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If it's jobs they want, Labour and the unions must back renewables, not Hinkley C!

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 08/30/2016 - 18:53

By Ian Fairlie - The Ecologist, August 30, 2016

On July 28, the Prime Minister's Office announced a delay until the autumn to allow a review to take place re the nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C proposed by the previous Government.

Since then, press criticisms of the mooted Hinkley C have continued unabated led by flagship editorials from the FT and The Economist.

These echo widespread concerns by the National Audit Office (NAO) in its recent preliminary report - Nuclear Power in the UK.

A detailed reading reveals serious question marks about the proposed project. According to The Times of July 31, the NAO will publish another damning report on Hinkley as soon as the Government has made its decision.

It would be infinitely preferable for the NAO's considerations to be made available to the Government before legally binding decisions were taken on Hinkley C, rather than afterwards.

This is not a minor matter: the Government is understood to have ready a draft Investor Agreement - essentially an irrevocable contract for electricity from Hinkley C for 35 years at a cost of £29.7 billion to British energy consumers, as estimated in the above NAO report. This is a discounted sum: economists consider an undiscounted sum of about £37 billion should really be applied. Whichever figure is used, this is an unconscionable sum.

But it is not just the NAO which is concerned: other institutions including the Treasury's National Infrastructure Commission, chaired by Lord Adonis, and its Infrastructure and Projects Authority. Members of Energy UK are also worried.

And two years ago, as stated in the UK Government's report of October 8, 2014 to the European Commission on state aid for Hinkley, the then Infrastructure UK arm of the Treasury evaluated the Hinkley project as 'Speculative BB+'.

Even this junk rating would have depended on the proper functioning of the proposed EPR at Flamanville in France which is by no means assured. In 2016, two years later, it is likely Hinkley's investment rating will be even lower.

Tags: 
nuclear power
nuclear power workers
green unionism
renewable energy
renewable energy workers
labor and environment
trade unions
green jobs
just transition

Transition to green economy could yield up to 60 million jobs, ILO says

Submitted by x332349 on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 17:35

International Labor Organization Press Release - May 31, 2012

GENEVA (ILO News) – The transformation to a greener economy could generate 15 to 60 million additional jobs globally over the next two decades and lift tens of millions of workers out of poverty, according to a new report led by the Green Jobs Initiative.

EcoUnionist News #117

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 08/15/2016 - 19:21

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 17, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
whistleblowers
health and safety
agriculture
agricultural workers and peasants
agroecology
labor and environment
green jobs
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)
World Social Forum

EcoUnionist News #116

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 08/08/2016 - 17:33

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 10, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
health and safety
agricultural workers and peasants
agriculture
labor and environment
green jobs

EcoUnionist News #115

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 08/01/2016 - 19:34

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 2, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistleblowers:

Wobbles:

Other News:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW. Please send suggested news items to include in this series to euc [at] iww.org.

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
health and safety
agricultural workers and peasants
agriculture
whistleblowers
labor and environment
green jobs

EcoUnionist News #114

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 07/26/2016 - 21:40

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, July 27, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
health and safety
agricultural workers and peasants
La Via Campesina
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
agriculture
whistleblowers
labor and environment
green jobs

A Just Transition for U.S. Fossil Fuel Industry Workers

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 07/25/2016 - 19:01

By Robert Pollin and Brian Callaci - American Prospect, July 6, 2016

According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2015 was the globe’s warmest year since at least 1880, when such figures were first recorded. 2014 was the next warmest, and the hottest five years also include 2013, 2010, and 2005. Can it be any more obvious that we absolutely must stop playing Russian roulette with the global climate?

The two most important things we need to do to stabilize the climate are straightforward. First, the world must dramatically cut its reliance on oil, coal, and natural gas in energy production. This is because carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated through burning fossil fuels, along with methane emissions released during fossil fuel extraction processes, are responsible for about 75 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Second, as the alternative to fossil fuel consumption, again on a global scale, we must massively expand investments in energy efficiency and clean renewable energy sources—solar, wind, geothermal, low-emissions bioenergy, and small-scale hydropower.

