transportation infrastructure

By Nicole Fabricant and Steve Zeltser - Labor Video Project, March 30, 2024

By Steve Zeltser, et. al. - Labor Video Project, March 28, 2024

By Chris Albright, et. al - Labor Video Project, March 26, 2024

By Steve Mellon - Pittsburg Union Progress, March 24, 2024

Laurie Harmon stepped from the crowd gathered in a community hall at the East Palestine Country Club around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon and told her story to a hushed crowd of about 80 people. Many had traveled from as far as California and Texas to hear stories like hers, and to offer their support.

Laurie, 48, a retired registered nurse, lives three blocks from the site of the Feb. 3, 2023, toxic train derailment that many residents believe poisoned the town.

“On the 12th, I started getting rashes,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “On May 1st, about the time they started digging up a pit and cleaning up, I started getting second-, third- and fourth-degree chemical burns. I had burns over 80% of my body. They burrow deep down in. It’s horrible. I was going to doctors, trying to get it figured out. Nobody knows; no one can tell me. I was diagnosed with systemic contact dermatitis due to chemical exposure. I have now lesions on my spine, cysts on my kidneys; I have kidney stones. On March 4, I had a heart attack. …”

She’s scheduled for heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic. She’s seeing seven doctors. Her medical bills total $500,000. She’s on Medicare and says she’ll have to pay 20% of that. To avoid the rashes, she quit going outside in September.

“I’m losing everything. I’m losing my home; I lost my relationship; I’m a foster parent. I lost my kids. This is more than one person can take. I just don’t even know what to say. I want to thank you guys for coming here. I wasn’t even going to come, because sometimes I feel I’m defeated, but I can’t feel that way, because if I don’t talk no one’s going to know. No one is going to know.”

Laurie’s story, and the stories of other East Palestine residents in attendance, moved the crowd, which included organizers and members from a number of unions, as well as several environmental activists, academics and some people who simply wanted to offer help to a community in crisis. Hours later, after a number of panel discussions and the performance of a song written about the East Palestine disaster by musician Mike Stout, they voted to take action.

By Union Jake - Valley Labor Report, March 20, 2024

By Simon Pirani - The Ecologist, March 19, 2024

Fares for public transport around London should be abolished, says a new campaign briefing from Fare Free London.

Free public transport “opens the city to all” and should be “provided as a public service, just like health, education and public parks,” a new campaign briefing from Fare Free London argues.

And abolishing fares for public transport in London is “one of the drastic, demonstrative actions needed to tackle climate change globally and air pollution locally”. 

READ THE FAIR FREE LONDON BRIEFING NOW

Fare Free London, set up at a meeting of community, trade union and environmentalist activists this year, is calling on the city’s mayor to adopt the policy, and commission research on how to implement.

It urges national government to support the fare-free approach around the country, and change local government finance rules so that it can be paid for. 

By Jonathan Essex - Greener Jobs Alliance, March 19, 2024

This is the second part of Jonathan’s discussion of a new approach to a Green Transition, as presented at the GJA AGM on 13 February.

We need a green transition, that is labour- not material- or technology-intensive, increasing how the economy flows locally rather than how big it is nationally or globally. The new jobs will not be in production in the UK but reproduction. It would depend upon new skills and jobs that reimagine, repurpose and reuse what already exists, and thus on activities that retain embodied carbon. Instead of using ever more energy to make more stuff that economy of scale and comparative advantage turn into fossil fuel powered global supply chains: a revolution of upskilling is needed to reconnect communities. Instead of Do-it-yourself, think: Re-inspire Your Community.

The shift to this new economy could be energised through local green jobs plans that ratchet down our level of resource supply and demand, making better use of what the economy already has, including repurposing resources like steel regionally and locally, reinsulating homes, renewables and less overall energy use. This would be a clear alternative to continuing to exploit more North Sea oil and gas, and also to end the massive predicted increase in the use of lithium and rare earth metals to power the transition to electric vehicles – reducing the scale of consumption of these, and our propensity to travel and consume ever more. 

Such green jobs plans need to be set in an economics of redistribution that turns politics into something we all participate in, something that provides the glue and grease that links the climate science and emergency declarations and policies into real plans, everywhere that can deliver sufficient collective transformation. That would be a great upskilling in contrast to the present absence of any government requirement on business to provide pathways to new skills and jobs beyond that company. That requires a government to go beyond doing litmus tests and tinkering in the market and instead to drive forward with a clear public-led plan. 

So how might this start in the absence of such a plan? I am involved in a local community enterprise – I am part of Energy Action Redhill and Reigate. Our leaky home surveys use infrared cameras to show residents where heat leaks, and we distribute free and half price insulation to households in need. But not just that! We are NVQ-ing up to levels 3 and 4 a group of energy champions. Initiatives like this are already getting skills in place, in readiness for government to finally mainstream investment in retrofitting the UK’s poorly insulated and leaky housing stock. 

