mine workers

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, April 12, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

• Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels - By Tom Randall, Bloomberg, April 6, 2016
• Laid off coal miners on their own after fueling Wyo economy for decades - By Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile, April 5, 2016
• The Beginning of the End of the Tar Sands? - By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International, April 4, 2016
• Can coal companies afford to clean up coal country? - By Steven Mufson and Joby Warrick, Washington Post, April 2, 2016

Other Carbon Bubble News:

• Chesapeake pledges almost entire company as debt collateral - By Bloomberg, FuelFix, April 11, 2016
• Moody’s cuts Chevron, Shell and Total credit ratings - By Bloomberg, FuelFix, April 9, 2016
• U.S. oil rig count drops by eight, Baker Hughes says - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, April 8, 2016
• While Lobbying Against Safety Regulations, Exxon Admits to Potential for Stranded Assets - By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog, April 8, 2016
• Chevron cutting 655 Houston jobs amid oil bust - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, April 7, 2016
• Evidence shows new pipelines will not solve Alberta’s economic woes or support a clean energy transition - By Hannah McKinnon, Oil Change International, April 7, 2016
• US shale gas investors eye billion-dollar gamble - By Gerard Wynn, Climate Change News, April 7, 2016
• The nation’s biggest coal mines lay off hundreds of workers - By Elizabeth Shogren, High Country News, April 6, 2016
• Wyoming recruits unemployed energy workers for prison jobs - By Associated Press, FuelFix, April 6, 2016
• Houston energy company closing Texas plant - By Jordan Blum, FuelFix, April 5, 2016
• EDITORIAL: Our answer to the steel crisis; nationalise to save jobs, not bosses' profits | Defy the logic of capitalism to save steel jobs | LETTERS: Steel jobs should be part of the climate change solution - By Alex Callinicos, et. al., Socialist Worker (UK), April 5, 2016
• Phillips 66 joint venture cutting 300 jobs - By Jordan Blum, FuelFix, April 5, 2016
• Thousands join UMWA rally for jobs, benefits - By Steve Ferris, Herald-Standard, April 2, 2016
• Austerity Gathers Pace in Volatile South Africa - By Patrick Bond, The Bullet, March 28, 2016

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.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, April 4, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

• Black Thursday: Layoffs hit 500 Wyoming coal miners - By Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile, March 31, 2016 
• Steel crisis: we need urgent action to save tens of thousands of jobs - By Charlie Kimber, Socialist Worker (UK), March 30, 2016
• Excuse me — do you know where my Appalachia is? - By Eve Andrews, Grist, March 29, 2016

Other Carbon Bubble News:

• Texas leads the way in another rig count drop - By Jordan Blum, FuelFix, April 1, 2016
• BNSF furloughs have hit 4,600 employees nationwide - By Max B. Baker, Forth Worth Star Telegram, March 31, 2016
• Devon Energy to close Houston area office, cut about 60 jobs - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, March 31, 2016
• Maersk Oil to close Houston office, cut remaining local jobs - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, March 31, 2016
• Oil bust claims another 1,100 jobs across Texas - By Robert Grattan, FuelFix, March 29, 2016
• Peabody Lifeline Vanishing as Bowie Loan Deal Said to Be Dropped - By Michelle Davis, MichelleF_Davis, Jodi Xu Klein, Bloomberg, March 29, 2016
• U.S. Lifted The Crude Oil Export Ban, And Exports Went…Down - By Charles Kennedy, OilPrice.com, March 29, 2016
• Yellen: Another oil price drop could spill over into global economy - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, March 29, 2016
• Electric Vehicles Will Deflate Demand For Oil - By Andreas de Vries and Salman Ghouri, Energy Post, March 28, 2016

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.

By various - Re:Common, April 2016

By presenting the horrors suffered under the domination of multinational companies, this work by Re:Common will dispel any lingering doubt that the current economic system based on extractivism is a war against the poor (what subcommander Marcos called the “Fourth World War”).

If someone who trusts the mainstream media and academic analyses thinks that at some point colonialism disappeared from the face of the Earth, this work, based on documents and testimonies, demonstrates otherwise.