Both parts of this climate stabilization program will produce large-scale impacts on the employment opportunities for working people as well as on the communities in which they live. The investments in efficiency and clean renewables will generate millions of new jobs. But workers and communities whose livelihoods depend on the fossil fuel industry will unavoidably lose out in the clean energy transition. Unless strong policies are advanced to support these workers, they will face layoffs, falling incomes, and declining public-sector budgets to support schools, health clinics, and public safety. This in turn will increase political resistance to any effective climate stabilization program.

It follows that the global climate stabilization project must unequivocally commit to providing generous transitional support for workers and communities tied to the fossil fuel industry. The late U.S. labor leader and environmental visionary Tony Mazzocchi pioneered thinking on what is now termed a “Just Transition” for these workers and communities. As Mazzocchi wrote as early as 1993, “Paying people to make the transition from one kind of economy to another is not welfare. Those who work with toxic materials on a daily basis … in order to provide the world with the energy and the materials it needs deserve a helping hand to make a new start in life.”

In this article, we propose a Just Transition framework for U.S. workers. Our rough high-end estimate for such a program is a relatively modest $600 million per year. This is about 1 percent of the annual level of public investment that will be needed to advance a successful overall U.S. climate stabilization program. As we show, this level of funding would pay for income and pension-fund support for workers facing retrenchments as well as effective transition programs for what are now fossil fuel–dependent communities.

Tags: 
just transition
green unionism
climate justice
Tony Mazzocchi
renewable energy
green jobs
labor and environment

From the Tar Sands to ‘Green Jobs’? Work and Ecological Justice

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 07/20/2016 - 17:31

By Greg Albo and Lilian Yap - The Bullet, July 12, 2016

The ecological and social implications of climate change have – or should – become a central parameter for all discussions of work and capitalism. It is generally agreed that reliance on the burning of fossil fuels as the pre-eminent energy source for production and consumption over the history of capitalism is the critical factor in the ruinous greenhouse gas emissions triggering global warming, which would become irreversible if the earth's atmosphere were brought to a ‘tipping-point’. The leading scientific estimates project that a rise in average global temperatures of 2°C (and now often just 1.5°C) is the threshold for irreversible climate change; that this can be expected from an accumulation of 1 trillion metric tonnes of carbon in the atmosphere; that we are approaching 600 million tonnes; and that the carbon ‘tipping-point’ may well be reached in 30 years unless carbon emissions can be reduced by 2-5% per year (and now often even more severe reductions).[1] The unrelenting build-up of greenhouse gases has led to the jarring conclusion, drawn by climatologists, ecological militants and union activists, that an exit from reliance on fossil fuels for energy needs to occur with some urgency.

In Canada, the hyper-development of the Alberta tar sands, as well as the intensifying exploitation of both conventional and unconventional fossil fuel deposits across the country, has opened a major political divide over climate change strategies and their implications for work.[2] On the one side, the oil industry, governments and many workers in the oil and gas sectors have sought to lock-in the further tar sands development. They have argued that this could be done through a strategy of carbon intensity (more output per unit of carbon emitted from fossil fuels burned) by ‘green growth’ and a range of ‘market ecology’ measures to shift consumer behaviour toward energy saving. On the other side, many Aboriginal nations and ecological and labour organizations have pushed for a transition to an ‘ecologically-sustainable’ economy built around ‘green’ technologies, a renewable energy regime and ‘green jobs’ that would ‘de-carbonize’ production processes. (For the Aboriginal nations, this also could involve reclamation, if on an entirely different foundation, of traditional territories and economies.) This could be accomplished, it is argued, through ‘Keynesian-style’ public policies that build non-market institutions that embed and guide capitalist markets along a more sustainable and equitable growth path – in effect an ‘institutional ecology’.[3]

For reasons of both theoretical clarity and the political injunction to address climate change, the varied strategies for ‘greening work’ need dissection. If the levels of carbon emissions are to be stabilized, it will be necessary to not be limited by plans acceptable to the capitalist classes and their interest in endless accumulation. An ambitious vision of possible eco-socialist alternatives for Canada needs, we argue, to connect the restructuring of work to wider transformations in the socio-ecological system. This is a key task of the growing movement, in Canada and globally, to stop the tar sands and stand for climate justice.

