publications

By Luke Sussams, et. al. - Carbon Tracker, February 2017

The time for energy transformations is now.

Achieving climate stability will require deep and widespread changes in the global energy sector. Fossil fuel industry projections, however, continue to show a future energy system with few changes to that of today. This is in spite of examples of disruption in the energy sector at the hands of the low-carbon transition. This scenario analysis was produced in partnership between Carbon Tracker and the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and explores the extent to which ongoing cost reductions could see solar photovoltaics (PV) and electric vehicles (EVs) impact future demand for coal, oil and gas. The findings of this study should motivate energy companies and their investors to retire the use of business as usual (BAU) scenarios and further integrate the consideration of downside demand scenarios.

Read the report (PDF).

By Liza Tucker - Consumer Watchdog, February 2017

This review fact-checks the perception of Jerry Brown as an environmentalist against his actions since taking office as Governor in 2011 to answer the question: “How Green Is Brown?” On a continuum of “Green” to “Murky” to “Dirty,” the review concludes that Brown’s environmental record is not green. The following advocates and public interest groups concur with the report’s analysis, conclusions, and recommendations: Food & Water Watch, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, Rootskeeper, Powers Engineering, Basin & Range Watch, Aguirre & Severson LLP, Public Watchdogs, the Southern California Watershed Alliance, The Desal Response Group, Restore The Delta, and Committee to Bridge the Gap.

Brown has staked his environmental legacy on fighting climate change, calling it the “singular challenge of our time.” He claims that he is enacting “a 1 thorough, integrated plan to reduce fossil fuel consumption.” He plans to have 1.5 million electric cars on the road by 2025 and has granted major investor-owned utilities a windfall of billions of dollars to build the charging infrastructure to make it happen. Yet, he has thrown his support to the fossil fuels industry whose products emit the most carbon on the planet when burned for transportation, electricity, and heat.

Far from the environmentalist that Brown claims to be, Brown has expanded the burning of heat-trapping natural gas and nurtured oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing while stifling efforts to protect the public from harm. The Public Utilities Commission has approved a slew of unnecessary new fossil-fuel power plants when the state’s three major investorowned utilities have overbuilt their generating capacity by nearly triple the minimum extra capacity that the state requires. Under Brown, the number of active onshore state oil and gas wells jumped by 23 percent since the year before he was elected Governor in a bid to produce more oil.

Hydraulic fracturing is producing 20 percent of the state’s oil, while companies continue to use other common, dirty methods of oil extraction exempted from fracking legislation under Brown. Companies are extracting oil from a few hundred newly permitted offshore wells in existing state leases since Brown came to office, though Brown asked then- President Obama to ban any new drilling in California’s federal waters. Brown’s regulators have ignored a petition signed by 350,000 people to ban the use of toxic oil wastewater for crop irrigation until proven safe.

Read the report (PDF).

By various - Climate Justice Alliance, January 2017

What Do We Mean By Just Transition?

“Just Transition is a principle, a process and a practice” -- Just Transition Alliance

Just Transition is a vision-led, unifying and place-based set of principles, processes and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy 2 to a regenerative economy. This means approaching production and consumption cycles holistically and waste free. The transition itself must be just and equitable; redressing past harms and creating new relationships of power for the future through reparations. If the process of transition is not just, the outcome will never be. Just Transition describes both where we are going and how we get there.

Download (PDF).

By Eskedar Gessesse, et. al. - Blue Green Alliance, January 2017

The following text is by Elizabeth Perry, Work and Climate Change Report, February 3, 2017:

Following on the January 2017 report US Energy and Employment  from the U.S. Department of Energy, more evidence of the healthy growth of the clean energy industry comes in a report by the Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps and Meister consultants.  Now Hiring: The Growth of America’s Clean Energy and Sustainability Jobs compiles the latest statistics from diverse sources, and concludes that “sustainability” accounts for an estimated 4.5 million jobs (up from 3.4 million in 2011) in the U.S. in 2015. Sustainability jobs are defined as those in energy efficiency and renewable energy, as well as waste reduction, natural resources conservation and environmental education, vehicle manufacturing, public sector, and corporate sustainability jobs.

Statistics drill down to wages and working conditions – for example, average wages for energy efficiency jobs are almost $5,000 above the national median, and wages for solar workers are above the national median of $17.04 per hour. Comparing clean energy with the fossil fuel industry, the report states that the 1.4 million jobs in energy efficiency construction and installation alone is more than double the number of workers in fossil fuel mining, extraction and electric power generation combined. Now Hiring states that for every $1 million invested in building retrofits and industrial efficiency, 8 direct or indirect jobs are created; in comparison, 3 are created by a comparable investment in the fossil fuel industry. This final comparison of job multiplier effect is based on “Green versus brown: Comparing the employment impacts of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and fossil fuels using an input-output model” by Heidi Garrett Pelletier at PERI, and appears in the February 2017 issue of Economic Modelling.

Read the report (Link).

