December 2022. A 2014 report found that nearly half of these deaths happen on a worker’s first day on the job. 

Extreme heat takes a heavy toll on the heart, and Black people are particularly vulnerable.

A new report released this week reveals how much more deadly the effects of climate change may become in the United States. By 2053, 13 times as many Americans will be regularly exposed to extreme heat compared to 2022 rates. So the prevalence of these deadly events is only going to get worse, according to the new study.

Published in the American Heart Association’s scientific journal, the study found that even if the U.S. successfully implements all of its plans to curb climate change and rising temperatures, annual heat-related cardiovascular deaths in the U.S. will more than double between 2036 and 2065 compared to the last decade.

If we fail to implement all of our plans to lower greenhouse gasses, which are attributed to rising global temperatures, these deaths will triple. 

In either scenario, the increase will be most acute among Black adults over 20 and for all adults over 65. 

By Kristoffer Tigue - Inside Climate News , October 31, 2023

American farmworkers are increasingly at risk of heat-related illness and death as climate change drives temperatures around the world to record highs. That’s pushing more and more workers to harvest crops at night to avoid extreme heat, according to recent reports, which is creating a host of new risks that experts say need to be more thoroughly studied.

More than 2 million U.S. farmworkers, who typically toil outdoors under a hot summer sun, are exceptionally at risk of succumbing to heat-related illness, the Environmental Defense Fund warned in a July report, with heat-related mortalities 20 times higher for crop workers than in other private industries, as well as employees in local and state government. About three weeks of the summer harvest season are now expected to be too hot to safely work outdoors, the report’s authors added, and that number will only increase as global warming continues.

Government data and other studies have found that an average of 43 farmworkers die every year from heat-related illness. But top officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees U.S. working conditions, say that number is significantly undercounted, largely because heat doesn’t get factored into deaths from cardiac arrests and respiratory failures. One advocacy group estimated that heat exposure could be responsible for as many as 2,000 worker fatalities in the U.S. each year.

In fact, this summer was the hottest on record for the entire northern hemisphere, federal scientists announced in September, in large part because of climate change. Parts of the Midwest and large regions of Europe are also experiencing record hot Octobers.

As the daytime heat has gone up, a growing number of agriculture workers—many of whom are Latino and undocumented—now work while it’s still dark out. But that could be trading one risk for a set of others, labor and safety advocates are warning.