climate change

By staff - Morning Star, April 12, 2023

UNION leaders are calling for new investment to meet net-zero targets, saying it would create high-quality jobs in transport and manufacturing.

The TUC has set out an investment plan for public transport across England and Wales, arguing it would improve quality of life and boost the economy.

The union organisation says its proposals fill a gaping hole in the government’s recently published net-zero strategy, which it claims fails to explain how it will achieve a shift away from car use.

The TUC says its plan would require an average of £9.9 billion in annual capital expenditure up to 2035.

Extra operating costs for expanded bus, tram and rail services would reach £18.8bn a year by 2030, its report, published today, says.

The plan is estimated to boost annual economic growth by £52.1bn by 2030 through productivity gains, creating 140,000 jobs in the bus, tram, and rail sectors.

A further 830,000 jobs would be created in manufacturing, construction, and infrastructure for buses and trams up to 2035, says the TUC.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “Everyone knows that we have to cut carbon emissions and that switching to public transport is a big part of how do it.

“Investing in public transport will help us meet net-zero targets and reduce the threat of catastrophic climate change, and it creates jobs throughout England and Wales, boosts the economy in every community and improves everyone’s quality of life.

“Commuters will have faster and cheaper journeys to work. New connections will bring new businesses to places where people need economic opportunities.

“We will save lives with cleaner air, and we will reduce loneliness and isolation by making everyone better connected, wherever you live.

“With this report, we’ve done the work that Conservative ministers should have done with their empty and incompetent net-zero strategy.”

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch, who will be speaking at the launch of the report today, said it shows that investing in public transport is vital for fighting climate change and delivering significant economic and social benefits.

He said: “This report shows that there is an alternative where we can expand and invest in our transport infrastructure.

“It is therefore vital that bus and rail services all run as a public service under a public ownership model which is free from profit-hungry multimillion-pound private companies.”

By staff - National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), April 12, 2023

RMT responds to TUC transport and climate change report.

Responding to the TUC Public Transport for the Climate Emergency report, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: "This is a welcome report that shows investing in public transport is not only vital for fighting climate change but that it will deliver significant economic and social benefits for everyone.

"The government - in league with private transport operators, are ideologically committed to securing the maximum profit for shareholders. This approach is leading to the managed decline of rail and bus services across the country.

"This report shows that there is an alternative where we can expand and invest in our transport infrastructure. This will create thousands of jobs in across every region of England and Wales, helping build strong local economies and at the same time, secure an environmentally sustainable future.

"It is therefore vital that bus and rail services all run as public service under a public ownership model which is free from profit hungry multimillion pound private companies."

The full report can be viewed here.

By staff - The Pulitzer Center, April 11, 2023

By Tahir Latif - Greener Jobs Alliance, April 11, 2023

This piece provides a summary of the latest IPCC synthesis report based on their sixth Assessment Report (AR6), part C, which deals with the ‘Urgency of Near-Term Integrated Action’. In other words, what we need to do by 2030 to have any chance of meeting the 1.5° or 2° targets.

As with the previous summaries, nothing here is likely to be too surprising to climate activists – the value is in seeing the situation laid out so systematically in the report, but also in the shortcomings that even this otherwise hard-hitting report exhibits, and which are touched on in the critique section.

General themes

Most starkly, ‘the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years’. The level of urgency has increased since AR5.

Climate resilient development integrates adaptation and mitigation and requires international co-operation, but there is a ‘rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.’

The report warns that past development constrains future paths, as does every increment of warming. Existing constraints include:

• Poverty, inequity and injustice,
• Siloed responses,
• Barriers to finance and technology,
• Trade-offs with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

‘Deep, rapid and sustained mitigation’ together with ‘accelerated implementation of adaptation actions’ this decade would reduce losses and damages and improve air quality and health. By contrast, delaying would lock in high emissions infrastructure, risk stranded assets, and increase costs, losses and damages, while lowering the chances of success.

High upfront investment is needed, with ‘significant distributional consequences within and between countries’, along with potentially disruptive changes in lifestyle. The cost Vs benefit equation tips in favour of benefits the more rapidly investment is undertaken. Significantly, however, the investment required during 2020-2030 to limit warming to 2° or 1.5°are a factor of three to six greater than current levels.

Sustainable development requires just transition principles in employment. Eradicating extreme poverty and providing sustainable development in low-emitting countries ‘can be achieved without significant global emissions growth.’ Finance and technology development is required to leapfrog or transition to low emissions.

Vulnerability is exacerbated by inequity and marginalisation linked to gender, ethnicity, disability, age, income level and historic and ongoing patterns of colonialism. By contrast, ‘individuals with high socio-economic status contribute disproportionately to emissions.’ Reducing emissions-intensive consumption is strongly associated with societal well-being

By Liz Blackshaw; Gareth Forest; Kamaljeet Gill, et. al. - Trades Union Congress (TUC), April 11, 2023

Public transport has a vital role to play in decarbonising our economy and safeguarding a planet fit for our children and grandchildren to live in. Improving our public transport is not only about protecting our environment, it’s also about the quality of life in communities all over England and Wales.

Decent public transport is essential for access to work across the economy, it also means that grandparents get to see their grandkids, and working parents get home earlier to spend time with their children, we call get to share in culture and entertainment. It means that teenagers can get to school and adult learners can access training that can transform lives. It means people on low incomes can visit town centre shops, and businesses can get the customers they need to reinvigorate local economies.

