climate change

By Enrico Somaglia - Green European Journal, February 13, 2024

With farmers taking to the streets and making headlines all over Europe, national governments and EU institutions are rushing to make concessions to appease them. But are the solutions offered what farmers and agricultural workers really need? We asked Enrico Somaglia, deputy general secretary of the European Federation of Food, Agriculture, and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT).

Green European Journal: Is there a common thread among the farmers’ protests happening across Europe?

Enrico Somaglia: The protests are linked to different national circumstances, such as overregulation, subsidy cuts, or imports of Ukrainian grain to the EU. But there is definitely a frustration towards a common enemy, the European Union, the Green Deal and its Farm To Fork strategy. Of course, not every farmer sees them as enemies: the agriculture sector is very heterogeneous. Small and big farmers are organised in different ways, they have different representatives. A minority within the sector opposes any kind of green policies because it is resistant to change. As trade unions, we firmly reject this stance.

On the other hand, a significant part of the farmers are against the Green Deal because they perceive it as something that has been unilaterally imposed on them. Fortunately, there is still room to improve green policies to make sure they are more socially acceptable. Trade unions see this as the way forward to build a different agriculture sector which is not only more sustainable from an environmental point of view, but is also a better place to work. To achieve that, we need measures for a truly just transition. We should not forget that if the condition of farmers is challenging, that of agricultural workers is simply unbearable. A vast proportion of seasonal workers, migrant workers, and daily labourers still face unrecorded working hours, appalling housing situations, and exploitative working relationships. The green transition can be an opportunity to create better jobs, but it needs to be stronger on the social side.

By Clare Carlile, Adam Barnett and Phoebe Cooke - DeSmog, February 8, 2024

Producers say ‘No Farmers, No Food’ is a populist initiative that serves to “whip up indignation and anger”.

Producers say ‘No Farmers, No Food’ is a populist initiative that serves to “whip up indignation and anger”.

A network of climate science deniers has been accused of “hijacking” rural concerns over a new social media campaign “to save the farming industry”. 

‘No Farmers, No Food’ has gained over 50,000 followers on X in the fortnight since its launch, which was framed as a response to the widespread farmers’ protests sweeping across Europe.

The campaign, which started in the UK, has rapidly won support from a number of international pundits, from Canadian climate science denier Jordan Peterson, to Fox News contributor and host Tomi Lahren, who has called climate change a “hoax”. Populist politicians in the UK and elsewhere have also declared their support. 

Conspiracy theorists have jumped to support the social media account, which has boosted false claims about people being forced by the World Economic Forum to “eat bugs”.

The campaign has expressed scepticism around climate targets, claiming that “Farming is being sacrificed on the altar of net zero.”

Sporting a distinctive black and yellow tractor logo, the campaign’s hashtag trended on X a week after its launch on 23 January. Its founder James Melville told DeSmog that the campaign, which claims to represent the voices of farmers, plans to target national and local legislation on issues like pricing and food security as well as “aspects of net zero”.

James Melville is a PR consultant who has appeared as an anti-lockdown campaigner on right-wing broadcaster TalkTV and a farming commentator on GB News. A former journalist who grew up on a livestock and arable farm, he said he started the campaign to put “pressure on governments to help farmers … and shape the messages that will build public support”. 

“I think it’s time for a national debate on climate and net zero,” Melville told DeSmog. The campaign is due to launch a new mission statement in the coming days.

Scientific consensus on human-caused climate change is equivalent to that on evolution. 

The UK’s legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 is part of an international effort to limit global warming to 1.5 C. Food production accounts for around a quarter of global emissions. 

But while Melville’s campaign claims to speak for farmers, arable and livestock farmer Joe Stanley says the initiative does not represent his industry.

“There is massive discontent in the farming community,” he said. “But this does not seem to be a farmer-generated movement.”

“Populism whips up indignation and anger,” Stanley added. “That is what ‘No Farmers, No Food’ is doing, clearly with the hope of creating a wider movement as we’ve seen in Ireland and Holland.”

Journalist Peter Geoghegan, author of ‘Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics’, said that ‘No Farmers, No Food’ had “all the hallmarks of a classic astroturf campaign” – a supposedly ‘grassroots’ campaign that provides a front for political or commercial interests. 

