Nigeria

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, April 30, 2023

How are workers around the world viewing climate change and its impact on their jobs, their labor conditions, and their industries? For a quick, revealing glimpse at the answer, take a look at the 15-minute video Talking Union, Talking Climate. It provides a dialogue among workers in California, Norway, and Nigeria about labor conditions in the fossil fuel industry, the shift to a green economy, and what a just transition might be.

The video was made by Vivian Price, a former union electrician, now professor and researcher on labor and climate change and a co-author of the LNS report Workers and Communities in Transition: Report of the Just Transition Listening Project. The three workers are Charlie Sandoval, United Steelworkers, California, Kristian Enoksen,Industri Energi, Norway, Orike Didi, PENGASSAN, Nigeria.

By various - Bergen Global CMI/UiB, February 8, 2023

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, May 31, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

• Niger Delta Avengers militants shut down Chevron oil facility - By Ruth Maclean, The Guardian, May 26, 2016; [related] Who are the Niger Delta Avengers? Deep Sea Divers, Sophisticated Explosives, and Sabotage - By staff, Earth First! Newswire, May 26, 2016; [and]: Local leaders supporting militants attacking Nigerian oil production - By Associated Press, FuelFix, May 27, 2016
• The Oil World in Chaos - By Michael Klare, Tom Dispatch, May 26, 2016
• American Unions Form Alliance to Prevent Climate Disaster and Promote Prosperity - By Joe Uehlein and Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability, May 24, 2016
• Leading US union SEIU makes fighting climate change a campaign priority - By Jana Kasperkevic and Oliver Milman, The Guardian, May 24, 2016
• Progressive Nonprofits That Oppose the New Overtime Rules for Low-Income Workers Are Hypocrites - By Ethan Miller, In These Times, May 23, 2016
• Why the Environmental Movement Is Not Winning - By Peter Montague, Huffington Post, (updated) May 23, 2016

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Convergence In Support of Eco-Prisoners & Against Toxic Prisons - June 11-13, 2016
• Flush the TPP - Ongoing through 2016 | #FlushtheTPP
• March for a Clean Energy Revolution - July 24, 2016, Philadelphia | #CleanEnergyMarch
• TWAC Cascadia 2016 - August 8th-15th 2016

The Thin Green Line:

• Dangling from a trestle, protesters provoke police - By Elizabeth Floyd Mair, Hudson Valley Earth First!, May 26, 2016
• Supporters of shipping coal through Oakland say it will bring jobs [in fact there will likely be more jobs if coal isn't shipped through Oakland; see No Coal in Oakland's analysis for details] - By Erin Baldassari, East Bay Times, May 24, 2016
• Fracking Comes to the UK for First Time in Five Years Despite Concerns Over Gas Leaks and Safety Breaches - By Victoria Seabrook, DeSmog UK, May 23, 2016 
  

Just Transition:

• Is the real rich v poor climate battle about to start? - By Ed King, Climate Change News, May 27, 2016
• Environmental groups should come to the aid of coal country - By Pete Maysmith, Grand Junction Sentinel, May 22, 2016
• Electrify the Rail System for a Just Transition From Fossil Fuels - By Patrick Mazza and Bill Moyer, Truthout, May 12, 2016

Bread and Roses:

• Food sovereignty and climate change - By La Via Campesina, Climate and Capitalism, May 28, 2016
• United Church of Christ, representing one million followers, endorses Wendy’s boycott! - By staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, May 27, 2016
• Insurgency, conflict and communalism in Colombia - By José Antonio Gutiérrez D. and Janet Biehl, ROARmag, May 26, 2016
• ZIMSOFF and Ucama farmers join hands to fight for farmer saved seeds - By staff, La Via Campesina, May 26, 2016
• “As people of faith… we pledge to join the boycott of Wendy’s until Wendy’s commits to justice for the workers that make your profits possible.” - By staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, May 25, 2016
• From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Living in the Shadow of Global Agribusiness - By Colin Todhunter, Counterpunch, May 25, 2016
• Kazakhstan: land protesters face police rampage - By Andrei Grishin, People and Nature, May 25, 2016
• Poultry Industry “Sustainability Workshop” Shuts Door to Farmers, Workers, Consumers, Animal Rights Groups - By Jean Willoughby, Rural Advancement Foundation International, May 25, 2016
• Publication: Farm Succession in Romania - By staff, La Via Campesina, May 25, 2016
• Revolt of the ‘Chapulines’: After Strike, Indigenous Mexican Farmworkers Vote To Unionize - By David Bacon, In These Times, May 25, 2016
• Bayer and Monsanto: A Marriage Made in Hell - By Martha Rosenberg and Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association, May 24, 2016; [related]: Bayer ‘Confident’ It Can Still Strike Deal with Monsanto, Merger Could Spell Disaster for Farmers and Global Food Supply - By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch, May 26, 2016; [and] Small Farmers Are Foundation to Food Security, Not Corporations Like Monsanto - By Dr. Vandana Shiva, EcoWatch, May 23, 2016
• Bold, fruity, with a hint of RoundUp... - By Christian Kallen, Sonoma Index-Tribune, May 23, 2016
• Unions join the fight to ban glyphosate in the European Union - By staff, European Trade Union Institute, May 23, 2016
• Toxic ‘red tide’ in Chile prompts investigation of salmon farms - By Jonathan Franklin, The Guardian, May 17, 2016

By Jess Worth; lead image by Jenna Pope - New Internationalist, November 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In September 2014, the $860 million Rockefeller Foundation made an historic announcement. Timed to coincide with massive marches for climate action all over the world, the fund revealed it was going to divest from fossil fuels. Following in the footsteps of the World Council of Churches, the British Medical Association and Stanford University, the latest major institution to make such an announcement is also the most symbolic. Because the Rockefeller fortune owes its very existence to oil.

The Rockefeller story is also the story of the rise and fall of the first ‘oil major’. Standard Oil, founded by John D Rockefeller in 1870, soon came to control the burgeoning US oil industry, from extraction to refining to transportation to retail.

It built an unprecedented monopoly that ultimately became so publicly despised that the US government stepped in and broke it up – birthing Exxon, Mobil and Chevron, among others. But by then, Standard had already set the Western world on a path to oil dependence that we are still shackled to, chain-gang-style, today.

The forced break-up created the Rockefeller millions. A century later, those millions are being used to make a dramatic point: we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the oil age.