capital blight

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 7, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

• Remembering Berta Cáceres, Assassinated Honduras Indigenous & Environmental Leader - Silvio Carrillo and Beverly Bell interviewed by Juan González and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, March 4, 2016
• Assassination of our sister in struggle: Berta Cáceres - By Staff, La Via Campesina, March 3, 2016
• Poisoned City: Flint and the Specter of Domestic Terrorism - By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout, March 3, 2016
• David Suzuki and labour movement join forces - By Valentina Ruiz Leotaud, National Observer, March 2, 2016
• DuPont Rakes in Federal Dollars Despite History of Hazards - By Mary Bottari, PR Watch, February 29, 2016
• New York State Pension Funds Lost $5.3 Billion From Fossil Fuel Holdings Over 3 Years - By Joshua S Hill, Clean Technica, February 29, 2016

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Appalachia Resist: Regional Action Camp for Social & Environmental Justice - March 18-21
• Break Free 2016 - May 2016
• Convergence In Support of Eco-Prisoners & Against Toxic Prisons - June 11-13, 2016
• Cove Point Spring Break - March 6-14
• Earth Day to May Day! - April 22-May 1, 2016
• Flush the TPP - Spring 2016 | #FlushtheTPP
• March for a Clean Energy Revolution - July 24, 2016, Philadelphia | #CleanEnergyMarch
• 2016 Labor Notes Conference - April 1-4, 2016

The Thin Green Line:

• City of Warrenton Denies Key Land Use Permits for Proposed Oregon LNG Terminal - By Brett VandenHeuvel, Columbia Riverkeeper, March 4, 2016
• Inside the Fight to Frack a Pennsylvania Township - By Natasha Khan, Truthout, March 4, 2016
• U.S. Marshals Enforce Eminent Domain for Constitution Pipeline - By John Zangas, DC Media Group, March 4, 2016 
• A Hollow Victory for Williams Partners - By Ted Glick, Ted Glick, March 1, 2016
• Oakland: Sen. Hancock introduces four bills to restrict coal exports - By David DeBolt, Contra Costa Times, February 19, 2016

Just Transition:

• From sit-ins to songs to socials, highlights from Leap Day 2016 - By Bianca Mugyenyi, Rabble.Ca, March 4, 2016
• How do we ditch dirty coal power without sending miners to the unemployment line? - By Times Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2016
• Big Solar Brightens Up South Carolina Economy - By Staff, Clean Energy Footprints, March 2, 2016
• Canadian Labour Congress proposes plan to create 1 million 'climate jobs' - By Staff, CBC News, March 2, 2016
• HS2 or HSUK - the quicker, cheaper, emissions-cutting, low impact high speed rail network? - By Colin Elliff, Andrew Coulson & Stephen Stretton, The Ecologist, March 1, 2016
• Mass demo says Trident has got to go - By Tomáš Tengely-Evans, Socialist Worker (UK), March 1, 2016
• A closer look at the Repower Our Schools report and transitioning CMS to solar - By Ryan Pitkin, Creative Loafing, February 17, 2016

Bread and Roses:

• The Wendy’s Boycott begins: Video, photo report from Day One of the Workers’ Voice Tour! - By Staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, March 5, 2016
• Incapable of responding to the dairy crisis, the European Commission faces international peasant farmer delegation - By Andoni Garcia, et. al., La Via Campesina, March 4, 2016
• 2016 Jose Gomez Farmworker Justice Day - By Staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, March 4, 2016
• Farmworkers, Consumers Declare National Boycott of Wendy’s! - By Elena Stein, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, March 3, 2016
• Farmworkers Forced To Go Back To Work After Being Exposed To Pesticide - By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, Think Progress, March 3, 2016
• Historic West Coast Tour with Familias Unidas por la Justicia - By Staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, March 3, 2016
• CTA Review reflects previous government’s priorities, says NFU - By Jan Slomp, Ian Robson, and Terry Boehm, La Via Campesina, March 2, 2016
• Workers embark on Workers’ Voice Tour with wind in their sails thanks to National Council of Churches’ open letter to Wendy’s, Brolick, and Peltz! - By Staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, March 2, 2016
• EU: Roadmap to exit the milk crisis - By Marzia Rezzin, et. al., La Via Campesina, March 1, 2016
• Backpackers 'targeted by dodgy labour hire companies' in 'culture of impunity' - By Robert French, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 1, 2016