“As we can see here you don’t need any grassroots support to be able to push an agenda straight into the media and the political system,” he said.

James Melville denied that the campaign was a front for political interests, adding that ‘No Farmers, No Food’ was “non-partisan”. “I welcome all sides of the debate,” he said.

Images and Words by Rachel Sherrington - DeSmog, February 7, 2024

Across France, Italy and Belgium last week thousands of farmers descended on capital cities to express their deep discontent with the European food system.

The scenes were dramatic. Parked tractors brought traffic to a standstill in Paris, and on Thursday burning piles of hay and debris sent up huge, dark plumes of smoke in Brussels. The protests show no sign of slowing down and are expected this week across Italy, Slovenia and Spain.

Farmers’ demonstrations have been portrayed as a revolt against net zero, by the media and far-right groups.

This is the message received by governments – and they are acting on it. So far, the farmers have won key concessions, with the EU decision on Tuesday to drop its plans to cut pesticide use, hot on the heels of the same move by France on Friday, despite numbers of birds and pollinators plummeting in Europe.

Yet the reality on the ground in Brussels last week was more mixed. While Europe’s largest farming union, Copa-Cogeca, paints environmental measures as an enemy to farmers’ prosperity, an analysis by Carbon Brief has found that a fifth of farmer concerns were not on green issues, relating instead to high production costs, food pricing and trade-related concerns.

Other groups of farmers came out onto the streets of Brussels with a different message. They say the EU should see the protests as a sign to do more, not less, to protect the environment.

“We are very clear that as farmers we want to take action to struggle against the climate crisis,” said Morgan Ody, a farmer from Brittany who belongs to the European chapter of La Via Campesina (ECVC).

Ody travelled to Belgium with over a thousand farmers connected to Via Campesina – and other allied national smallholder farmer groups from Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Germany – to protest last Thursday.

Via Campesina and its smallholder allies also insist that ambitious action to address climate breakdown and biodiversity loss must go hand in hand with tackling other farmer concerns – such as low pay. Difficult working conditions, they say, are also at the root of the frustrations of many who showed up to demonstrate.

By Young Worker Project - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 7, 2024

By staff - People and Nature, February 6, 2024

On 9 July 2021, Melrose Industries announced the closure of its GKN Driveline (formerly FIAT) factory at Campi di Bisenzio, near Florence in Italy, which produced axles for cars. More than 400 workers were laid off. While in many such cases the workers and unions settle for negotiating enhanced redundancy benefits, the GKN Factory Collective took over the plant and kickstarted a long struggle against its closure.

But what makes the ex-GKN Florence dispute really unique is the strategy adopted by the workers, who sealed an alliance with the climate justice movement by drafting a conversion plan for sustainable, public transport and demanding its adoption.

This strategy engendered a cycle of broad mobilisations – repeatedly bringing tens of thousands to the streets – so that the dispute still continues, and the permanent sit-in at the factory remains until today.

The workers were meant to be finally dismissed on 1 January 2024. The GKN Factory Collective had thus turned New Year’s Eve into a final call to action to defend their conversion plan. Such pressure from below probably played a role in a decision by the labour court, announced on 27 December 2023, to overturn the layoffs for the second time.

The workers’ current plan is to set up a cooperative for the production of cargo bikes and solar panels, as part of a broader vision for a worker-led ecological transition. This needs material solidarity, now. A popular shareholding campaign has been started, to launch this co-operative: so far more than 600,000 euros have been collected, towards a target of one million euros.

All information on how to contribute, individually or as an organisation, can be found at the website Insorgiamo.org.

This interview with some GKN workers, by Luca Manes, was published in December on Comune-Info in Italy, and was translated into English by Lorenzo Feltrin.

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 2, 2024

Green New Deal initiatives at local, state, regional, and civil society levels around the country have drawn together diverse, sometimes isolated, or even conflicted constituencies around common programs for climate, jobs, and justice. How have they done so?

Transcript Follows:

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

A just-published article by Todd E. Vachon, “Climate Justice for All: Pursuing a Just Transition in the Education Sector”—published in the American Federation of Teachers journal The American Educator—lays out in detail “what educators can do—and many already are doing—through their unions to promote climate justice and equity in their schools and communities.”