For too long, people have had to put up with inadequate services. All too often, buses are expensive and infrequent, with routes that get cut because the private providers are driven more by private profit than by a public service ethos. Train services are expensive and chaotic, with services frequently delayed – when they’re not cancelled at short notice due to staffing levels cut to the bone and maintenance services outsourced and short-staffed. The transport workforce has suffered alongside passengers. Years of frozen pay and attacks on terms and conditions are a poor reward for those on the frontline during the pandemic.

Public transport fit for the climate emergency sets out a plan for the investment in public transport throughout England and Wales that has long been needed. From town and cities, to villages and rural communities, this plan would mean more services, new routes, cheaper fares and modern fleets of low emission vehicles. This radical transformation must be funded by central government and delivered by local and regional transport authorities. And we should all get a say on the transport needs where we live and how this investment is allocated.

Passengers, local communities, and transport workers should all be consulted on public transport improvement plans where they live and work.

The investment proposed by this report would achieve the transition to low-carbon transport needed to honour our climate action agreements with the rest of the world. It would generate green and sustainable economic growth in regions across England and Wales. And it would directly create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the transport sector, plus many more in construction and manufacturing supply chains. As well as cheaper, more extensive and reliable buses, trams and trains, we would have cleaner air to breath. And the roads would be less congested for all road users.

To make sure that every community benefits as fully as possible, with ongoing investment and the best value fares, our public transport should be publicly owned.

The climate emergency means we must act. But the benefits of affordable, reliable and extensive public transport are so great that we should want to anyway – for the lower cost of living and higher quality of life it will bring. This report lays out the blueprint for 21st century public transport, all that’s left is to build it.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

By staff - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, April 8, 2023

On Tuesday, the Mexican Government signed an agreement to purchase 13 power generation plants from the Spanish multinational Iberdrola. Purchase turns the State Company into a majority owner in electric energy generation in Mexico.

Three weeks after hundreds of thousands mobilised to mark 85 years since the expropriation of oil by former Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas, the federal government announced it is purchasing 13 electric energy generation plants owned by the Iberdrola for nearly USD $6 billion. The 13 plants represent 8,539 MW of installed capacity, with 8,436 MW corresponding to combined cycle gas and 103 MW to wind. Altogether, the purchase represents 77% of Iberdrola’s installed capacity in the country, although the Spain-based multinational would remain the main private generator of renewable energy in Mexico.

While many details are yet to be made public around the financing structure, according to the finance ministry, a new trust fund managed by Mexico Infrastructure Partners (MIP) will own the power plants, with a majority of its capital sourced primarily by Fonadin, the public infrastructure fund of Mexico. The federal power utility, Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), will operate the plants.

"This means, without exaggerating (...), the rescue of the CFE and is a new nationalisation of the electricity industry. Most important of all, in this way, we guarantee that electricity prices will not increase for consumers, as has been the case in the last four years,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). “In other words, the CFE becomes the majority company. If we add to this that final plants are being built, hydroelectric plants are being rehabilitated with new turbines, all under the CFE, we can affirm that the Mexican state will maintain around 65 per cent of all energy generation at the end of the six-year term,” added AMLO in Tuesday’s televised announcement.

“The CFE is the only company with permission to commercialise electricity. The CFE had to buy electricity from these 13 Iberdrola plants in order to sell it. Today, we will no longer need this intermediation,” said Rocío Nahle, Secretary of the Energy Ministry (Sener). “The Mexican people are therefore favoured because we are able to sustain affordable electricity costs. In Mexico, we are the country with the lowest energy rates in the OECD because we have an energy policy that the President reviews daily, and with PEMEX, CFE, it allows us to have rates below inflation,” she said.

By Our Changing Climate - Our Changing Climate, April 7, 2023

By Ted Franklin - Common Dreams, April 4, 2023

As it hits its 10th year, the divestment movement claims many moral victories, yet fossil fuel companies keep booming and carbon keeps rising. Divestment fails to turn off the taps.

"After a decade of action, we are making a difference in the fight against climate change,"proclaims DivestInvest, the global divestment network. Dozens of leading climate organizations from 350.org to the World Council of Churches have enlisted as core partners or endorsers of DivestInvest.

According to DivestInvest's website, 1,585 institutions have publicly committed to "at least some form" of fossil fuel divestment, representing an enormous $39.2 trillion of assets under management.

"That's as if the two biggest economies in the world, the United States and China, combined, chose to divest from fossil fuels," the site goes on.

DivestInvest's 2021 glossy prospectus intimates that, thanks to divestment, the fossil fuel industry has begun to collapse. At the very least, oil and gas moguls should be trembling with fear that divestment activists will soon force them to close their spigots and relinquish their financial and political power.

If only this were true.

The balance sheets of the fossil fuel companies say otherwise. Instead of the industry tailspin portrayed in DivestInvest's report, the fossil fuel giants are awash in record profits. In 2021, The Hillreports, "the four largest oil and gas companies made over $75 billion in profits, returned billions to their shareholders through record dividends and share buybacks, and handed out millions in compensation to their chief executive officers."

By Tahir Latif - Greener Jobs Alliance, April 3, 2023

Summarising Part A of the report was straightforward as it comprised a factual assessment of where we are now.

By contrast, Part B covers Long Term responses and uses sophisticated modelling to project future scenarios based on different sets of assumed developments. While nothing undermines the basic conclusion that radical action is required very quickly, we do enter more subjective territory in terms of the scenarios chosen and the assumptions underpinning them.