greenwashing

By Cara Bottorff, Noah Ver Beek, and Leah Stokes - Sierra Club, October 2022

Rapidly cleaning up the electric sector is key to achieving our climate goals. We need electric utilities to retire coal plants, cancel plans to build new gas plants, and accelerate clean energy deployment to achieve 80 percent clean electricity by 2030 and 100 percent clean electricity by 2035. This is in line with the United States’ climate commitments and scientific consensus of what is needed for a livable planet.

Many utilities have pledged to clean up their electricity production, but our research shows these promises often amount to little more than greenwashing. In our 2021 report, released a year and a half ago, we analyzed the plans of 77 utilities owned by the 50 parent companies most invested in fossil fuel generation. We found that despite pledges to reduce emissions from many of these companies, most utilities did not have plans that would actually achieve the necessary emissions reductions by 2030.1, 2 This updated report investigates what progress, if any, these utilities made over the last year and a half to turn their pledges into real action. We want to know: have utilities stepped up to meet the challenge and make the changes needed to save lives, reduce costs, and address climate change by transforming our power system?

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Max Ajl, Luana Carvalho, Pedro Horta and Lanka Horstik - Global Climate Jobs, September 19, 2022

By staff - European Trade Union Institute, September 15, 2022

The recent Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is properly recognised as the largest climate policy in US history. In this short essay I will first summarise and comment on its provisions, then outline the reactions to it, with a focus on labour unions, and will close by providing my own thoughts.

The IRA allocates around $370 billion over a period of ten years. About 75% of that is in the form of incentives (rather than direct investments or regulatory mandates) to advance the transition to ‘clean energy’ that includes renewables but also nuclear power, biofuels, hydrogen, and carbon capture and sequestration. These incentives focus primarily on advancing the production of clean energy but also on stimulating its consumption. Smaller energy investments focus on tackling pollution in poorer communities and on conservation and rural development.

The IRA also authorises as much as $350 billion of loans to be disbursed by the Department of Energy. While such loans have been around since the Bush Administration, the amounts and the likelihood that they will be used during the Biden Administration are much higher. Finally, its main regulatory provision is the designation of carbon, methane and other heat-trapping emissions from power plants, automobiles, and oil and gas wells as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, one of the bedrocks of US environmental legislation, which the Environmental Protection Agency implements. Overall, it is estimated that by 2030 the IRA will help reduce emissions by around 40% of 2005 levels, compared to the about 25% reduction projected without it. 

However, the policy mandates that renewable energy siting permits cannot be approved during any year unless accompanied by the opening up of 2 million acres of land or 60 million acres of ocean to oil and gas leasing bids, respectively, during the prior year (for more details see 50265 of Act). In either case, the amount of actual leasing and drilling is subject to market dynamics rather than regulatory limits, while the Act also streamlines the permitting process for pipelines. The growing transition to electric vehicles will lessen the market for oil but the strategic repositioning of natural gas in energy production (as well as plastics) suggests that it (along with nuclear power) will be a long-term source of energy, including in the production of hydrogen. Nevertheless, overall, it is the prevailing view that the IRA will decisively transition the US into renewable energy as part of a broader energy mix.

By John Molyneux - Global Ecosocialist Network, September 4, 2022

Recent events – the terrible floods in Pakistan, the drought and floods in China, the drought and floods in many parts of Africa, the heatwave and fires in France, Spain and Portugal, the fires in the American West and floods in Kentucky and more disasters by the day– make it clear that the catastrophe of climate chaos is upon us. To this must be added the chilling knowledge that this is only the starting point of a process that can only get worse.

The simple fact is that decades of warnings of impending disaster by scientists and the environmental movement have been studiously ignored by our rulers in clouds of greenwashing and ‘blah! blah! blah!’ The fact that COP 27 is being held in Sharm el-Sheik under the hideous Al-Sisi dictatorship, where no real protest is possible and that COP 28 will be held in the United Arab Emirates, is further confirmation that global capitalism is not going to change its spots.

This raises a serious strategic problem: what should the movement, and in particular ecosocialists, do next?

Up to now the climate movement as a whole has focused on raising the alarm: a) in the hope that our rulers will take effective action; b) in the hope of making the international public sufficiently aware to change its own behaviour and to pressure governments to change theirs. Within this framework, ecosocialists have focused on making the general intellectual case for the ecocidal nature of capitalism and the necessity of ecosocialist transformation. Doubtless these efforts will continue and doubtless we should continue to support them. But what if they are not enough and what if the hopes on which they are based are false or at least questionable?

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, September 2022

Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act reveals the power that can arise when the movements for worker protection, climate protection, and justice protection join forces.