For those who believe that progress is the most striking characteristic of our times, starting with the post-World War II period, the voices of the missing that populate these pages will convince you that present-day capitalism is a just a revamped version of the Spanish conquest of five centuries ago.

Throughout this work, all the variables of extractivism can be seen: from occupation of the territory and displacement of people to the role of the offshore banking and financial system, as two complementary and inseparable parts of accumulation by theft/dispossession. In the occupied territories, the displacement occurs in the form of war, with the participation of military, paramilitary, guerrilla and the greatest variety of imaginable armed actors.

The victims are always the weak: poor women and their children, elderly men and women, peasants, Indians, blacks, mestizos, the “wretched of the Earth,” as Frantz Fanon calls them. I want to emphasize, though it may seem anachronistic, and without reference to academic sources, how the extractive model coincides with colonialism, despite the different eras. This is not only due to the violent occupation of territories and the displacement of populations, but also to the salient features of the model.

Economically, extractivism has generated enclave economies, as it did in the colonies, where the walled port and plantations with slaves were its masterworks. This colonial/extractive model held populations 6 hostage in both 1500 and 2000.

Extractivism produces powerful political interventions by multinational enterprises, often allied with States, which manage to modify legislation, co-opting municipalities and their governors. It is an asymmetrical relationship between powerful multinationals and weak states, or better, states weakened by their own local elite who benefit from the model.

Like colonialism, the extractive model promotes the militarization of the territories, because it is the only way to eradicate the population, which, recalling Subcommander Marcos, is the real enemy in this fourth world war. Militarization, violence, and systematic rape of women and girls are not excesses or errors; they are part of the model because the population is the military objective.

To understand extractivism, we must consider it not as an economic model, but as a system. Like capitalism. Certainly there is a capitalist economy, but capitalism is not just the economic aspect. Extractivism (as stated by Re:Common) is capitalism in its financial phase and cannot be understood only as an economic variable. It implies a culture that promotes not work but consumption, which has (systemic) corruption as one of its central features. Put in another way, corruption is the extraction mode of governing.

Therefore, extractivism is not an economic actor; it is a political, social, cultural, and of course also economic actor. At this point, it’s crucial that the central part of this work describes human beings and the Earth as the subjects for looting, which is much more than the theft of the commons. Understanding dispossession only as robbery places property ownership at the center of the matter, in the place of people and land; e.g., life.

Read the text (PDF).

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 29, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

• Proponents buried coal’s role in Oakland export terminal; now questions remain - By Brian Maffly, Salt Lake Tribune, March 28, 2016
• Shale Euphoria: The Boom and Bust of Sub Prime Oil and Natural Gas - By Dave Forest, Credo, March 23, 2016
• Drowning in Bad Oil Debt - By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International, March 22, 2016
• It’s Beyond Time Coal Mining Outlaws Are Held Accountable - By Jeff Biggers, EcoWatch, March 22, 2016
• New study says entire regions of US will remain in slump until the 2020s - By Jerry White, World Socialist Web Site, March 21, 2016

Other Carbon Bubble News:

• Peabody Coal's bankruptcy would be 'rocket fuel' to end investment in old energy companies - By Andrew Freedman, Mashable, March 25, 2016
• Lost in Lusatia: Lignite goes from asset to liability - By Megan Darby, Climate Change News, March 24, 2016
• U.S. oil rig count falls by 15 - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, March 24, 2016
• As Coal Prospects Decline, a Colorado Town Reconsiders Marijuana - By Jack Healy, New York Times, March 23, 2016
• Cleaning Out Taxpayers - By Ryan Alexander, US News & World Report, March 23, 2016
• ELPC’s Learner Calls on Indiana Officials to require Peabody to Pay Reclamation Costs - By Howard Learner, Environmental Law & Policy Center, March 21, 2016
• How Oil Price Volatility Explains These Uncertain Times - By Tom Therramus, Greentech Media, March 23, 2016
• Large inventory gain helps push oil back toward $40 - By Robert Grattan, FuelFix, March 23, 2016
• Layoffs at Sudbury mine development - By Staff, Northern Ontario Business, March 23, 2016
• More layoffs hit Eagle Ford Shale workers in San Antonio - By Jennifer Hiller, FuelFix, March 23, 2016
• This is what an oil bust looks like - By Jonathan Thompson, High Country News, March 23, 2016
• Alaska gov. may call special legislative session on budget - By Associated Press, FuelFix, March 22, 2016
• Chile Sees Unrest In Its Gold And Copper Sectors - By Dave Forest, OilPrice.Com, March 22, 2016
• The Current Oil Price Rally Is Reaching Its Limits - By Nick Cunningham, OilPrice.com, March 21, 2016
• Fears of an Asian coal surge are overblown – By Ed King, Climate Change News, March 21, 2016
• Boom or Bust, Courts Remain Busy in North Dakota Oil Patch - By Dave Kolpack, Associated Press, March 19, 2016