Consider how this might look if the economy behaved like the national electricity grid. If we opt for a scaling up of renewables alongside the rethinking of demand explored above, the national grid will not need to expand exponentially to cope with the electrification of heating, transport and all else. Instead, more energy will be generated and consumed locally, and the grid will have a greater role in rebalancing and redistributing power, alongside new storage and demand management. Similarly, instead of continuing to increase the scale of energy generation and consumption, and the ‘economy’ distributing product from where it is centrally produced to consumers, it might serve to redistribute between far more self-reliant local economies, that retain more of their own work, and have a greater sense of place as the local vernacular of architecture, the seasonal variations of diet, and sports and pastimes more dependent on where you live.

By Steve Mellon - Pittsburg Union Progress, March 19, 2024

Here’s the story of two men. One is a Trump-supporting blue-collar conservative from a small town in rural Ohio; the other is the son of a Mexican immigrant and describes himself as a socialist and a “lefty nut job.” They’ll be getting together later this week, and of course they’ll soon come to blows, right? Or at least hurl insults at each other?

That’s the narrative we’ve all come to expect. You see it on cable news shows, on social media. Division is hot these days.

But in the real world, the one in which trains fly off their tracks and spill toxic loads in America’s backyards, Chris Albright and Maximilian Alvarez recognize they have more in common than that which separates them.

That bond will be on display Saturday, during an event in East Palestine, Ohio, involving local residents, unionists, community activists and environmentalists from around the country. They’re getting together to demand the federal government step in and make certain those affected by the derailment are provided with health care.

The get-together will feature music and a lineup of speakers that includes residents of East Palestine and other communities affected by toxic contamination as well as union organizers and journalists. Initiated by the newly formed coalition Justice for East Palestine Residents and Workers, the event runs from noon to 5 p.m. at East Palestine Country Club, 50834 Carmel Anchor Road, Negley, OH 44441 (moved from the First Church of Christ).

By Jonathan Essex - Greener Jobs Alliance, March 19, 2024

The Greener Jobs Alliance was very pleased to invite Jonathan Essex to speak at our AGM on 13 February. Here Jonathan expands on the ideas in that presentation in a two-part blog posting, focusing, in this first part, on the urgent need for a different approach to transition in several specific sectors.

Green jobs plans are an important part of the transition to a zero-carbon economy. But they need wider political commitments to make this happen. This piece explores the need for a stronger position by the UK government on phasing out fossil fuels, for a transition for heavy industry such as steel, for reducing overall demand for energy and materials, and for this to be set within an economics of redistribution. 

No more oil, coal and gas

First, we need to stop extracting ever more coal, oil and gas. We can’t afford to extract and burn current reserves, let alone new reserves. That Rosebank, the large new oilfield in the North Sea, should not be exploited, is a litmus test of political commitment to sufficient climate action. It has long been known that we must leave at least 80% of coal, oil and gas as unburnable to stay within 2°C of global warming. In 2021, the International Energy Agency said that no more oil, gas or coal reserves should be developed to stay within the limit of 1.5°C. In 2023 researchers have estimated that 60% of existing oil, gas and coal fields and mines already open or under construction need to be shut down. 

The implication for the UK is clear. No more offshore or onshore fossil fuel extraction should start, and existing North Sea oil and gas fields should be phased out. 

But to constrain fossil fuel burning within global limits we need more global restraint of supply and demand than has been envisaged, let alone agreed, at global climate conferences.

Firstly, a non-fossil fuel proliferation treaty is needed to keep large amounts of existing reserves, including that already being exploited, in the ground in a fair manner. This needs a global transition fund and clear agreed plans for its implementation. 

The UK and other historic emitters should lead by example. For the UK this means not just no to Rosebank but no new coal mine in Cumbria, no fracking or other onshore extraction. 

But that is only half of the story. Research by Fergus Green on climate policy highlights that to be effective, policies to limit fossil fuel extraction and constrain demand for oil, coal and gas need to work together. They use the analogy of a pair of scissors. Unless pressure is put on both sides, to reduce supply and demand together, then policies to cut carbon will not work. 

So, alongside limiting extraction, real efforts to curtail demand are needed. Such demand reduction must start with key sectors of the economy that have to date largely defied efforts to decarbonise. Three are explored here: transport (particularly aviation, shipping and road freight), heavy industry and the overall demand for high carbon ways of living. To explore this the fastest growing form of transport emissions – aviation – and perhaps the cornerstone of heavy industry – the steel industry – are considered, before exploring how society as a whole might make sufficient changes.