The fossil fuel industry, the Republican Party, conservative fossil-fuel Democrats, and right-wing ideologues combined to block the climate, labor, and social justice programs of the Green New Deal and Build Back Better. They almost succeeded. But at the last minute, the combined power of climate protectors, worker advocates, and justice fighters was enough to force passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history.[1]

That power was enough to include important positive elements in the Inflation Reduction Act. It will provide the largest climate protection investment ever made. It will create an estimated 1 to 1.5 million jobs annually for a ten-year period.[2] It includes modest but significant funding to address pollution in frontline communities.[3]

But the power of the fossil fuel industry and its allies was still enough to gut important parts of a program for climate, jobs, and justice – and to add provisions that promote injustice and climate change. The legislation includes only one-quarter of the investment necessary to meet the Paris climate goals and prevent the worst consequences of global warming. It allows much of its funding to be squandered on unproven technologies that claim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but whose primary effect may simply be to permit the continued burning of fossil fuels – and enrich their promoters. It allows increased extraction of fossil fuels, especially on federal lands. It allows massive drilling and pipeline construction that will turn areas like the Gulf Coast and Appalachia into de facto “sacrifice zones” where expanded fossil fuel infrastructure will devastate the environment – and the people. It does not guarantee that the jobs it creates will be good jobs. It makes few “just transition” provisions for workers and communities whose livelihoods may be threatened by the changes it will fund.

By C.J. Polychroniou - Truthout, August 23, 2022

California has a well-established reputation as a national and global climate leader, but despite its remarkable successes in cutting emissions between 2006 and 2016, it has recently begun showing signs of having lost its way.

California is increasingly falling behind on its emissions reduction targets, and its existing policies have now been deemed insufficient to hit its 2030 target of reducing carbon emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, according to new modeling from the climate policy think tank Energy Innovation.

“Compared to historical trends, California will need to more than triple the pace of emissions reductions to hit its 2030 target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030,” the Energy Innovation report states.

The report is disappointing news, representing a weakening of the climate action that began with California’s passage of AB 32 in 2006. Otherwise known as the Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32 was a landmark program in the struggle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Up until 2006, the United States was the largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions in the world, and California was the second highest state in terms of total greenhouse gas emissions.

By Tahir Latif, Secretary - Greener Jobs Alliance, July 21, 2022

The GJA Secretary went to Farnborough to join campaigners and activists from the anti-aviation/pro-worker organisation Stay Grounded in a protest against the Corporate love-in that is the Farnborough air show. A photo shoot with a ‘pigs might fly’ theme, complete with masks, took place, before three of the group went to the show itself to continue the protest from within the heart of the beast.

It’s hard to understate the sense of irony and hypocrisy that permeates the atmosphere over Farnborough. The air show opens on the very day that the country is subject to a Red Alert for extreme weather, that temperature records (including the 40^o thresh-hold) are being broken, and thousands across Europe are suffering illness or death due to the conditions. By any objective measure those supporting a ‘yep, we need more of these here planes’ would surely be considered dangerous psychopaths.

As a trade union-oriented organisation, we have to recognise that a number of our constituent unions, and many members otherwise supportive of our campaigns for green jobs, feel a sense of job security bound up with the continuing success of the aviation industry. This exerts significant power over worker viewpoints, and union policy, in the context of an industry that – due entirely to strong union representation – treats them relatively well in comparison with those struggling in the gig economy.

One thing we should all be clear about is that the Corporate hob-nobbing at Farnborough, the multi-billion deals and contracts, have absolutely nothing in common with the interests of workers, let alone with the communities sweltering in the excessive heat. At Farnborough – and I know this from my years as an industry employee – workers are never mentioned at all, or if they are it is as annoying ‘overheads’ to be reduced as soon as automation allows. As for unions, they are even more bothersome because they insist on making those overheads so expensive, a barrier to corporate objectives and shareholder benefits.

(Narrated) By J.T. Chapman - More Perfect Union, July 19, 2022

 Elon Musk spent decades building something big: himself. Musk managed to sell the world on a persona: the visionary genius billionaire working his hardest to save the the world. And it’s worked: the myth of Elon Musk has made him a lot of money.

But what did it cost to get him there? And what does it mean that the richest man in the world build that wealth purely on an image of himself?

We took a deep look into Musk’s entire career: court documents, SEC filings, and interviews to break down the story Elon tells about himself and how he leveraged it to accumulate wealth and power.

By Ted Franklin - Let's Own Chevron, July 14, 2022

California politicians never tire of touting the state’s leadership on climate issues. But how much of it is bullshit, to borrow the Anglo-Saxon technical term recently popularized by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr?