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.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 22, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

• Stranded Assets a Response: Myth or Reality? - By Paul Spedding, Carbon Tracker, March 18, 2016
• Oil bust puts tribes, towns over a barrel - By Matthew Frank, High Country News, March 17, 2016
• China: Mass Mining Workers’ Demonstration In Heilongjiang Coal Mine Town - By Parson Young, In Defense of Marxism, March 15, 2016
• How Cheap Oil Is Accelerating Investment In Sustainable Energy - By Philip Killeen, World Watch Institute, March 14, 2016
• China’s 13th Five Year Plan offers no hope for coal markets, further suppressing CO2 emissions - By Luke Sussams, Carbon Tracker, March 13, 2016
• Oil field workers increasingly sue for unpaid wages - By Dan Boyce, Durango Herald, March 13, 2016

By Lou Martin - RAMPS, January 14, 2016

RAMPS web editor's note: Our friend and ally Lou Martin wrote this (in response to Nick Mullins’s blog post “The Problem with Environmentalism in Appalachia“) and asked us to post it. Although this isn’t an official communique from RAMPS, we’re posting it in the spirit of fostering dialogue so that our movement can be stronger and more effective…

I wish more people knew the environmental movement in central Appalachia the way I have gotten to know it in the last four years.

I have been a longtime fan of Nick Mullins’s blog The Thoughtful Coal Miner, and I hope Nick knows that I appreciate and respect him and his family for their work—work of all kinds—to end mountaintop removal.  And I appreciate this recent blog post because it is grappling with a difficult subject and because, to be effective, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and our strategies.

As I understand the post, the main problem with environmentalism in Appalachia is that environmental organizations have not won over coal mining families.  Nick writes, “Coal mining families are not very receptive to environmentalists—and that’s putting it lightly. Why should they be? In what way have environmentalists approached coal mining families over the past two decades? In what way have environmentalists presented themselves to the public?”

Throughout the blog post he talks about “environmentalists” and “coal mining families” as being two different groups, opposed to each other.  In another place he writes, “At the end of the day, I had to realize that perhaps many environmental organizations are just as ‘out of touch’ as Appalachian people think them to be.”  Here, environmental organizations and Appalachian people as if they are almost mutually exclusive.

When I think back to why I got involved fighting mountaintop removal, I think of the people who inspired me, and almost every one of them came from a coal mining family or were former coal miners—and all those people belonged to environmental organizations.

But Nick is talking about a general perception of “the environmental movement” that someone in the region might get if they only watch the occasional news report or witness a demonstration.  Those people, I suppose, might not really be able to differentiate between a small organization based in the region and a national organization like the Sierra Club.  Between an organization that advocates civil disobedience and those that do not.

By Nick Mullins - The Thoughtful Coal Miner, December 30, 2015

I tend get flak from both sides of the argument surrounding coal. Environmentalists distance themselves from me because I am often critical of them, and some even hate me these days. Pro-coal folks tend to dislike me for my stance against coal companies. It only goes to show that telling the truth has never been popular, or easy.

So let’s get to it.

Coal mining families are not very receptive to environmentalists—and that’s putting it lightly. Why should they be? In what way have environmentalists approached coal mining families over the past two decades? In what way have environmentalists presented themselves to the public?