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• Explosion rocks refinery in Pasadena, injuring one - By Deborah Wrigley, KTRK TV (ABC 13 Houston), March 5, 2016; [related]: One injured in Texas explosion at Petrobras refinery - By Erwin Seba, Reuters, March 5, 2016
• NJ Transit rail workers holding rally as contract talks continue - By Dan Alexander, New Jersey 101.5 FM, March 5, 2016 
• Scuba diver sucked in to nuclear plant water pipe files suit against Florida Power and Light - By Jared Werksma, WPTV (NBC 5 West Palm Beach), March 4, 2016
• Five reasons Canada must ban asbestos now - By Staff, Canadian Labour Congress, March 3, 2016
• 5 Years Later Fukushima Still Spilling Toxic Nuclear Waste Into Sea, Top Execs Face Criminal Charges - By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch, March 1, 2016
• Garment factory workers in Bangladesh need support, solidarity, not boycott - By Archana Rampure, Rabble.Ca, March 1, 2016
• Georgian Miners Dig In as Protest Enters Second Week - By Nicholas Waller, Georgia Today, March 1, 2016
• Union to Tesla: Gigafactory Worker Protest Is Just the Beginning - By Kirsten Korosec, Fortune, February 29, 2016; [related]: Hundreds walk off Tesla job in Nevada labor dispute - By Staff, KRNV (Western Nevada NBC 4), February 29, 2016
• Audit faults Federal Railroad Administration for lack of oversight on oil trains - By Susan Phillips, State Impact (NPR Pennsylvania), February 26, 2016
• Crane operator fired for refusing high wind working - By Richard Krabbendam, Heavy Lift News, February 22, 2016

By Yves Engler - Rabble.Ca, February 4, 2016

At their finest labour unions are class-conscious organizations that check the corporate elite's influence over public policy. But, even the best Canadian unions have largely failed to provide an alternative vision to the existing system and challenge the power of big business over important areas of our lives. 

Alongside collective-bargaining activities, unions have spearheaded efforts to expand the Canadian Pension Plan and Employment Insurance coverage, to raise minimum wages and to improve labour laws. While these campaigns have directly benefited all workers, unions have also been heavily involved in fights for Medicare and public daycare, programs that serve a wider interest than just people who work for a living.

Over the past few decades most unions have devoted resources to combating sexism, racism and homophobia. They have done so out of a sense of solidarity and an understanding, built upon internal union struggles, that these forms of oppression take their toll on many members and society in general.

But unfortunately unions have generally deferred to the business class regarding much of the social, cultural and even economic sphere. Advertising provides a striking example of this implicit class compromise. On a typical day most people come across hundreds of ads, which greatly influence their consumption habits and social outlook.

Additionally, a media sphere funded through advertising gives corporations significant leverage over the news agenda (companies regularly pull or threaten to pull ads when they are unhappy about a story and simply refuse to advertise in leftist media outlets). Yet most unions have little to say about this expression of capitalist power or the particularly acute psychological burden advertising places on low-income people.

Few (if any) unions have called for blanket restrictions on destructive corporate advertising. In fact, some unions representing media workers have called for more advertising. In response to layoffs at the Toronto Star two years ago, a union representative was quoted in a release saying, "Why cut ad staff when the thing we need most is more ads?"

In another example of how unions concede much of the social, cultural and economic arena to big business, they have given a free pass to the private automobile even though orienting our living spaces around cars is particularly damaging to working-class interests.

As the least accessible and most expensive form of land transportation, car-dominated transport eats up a disproportionate amount of working-class income. Rather than promoting cars, unions should be promoting access to employment, lodging and goods by foot, bike or mass transit as this would greatly benefit lower income people, as well as society in general.

But why not "cars for all" some might ask. One important answer is the environment. A transportation system based on the private automobile is simply not sustainable. Preventing global warming requires drastically reducing the number of cars.

But even aside from the critical environmental question cars are bad for ordinary people.

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).