Some East Bay and SF DSAers got very interested when we learned that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) was holding a one-day hearing on a 228-page draft plan for California’s transition to a green future. The 2022 Scoping Plan Update, to be adopted later this year, aims to be the state’s key reference document to guide legislators and administrations in remaking the California economy over the next two decades. We turned on our bullshit detectors and prepared for the worst. CARB did not disappoint.

The state is currently committed to two major climate goals: (1) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and (2) to achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2045. These are hardly adequate goals in the eyes of science-based climate activists, but California officialdom is taking them seriously, at least seriously enough to commission a state agency to map out a master plan to reach them.

And there’s the rub. Charged with the outsized responsibility of devising a roadmap to a Green California, CARB’s staff came up with a technocratic vision that caters to the powerful, seems designed to fail, and pays virtually no attention to workers whose world will be turned upside down by “rapid, far- reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” required to limit global overheating to 1.5ºC. Despite copious lip service to environmental justice, CARB’s draft also ignores the critiques and questions put forward by CARB’s own Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (EJAC), assembled to give CARB input and feedback as the state’s master plan takes shape.

“The state’s 20-year climate policy blueprint is a huge step backward for California,” commented Martha Dina Arguello, EJAC’s co-chair and executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles. “The plan on the table is grossly out of touch with the lived reality of communities that experience suffocating pollution and doubles down on fossil fuels at a time when California needs real climate solutions.” 

The idea that an air quality regulatory agency like CARB could come up with a viable plan for a societal transformation on the scale of the Industrial Revolution is absurd on its face. To do this without extensive involvement of labor would seem to doom the project entirely. Yet CARB plowed ahead without any significant input from labor. Result: the only union mentioned in CARB’s draft plan is the European Union.

We searched the draft plan in vain to see if it addressed any of the key questions from labor’s point of view:

What is the green future for California’s workers? How shall we provide for workers and communities that depend on the fossil fuel economy as major industries are phased out? What would a green economy look like, what are green jobs, how can we create enough good green jobs to meet demand, and what public investments will be required?

Instead of answering questions like these, CARB’s draft plan promotes a bevy of false solutions to reach California’s already inadequate targets. CARB’s depends on the state’s problematic cap-and-trade carbon trading scheme as well as carbon capture and storage (the favored scam of the oil industry) and hydrogen (the favored scam of the gas industry). The draft gives the nod to 33 new large or 100 new peaker gas-fired power plants. Missing: cutting petroleum refining, oil extraction, and fracking; banning new fossil fuel infrastructure; degrowing military and police budgets; and committing more resources to education, mass transit, healthcare, and housing. Instead of proposing an economy of care and repair to replace the old fossil fuel economy, CARB offers electric cars and more pipelines.

Far from providing a roadmap to a green future, CARB has come up with California capitalism’s most ambitious response yet to the radical ecosocialist Green New Deal that the world needs and we are fighting for.

By the Egyptian Campaign for Climate and Democracy - Egypt Solidarity, June 2022

Egypt Solidarity Initiative has received the following message from Egyptian activists who have been involved for many years in campaigns for democracy, trade union and human, and environmental justice. We are publishing this on their behalf because the level of repression prevents the publication of an open appeal from inside the country.

This November the COP 27 conference will be held in the tourist town of Sharm El-Sheikh in the Sinai Peninsula, in Egypt. The governments of the world have broken nearly all the promises made in the Glasgow COP 26. We are all inching closer to a climate catastrophe, but political leaders and major corporations are too immersed in their competition for resources, markets and geopolitical dominance to take the necessary measures to save our planet.

It is becoming clearer every day to millions of people across the globe that only a grassroots movement can force through actual change.

Yet the COP 27 conference is taking place in an isolated heavily policed tourist resort with only one major road in and out, and hotels that are required to charge rates that might push the entire COP beyond the means of many grassroots organisations, particularly those from poorer countries. The Egyptian government has announced that there will be space for opposition during the conference, but what they actually mean is that activists will be offered fake ‘astroturfed’ protests in which state-affiliated NGOs demonstrate near the convention centre to deliver the impression of an independent local civil society. No real Egyptian opposition activists will be allowed near Sharm El-Sheikh during the conference. It would be a shame if genuine global grassroots movements are fooled into taking part in such a state-orchestrated charade.

While the Egyptian government is preparing to host COP27, thousands of people, among them human rights defenders, journalists, peaceful protesters, lawyers, opposition politicians and activists continue to suffer in Egyptian jails in brutal conditions, solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association or peaceful assembly, without legal basis or following grossly unfair trials. Egypt is an African country and part of the Global South. But Egypt is also a country ruled by a brutal and corrupt military dictatorship. The regime of Abdelfattah El-Sisi, will present itself during the conference and in the months leading to it, as championing the needs and demands of the Global South in general and the African continent in particular. This is a great lie. The only thing this regime represents is the military junta that has been in power since 2013.