By MG Collective - Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, January 2017

Just Transition is a framework for a fair shift to an economy that is eco-logically sustainable, equitable and just for all its members. After centuries of global plunder, the profit-driven, growth-dependent, industrial economy is severely under-mining the life support systems of the planet. An economy based on extracting from a finite system faster than the capacity of the system to regenerate will eventually come to an end—either through collapse or through our intentional re-organization. Transition is inevitable. Justice is not.

Just Transition strategies were first forged by labor unions and environmental justice groups who saw the need to phase out the industries that were harming workers, community health and the planet, while also providing just pathways for workers into new livelihoods. This original concept of Just Transition was rooted in building alliances between workers in polluting industries and fence-line and frontline communities. Building on that history, Just Transition to us represents a set of aligned strategies to transition whole communities toward thriving economies that provide dignified, productive and ecologically sustainable livelihoods that are governed directly by workers and communities.

A Just Transition requires us to build a visionary economy for life in a way that is very different than the economy we are in now. Constructing a visionary economy for life calls for strategies that

democratize, decentralize and diversify economic activity while we damper down consumption, and (re)distribute resources and power. Just Transition initiatives shift the economy from dirty energy to energy democracy, from funding highways to expanding public transit, from incinerators and landfills to zero waste, from industrial food systems to food sovereignty, from gentrification to community land rights, and from rampant destructive development to ecosystem restoration. Core to a Just Transition is deep democracy in which workers and communities have control over the decisions that affect their daily lives.

Read the report (English PDF) | (Spanish PDF).

Edited by Ingrid H. H. Zabel, Don Duggan-Haas, and Robert M. Ross - Paleontological Research Institution, 2017

The subject of climate change has become so socially and politically polarizing that it may be awkward to bring it up in polite conversation if one is not already sure of where others stand on the issue. But climate change is happening, and it’s essential for all to have an accurate understanding of the findings and implications of climate science: climate change is one of the most critical issues of the 21st century. Indeed, in the context of school curricula, it is difficult to imagine a subject that is not in some way affected by climate change or the processes of mitigating or adapting to it, so there are potentially myriad connections of this subject to just about everything that goes on in the classroom.

Despite this importance, even the basic science of climate change has until recently appeared much less in K-12 education than might be expected. Its presence is now accelerating, however, facilitated in part by its integration into the Next Generation Science Standards, and there are many existing books on climate change and some excellent online resources for teachers to help with integration of climate change into curricula. Yet there exist few user-friendly books on climate change, written for teachers, that include both the basics of climate change science and perspectives on teaching communities of learners across the polarized spectrum. That is a need we seek to help fill with this volume.

This book was written for teachers who could benefit from a “teacher-friendly” resource on climate change.

Read the text (PDF).

By Tadzio Mueller - New Economics Foundation, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2017

Extract: Social movements, it has been argued since their heyday in the late 1960s, are actors, or maybe processes, that expand the limits of the possible, that bring ‘the new’ into the world, precisely because they emerge around problematics that the existing set of social and political institutions cannot find solutions for. At the same time, it is precisely this quality of bringing the new into the world that also brings with it one of the key problems of a politics based in movement(s): how do the gains of social movements become generalised and permanent? It is hard, in fact impossible, to constantly stay mobilised. The German anti-Nuclear movement, for example, fought long and hard against any new nuclear power installation in the country. But nobody can stay in the streets forever, so at some point, it becomes necessary to institutionalise movement gains. It is here where movements often fail – and where, for a variety of reasons, the German Energiewende did not fail. It is therefore to the institutionality of the process we now turn.

I will argue that its remarkable dynamism and resilience are the result of a peculiar combination of local movement processes and national legislation, and of an unusual combination of political and economic logics. It is what it is not because of the basis of a particular purity, but because it lives by an open logic of articulation.

Download PDF

By Uma Outka - Brooklyn Law Review, January 1, 2017

The environmental justice movement in the United States forged a pivotal connection among concerns for social justice, civil rights, and environmental protection. At a time when the federal environmental statutes enacted in the early 1970s were beginning to mature, the movement drew critical attention to the disproportionate environmental harm borne by low-income communities and communities of color. The movement forced environmentalists to reflect on their biases and their commitments — to recognize that urban or degraded landscapes where people live are as much a part of our environment as the remote wilderness of our national parks. It made plain that our laws, designed to protect human health and the environment, were letting environmental justice communities down.

Today, as climate change drive s a shift in the energy sector away from fossil fuels and toward low-carbon resources, calls for “energy justice” and “climate justice” expand the movement’s conceptual reach in the modern context. These justice concerns respond to inequality in the distribut ion of environmental harms, as well as access to the environmental, economic, and social benefits asso ciated with the energy sector and climate policy. The link between climate change, energy, and environmental justice is un mistakable: the energy sector contributes to climate change more than any other industry; climate change is predicted to affect environmental justice communities most; and the energy sector has a long history with environmental injustice. In the United States and around the globe, the energy sector is the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions, causing atmospheric temperatures to rise.

Download PDF