By staff - It Takes Roots to Weather the Storm - January 2016

The Paris Climate Agreement of December 2015 is a dangerous distraction that threatens all of us. Marked by the heavy influence of the fossil fuel industry, the deal reached at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) never mentions the need to curb extractive energy, and sets goals far below those needed to avert a global catastrophe. The agreement signed by 196 countries does acknowledge the global urgency of the climate crisis, and reflects the strength of the climate movement. But the accord ignores the roots of the crisis, and the very people who have the experience and determination to solve it.

Around the world, negotiators use the term “red line” to signify a figurative point of no return or a limit past which safety can no longer be guaranteed. Our communities, whose very survival is most directly impacted by climate change, have become a living red line. We have been facing the reality of the climate crisis for decades. Our air and water are being poisoned by fossil fuel extraction, our livelihoods are threatened by floods and drought, our communities are the hardest hit and the least protected in extreme weather events—and our demands for our survival and for the rights of future generations are pushing local, national, and global leaders towards real solutions to the climate crisis.

We brought these demands to the UNFCCC 21^st Conference of Parties (COP21) as members of the delegation called “It Takes Roots to Weather the Storm.” Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) organized the delegation, which included leaders and organizers from more than 100 US and Canadian grassroots and Indigenous groups. We helped to mobilize the thousands of people who took to the streets of Paris during the COP21, despite a ban on public protest—and amplified the pressure that Indigenous Peoples, civil society, and grassroots movements have built throughout the 21 years of UN climate talks.

The Paris Agreement coming out of the COP21 allows emissions from fossil fuels to continue at levels that endanger life on the planet, demonstrating just how strongly world leaders are tied to the fossil fuel industry and policies of economic globalization. The emphasis within the UNFCCC process on the strategies of carbon markets consisting of offsets and pollution trading created an atmosphere within the COP21 of business more than regulation. The result is a Paris Agreement that lets developed countries continue to emit dangerously high levels of greenhouse gasses; relies on imaginary technofixes and pollution cap-and-trade schemes that allow big polluters to continue polluting at the source, and results in land grabs and violations of human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Our analysis of the Paris Agreement echoes critiques from social movements around the world, led by those most impacted by both climate disruption and the false promises that governments and corporate interests promote in its wake.

“Frontline communities” are the peoples living directly alongside fossil-fuel pollution and extraction—overwhelmingly Indigenous Peoples, Black, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander peoples in working class, poor, and peasant communities in the US and around the world. In climate disruption and extreme weather events, we are hit first and worst.

We are Mother Earth’s red line. We don’t have the luxury of settling for industry or politicians’ hype or half measures. We know it takes roots to weather the storm and that’s why we are building a people’s climate movement rooted in our communities. We are the frontlines of the solution: keeping fossil fuels in the ground and transforming the economy with innovative, community-led solutions.

By Natalia Paramonov - EcoDefense, December 2015

In four hours of flight from Moscow, in the middle of the country, lies the coal heart of Russia.

Coal mining and burning are generally known to be polluting atmosphere with loads of CO2 and causing climate change. But people of Kuzbass have little concern about global problems. They get used to open-cut mines operating and huge trucks roaring right out of their windows. Shot operations destroy houses, and spoil piles grow up around. Air and rivers are contaminated with coal dust, and fertile land is being devastated.

These particular problems can be discovered only by visiting surroundings of Novokuznetsk. Bad news about violations over environmental rights in Kemerovo Oblast would never reach Moscow themselves. They are hidden behind companies' ambition to get coal at any cost.

Number of official statistics provides evidence for contamination of air, water, and soil, high mortality and sickness rates in Kemerovo Oblast. Local authorities and regulatory bodies, however, prefer to avoid looking into particular cases. There is Kemerovo Oblast with a range of general environmental problems, but there are no particular people whose violated rights need to be protected. This way, there are no victims and no need to pay out compensations or think about mine reclamation.

This report begins with statistic data which reflect environmental conditions in Kuzbass, followed by testimonies of the local residents. Interviews with those suffered from coal production but unable to get it acknowledged and fully compensated by the state are enclosed in the appendix.

Behind every figure of the official statistics presented below, there are lives of people who live in Kuzbass and battle for their rights.

Read the report (PDF).