Vachon is an assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, the director of the Labor Education Action Research Network, and the author of Clean Air and Good Jobs: U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice. He is also a co-author of the Labor Network for Sustainability report “Workers and Communities in Transition”.

Vachon argues that “the world is in the midst of two simultaneous and interconnected crises: a crisis of ecology and a crisis of inequality.” But “the good news is that there is an important role that students, educators, our local unions, and community allies can play in addressing the dual crises of climate change and inequality.” Confronting the climate crisis offers “a potential pathway for making some of the important changes in our economy that are needed to recenter the lives and well-being of people.” Such a “just transition” offers “a vision of economic democracy, including public investments to account for the full social costs and benefits of environmental and economic policies to create the most just—not necessarily the most profitable—outcome for all.”

Educators can start by promoting “green and healthy schools” that involve “installing renewable energy generation and storage systems, renovating existing school buildings to improve efficiencies, constructing new green buildings, securing strong labor standards, ensuring an open and democratic process for all stakeholders, and requiring local and preferential hiring to ensure that local communities and displaced workers benefit from the jobs that are created in the process.”

Forging a just transition in education with healthy green schools and social and economic justice requires “grassroots organizing and power building,” such as “forming local union climate justice committees, building strong partnerships with students and community groups, bargaining for the common good, and holding decision makers accountable.” The cross-union Educators Climate Action Network, convened by the Labor Network for Sustainability, brings together over 100 union educators from across the country to tackle climate change and promote climate justice in education.

Vachon ends with a challenge and an invitation: “Perhaps your local union will be the next to take bold climate action and become a part of the solution by helping to forge your own local Green New Deal and joining the national effort.”

Link to the article: https://www.aft.org/ae/winter2023-2024/vachon

Link to ECAN: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/ecan/

Link to LNS Just Transition Listening Project report: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/jtlp-2021/

By Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr, Carlos Davidson, Luis Angel Martinez, Fatima Iqbal-Zubair, Ra’mauri Cash, and Bill McKibben - Fossil Free California, February 28, 2024

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

It’s not every day that workers get to tell representatives of Congress how federal programs affect their work lives. But that’s just what happened when union members working on clean energy projects in Illinois, Maine, and New York spoke about the impact of federal climate investments in their communities to the Clean Energy Workers Roundtable hosted by the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC).

Kilton Webb, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 567 told the Roundtable how his union is training clean energy workers in Maine:

I’m in my final year as an apprentice, and after five years, I have put in 8,000 work hours on commercial, industrial, and solar fields. The work is hard, but rewarding because I am part of this new clean energy industry that is doing great things for the state of Maine. It’s also exciting because of the potential of having more union jobs ready for the next generation of workers. Students who were in middle and high school when I started my journey of becoming an electrician are now apprentices that I work with and teach every day.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

The just-released anthology Power Lines: Building a Labor-Climate Justice Movement features an article by Maria Brescia-Weiler, LNS project manager for young worker organizing and Liz Ratzloff, LNS co-executive director, titled “Young Workers Can Bridge the Labor and Climate Movements.” They write:

Young workers have already demonstrated leadership on social and economic justice issues. From school climate strikes to nationwide protests against police brutality to recent union drives among the young workforces of Starbucks and Amazon, these workers are actively engaged in political work. But labor has been slow to capture the energy young workers can bring to the movement. […] If the labor movement doesn’t begin to invest in young workers, there is little chance that we will build the power needed to secure an ecologically sustainable and economically just future. Understanding the perspective of young workers is a crucial first step in bringing these workers into the labor movement.

Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, says of Power Lines:

The climate movement needs the labor movement to win a just transition. Power Lines is an essential how-to manual for organizers looking for the most creative, visionary, and practical strategies to bridge our movements.

And Frances Fox Piven, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, says:

This is a book that could brighten your life and stiffen your spine. These experienced and wise organizers search the world we share for the stories of movement uprisings that could spark something big enough to save us yet.

Power Lines is edited by Jeff Ordower and Lindsay Zafir and published by The New Press.

For more information: https://thenewpress.com/books/power-lines