Though most environmentalists have their hearts in the right place when it comes to helping other people, I’m afraid they’ve done a poor job of translating it to the public. So when the knee jerk reaction of coal miners and their families is to identify environmentalists as “out of touch,” I am not entirely surprised.

Decades of outside media infiltration has portrayed our people (Appalachians) in a negative way. The “War on Poverty” brought thousands of people from outside the mountains to tell us how to live (like we were to stupid or something). Let’s not forget that the first outsiders to come into the mountains were the land agents and coal companies who would lie, cheat, and steal to take our lands and mineral rights, and would then force us into a mono-economy making us dependent on mining coal to survive. Appalachian people have had enough of outsiders and for good reasons. That being said, I am very skeptical of many outsiders myself, and will gladly tell anyone who even remotely appears to be looking down their nose at us to go &#*^ themselves, no matter how “well intentioned” they think they are. But I digress.

For the longest time, unions helped us remind ourselves that coal companies were the outsiders, but when the unions were busted, the industry seized the opportunity to re-image themselves as part of our communities. Through industry public relations organizations, we were told that Appalachia was “coal” (see Bell & York, 2010) and that any threat against coal was a threat to our pride and heritage. They have even pointed to environmentalists as the new outside threat. Since the coal industry has the money to promote their message (see Friends of Coal), and they have the coal miner’s ear at work and through paychecks, they can paint a picture of environmentalists as being “out of touch tree hugging idiots” who support the “War on coal.” Many environmentalists have played right into this portrayal, sometimes so perfectly that I’ve wondered if it was intentional. Let me repeat that last statement. Many environmentalists have played right into the negative stereotypes, sometimes so perfectly that I’ve wondered if it was intentional. If the coal companies infiltrated the unions, you know they infiltrated the environmental movement.

Edward P. Louie and Joshua M. Pearce - Energy Economics, 2016

Although coal remains the largest source of electricity in the U.S., a combination of factors is driving a decrease in profitability and employment in the coal-sector. Meanwhile, the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry is growing rapidly in the U.S. and generating many jobs that represent employment opportunities for laid off coal workers. In order to determine the viability of a smooth transition from coal to PV-related employment, this paper provides an analysis of the cost to retrain current coal workers for solar photovoltaic industry employment in the U.S. The current coal industry positions are determined, the skill set evaluated and the salaries tabulated. For each type of coal position, the closest equivalent PV position is determined and then the re-training time and investment are quantified. These values are applied on a state-by-state basis for coal producing states employing the bulk of coal workers as a function of time using a reverse seniority retirement program for the current American fleet of coal-powered plants. The results show that a relatively minor investment in retraining would allow the vast majority of coal workers to switch to PV-related positions even in the event of the elimination of the coal industry.

Read the report (PDF).

By lmi Granoff, et. al. - Overseas Development Institute, 2016

Eradicating global poverty is within reach, but under threat from a changing climate. Left unchecked, climate change will put at risk our ability to lift people out of extreme poverty permanently by 2030, the first target of the Sustainable Development Goals. Coal is the world’s number one source of CO₂ emissions. Most historic emissions came from the coal industry in the developed world in the last century, with China joining the biggest emitters at the beginning of this one. It is widely accepted that a rapid and just response to climate change will require the urgent replacement of coal with low-carbon energy sources in rich economies.

Now the coal industry claims that expanding coal use is critical to fighting extreme poverty and improving energy access for billions of people in developing countries. In fact, the opposite is true. The global commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and energy poverty by 2030 does not require such an expansion and it is incompatible with stabilising the earth’s climate. The evidence is clear: a lasting solution to poverty requires the world’s wealthiest economies to renounce coal, and we can and must end extreme poverty without the precipitous expansion of new coal power in developing ones.

This paper explores the role of energy in fighting poverty, arguing that:

• More coal will not end energy poverty
• Coal is given too much credit for the reduction of extreme poverty
• Better energy options exist to lift people out of income poverty
• More coal will entrench poverty.

Read the report (EN PDF) | (JA PDF) | (ZH PDF).