By various - Carbon Trade Watch, December 2015

Over twenty years have passed since governments within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began to discuss the impending climate crisis. Year after year, we witness the talks moving further away from identifying the root causes of climate change while the increasing impacts affect even more peoples and regions. Every meeting has given more space for corporate involvement and less to the voices of those directly affected by these climate policies. Despite the promoters’ fancy “green” campaigns and videos, the main focus at the climate negotiations continues to be about saving the free-market economy for those who are holding the cards – the biggest transnational corporations and financial institutions. The same corporations that are largely behind the destruction of forests, rivers, diversity, territories – as well as the violation of human and collective rights and so on – are also the main polluters and plunderers of the Earth.

The climate crisis poses a real threat to the current economic model which is based on the continuous extraction and production of fossil fuels, hydrocarbons and “natural resources” such as land, minerals, wood and agriculture. If talks were to seriously address climate change, there would need to be a discussion on the many ways to support the hundreds of thousand of small-scale farmers, fishers, Indigenous Peoples, forest-dwelling communities and others whose territories and livelihoods are at risk from capital expansion, and how to transition to different economic systems where fossil fuels could be kept underground; where the consumption “mantra” would shift towards more local, diverse and collective discourses and practices. However, the hegemonic and colonial powers are once more violently closing doors, creating more “structural adjustments” and, ultimately, harming the people who are the least responsible for current and historical pollution levels suffering the most from the impacts.

The fallacy that we can continue with the same economic model is irremediably flawed, bankrolled by big polluters, and intrinsically linked to land and livelihoods grabbing, especially in the Global South. Nonetheless, mechanisms like carbon markets, which expand the extractivist and free-market logic, continue to be promoted as unilateral, program- matic “solutions” to mitigate climate change and address deforestation and biodiversity loss. From carbon trading to forests and biodiversity offsets, the climate crisis has been turned into a business opportunity, worsening the already felt impacts, especially for those who are the least responsible. Debates over molecules of carbon being accounted for and “moved” or “stored” from one location to the other detracts from the necessary debates on shifting away from extraction, unjust power structures and oppression. While being fully informed of the causes of climate change, international climate negotiations strive to ensure that the hegemonic economic model expands and rewards polluters.

The consequence is that “climate policies” (aka economic policies) finance the most destructive industries and polluters, often destroying genuinely effective actions that support community livelihoods and keep fossil fuels in the ground. Moreover, these policies further the “financialization of nature” process, which presupposes the separation and quantification of the Earth’s cycles and functions – such as carbon, water and biodiversity – in or-der to turn them into “units” or “titles” that can be sold in financial and speculative markets. With governments establishing legal frameworks to set these markets in place, they also have provided the financial “infrastructure” for negotiating financial “instruments”, by using derivatives, hedge funds and others. While financial markets have a growing influence over economic policies, the “financialization of nature” hands over the management to the financial markets, whose sole concern is to further accumulate capital.

Read the report (PDF).

By Erik D. Kojola - Sage Publications, August 20, 2015

Environmental protection is presumed to damper economic growth and media accounts of resource extraction often portray trade-offs between jobs and the environment. However, there is limited evidence that environmental protection universally costs jobs and heavily polluting industries provide few jobs in comparison to environmental impacts.

Therefore, how has media discourse contributed to the taken-for-granted division between the economy and the environment? This paper uses the Keystone XL pipeline controversy as a case of the symbolical conflict between supporters of growth and conservation to explore the role of ideology and power in media discourse.

I use frame analysis of newspaper articles to explore the representations of labor and the environment and how hegemonic ideology legitimizes resource extraction. My analysis reveals binary framing that constructed the pipeline as a political controversy over the trade-off between the environment and the economy, which made conflict between workers and environmentalists sensible, and silenced alternatives.

Read the text (link).

By Robert Galbraith, Gin Armstrong, and Kevin Connor - Public Accountability Initiative, February 2015

The global development of ‘unconventional’ fossil fuels (UFF) such as shale gas has provoked much debate involving scientists,industry, political decision-makers, environmental groups and civil society. More than a decade of large- scale development in North America has left a legacy of environmental damage, primarily resulting from the use of high- volume horizontal hydraulic-fracturing (also known as ‘fracking’) to extract the unconventional oil and gas. Despite the controversy surrounding this technique, the numerous unknowns and uncertainties concerning its impacts and the growing number of questions about the economic benefits of this industry, oil and gas operators are eager to identify new opportunities and so are engaged in a battle to make frackingpublicly and socially acceptable worldwide.

Read the report (PDF).