Tags: 
just transition
green unionism
green jobs
jobs versus environment
labor and environment
climate justice
climate change

EcoUnionist News #113

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 07/18/2016 - 21:36

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, July 19, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistleblowers:

Wobbles:

Other News:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW. Please send suggested news items to include in this series to euc [at] iww.org.

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
health and safety
agricultural workers and peasants
La Via Campesina
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
agriculture
whistleblowers
crude-by-rail
green jobs
labor and environment

A Dream Scenario

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 07/13/2016 - 16:11

By Cailynn Klingbeil - Future Perfect, July 2016

Tradespeople working in Canada’s oil sands have created their own organization to provide training in renewable energy. Positioning themselves at the forefront of a bourgeoning industry, they are seeking to realize a vision for a more sustainable future.

Over the six years that Lliam Hildebrand worked in Alberta’s oil sands, he regularly broached a subject around the lunch table that he expected to be taboo: renewable energy. But Hildebrand, a journeyman welder and steel fabricator based in Victoria, British Columbia, found that the topic was front of mind for many workers, himself included.

“I’ve always been environmentally minded, and always had a bit of a personal struggle with working in the oil sands and the contributions to climate change,” Hildebrand says. “I found in the conversations I was having with the tradespeople up there, it was a shared experience… they’re interested in innovation and technology and they care about the future of the planet for their children.”

Hildebrand previously worked at a steel fabricating shop in Victoria, B.C., building pressure vessels for the oil sands and ship loaders for coal terminals. Later, he watched the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth while working on a windfarm weather station at the shop. He realized that tradespeople could play a key role in building renewable energy infrastructure. “I started on a path to try and figure out how to make these things work in sync with each other,” he says.

His lunchtime conversations, combined with the atmosphere in Alberta – falling oil prices have led to massive job losses, while the provincial government has introduced a new climate policy – then encouraged Hildebrand to act.

He formally launched Iron & Earth, a worker-led initiative aiming to train tradespeople in renewable energy, in March 2016. Oil and gas workers have transferable skills, the organization posits, and they want to be part of building a greener energy industry in Canada. So why not help them get supplemental training to join this bourgeoning industry?

“It’s about time Canada starts diversifying our energy grid,” says Hildebrand, now executive director of Iron & Earth. “We can build products we’re proud of and contribute to preventing global warming – and provide greater economic security and energy stability in Canada.”

A shared vision

The organization is led by Hildebrand and four directors – all tradespeople – who have worked or are working in Alberta. More than 450 members from various trades have joined Iron & Earth and expressed interest in training programs, including boilermakers, electricians, pipe fitters, ironworkers and labourers.

Joseph Bacsu, a third-generation boilermaker in Alberta, shared many lunchtime conversations with Hildebrand, and ultimately agreed with his vision. Bacsu also recognized that a transition to green energy could fill a need inherent to oil-related jobs. The boom and bust cycles of the oil sands mean that workers crave consistent employment. “People want the work, they want to be trained, and they want to be called upon when these jobs [in renewable energy] are available. It’s a no brainer,” Bacsu says.

He is now a director of Iron & Earth and has seen many workers, including his father, a 35-year industry veteran, join the organization. “[My father’s] thoughts are the same as mine,” Bacsu says. “If I could be somewhere doing what I’m doing now, but knowing I’m making a better earth, why wouldn’t I?”

Tags: 
Iron and Earth
green unionism
just transition
tar sands
oil workers
renewable energy workers
green jobs

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