climate change

By various - ILR Worker Institute - March 4, 2022

On Friday, March 4, researchers from Cornell University joined with leaders of the Climate Jobs RI coalition, a group of labor, climate, and community groups in Rhode Island, and discussed a new report unveiled last month that outlined a comprehensive action plan to put RI on the path to becoming the first fully decarbonized state and building an equitable, pro-worker, clean energy economy.

Watch the panel here:

By Nicole A. Murray - Partisan, March 3, 2022

How organized labor can shift us away from dominant car culture and turn the tides of climate crisis at the point of production:

Organized labor is currently faced with the most consequential question of its life: are oil and gas commodities that workers have a right to burn for their own material benefit; or should they be left in the ground?

As an ecosocialist, the answer is clear: no more burning fossil fuels. Organized labor is in the unique position to both disrupt the deep systems that perpetuate dependence on fossil fuels and the products that run on them, while also ensuring production pivots towards the greater public good over individual personal luxury.

One system ripe for disruption is car dependence. Car-centric living requires millions of gallons of fossil fuels be burned into the air, every day, just so people can participate in society. It is a structural problem that requires a large-scale, organized solution that is clear-eyed on both the source and the results of car dependency. 

The existing pattern of development in the US in our urban, suburban and peri-urban spaces reflects an intentional plan by petro-capitalists and the state to center life around the automobile. The Federal Housing Administration subsidized low-density suburban development from the 1930s through the post-war years. Ex-urban homeownership, largely enjoyed exclusively by white families, boosted demand for automobiles, consumer durables, and energy consumption, thereby absorbing overproduction from some of the biggest industries of the time: the oil and automotive industries.¹ Indeed, the self-reinforcing and self-reproducing system of sprawl, cars, and gas make this system difficult to disrupt on a systemic level when the petro-capitalists are still many regions’ top employers and tax payers.

Today, car-centric systems seem fair and normal. Yet Americans collectively owe $1.37 trillion in auto loan debt — 10 times that of medical debt — to collectively burn about 350 millions gallons of finished motor gasoline into the air per day,² dwarfing China in terms of both per capita and total gasoline use.³ Unlike in other sectors such as energy production, global emissions in road transportation are projected to grow, and grow fast.

Make no mistake: it’s the system of automobility as a whole that is unsustainable, not individual use and consumption. Even advances in efficiency, including electrification (electric vehicles) will be wiped out by more widespread adoption especially as auto manufacturers open up markets in the global south.

By Jessica Corbett - Common Dreams, March 3, 2022

"This is an eye-opening moment for humanity to see that the world is aflame with new and old wars caused by fossil fuels," said Fridays for Future. "People only desire to live and exist safely."

Young climate campaigners with Fridays for Future took to the streets across the globe Thursday to stand with the people of Ukraine—whose country was invaded last week by Russian President Vladimir Putin—and call for a world that prioritizes peace and freedom from fossil fuels for all.

As Ukrainian forces and civilians fought Russian invaders who have been accused of war crimes, members of the youth-led movement—who generally hold school strikes on Fridays, inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg—carried signs that said #StandWithUkraine and #NoMoreWars.

Demonstrators also used the hashtags to share updates on social media.

Warsaw, Poland as well as more than 60 cities across the World stands today with Ukraine ✌️

It is a fossil fuel war. We call on the Polish govt and the EU to speed up the clean energy transition and phase-out fossil fuels. #StandWithUkraine #StopWarInUkraine pic.twitter.com/AFNAczZtMl

— Greenpeace Polska (@Greenpeace_PL) March 3, 2022

Sierra Leone in solidarity with Ukraine. No more Wars for resources we no longer need!#PeopleNotProfit !

✊We #StandWithUkraine️ @Fridays4future @GretaThunberg @fff_ukraine pic.twitter.com/79WjiAQueP

— Fridays For Future - Sierra Leone (@FFF_SierraLeone) March 3, 2022

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation, March 2, 2022

The report makes it clear that some thresholds to take action have been passed, leading to irreversible losses and damage, and that this decade is the only window of opportunity to act and that waiting for technological fixes to be invented to “catch up” is not a solution.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the report as an “atlas of human suffering”. He added: “The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal. The world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.”

Rapid and just transitions

ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said: “We understand the urgency and support this report’s endorsement that governments must include justice and social protection as a part of their climate adaption measures.

“Climate-resilient development is enabled when governments, civil society and the private sector prioritise equity and justice. Working people must be central to the plans for rapid and just transitions. The ITUC’s global day of action to Climate- and Employment-Proof Our Work, #CEPOW, on 22 June, takes these demands to the workplace.

“We agree with the report’s recommendation that social protection programmes must include a climate adaption focus, and they must be supported by basic services and infrastructure.

“The report is clear that the worst impacts of climate change are already hitting some of the world’s poorest, most vulnerable communities. A just response is to provide social protection to these people, financed by a global social protection fund as part of a new social contract.

“Most importantly, this has to happen now with just transition plans in every country and every company. The impacts are already devastating for both people and the planet.

“Adaption and mitigation actions must also be implemented immediately. These are vital investments in resilience and the capacity to anticipate and respond to future shocks.”

By Priscilla Claeys, Jasber Singh, and Nettie Wiebe - Agroecology Now, March 1, 2022

Nettie Wiebe, you are one of the women leaders of La Via Campesina (LVC), a transnational peasant movement that defends food sovereignty and unites over 200 million small-scale farmers, agricultural workers and indigenous peoples working the land. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and how you got involved in LVC?

I have farmed all my life. I may have missed a few harvests when I was abroad studying, but otherwise I am committed to, and deeply rooted in, farming. That’s been my life along with academia. I have a PhD in philosophy and in ethics. I have always, in my mind, in my life, made the link between how we live, what we eat and how we think about ourselves. I see it as one package. My intellectual life is not separated from my lived, practical life. I’ve always integrated those two. People sometimes have asked me, what do you need a philosophy degree for? That seems so impractical. And I say no, it’s in fact very practical. I have lots of time to think when I’m driving around and around on fields, but more importantly, our ethical and our intellectual or academic lives need to be embedded in our practical lives. I don’t think we will make any progress on the serious climate and ecological issues unless we think collectively and individually about our positioning here. It’s not just an economic issue, it’s an ethical one.

I have been involved in La Via Campesina for many years. We are small scale farmers here in Saskatchewan (Canada) and when we started farming on our own, we immediately became members of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU, a LVC member organization). Because I am a woman and, because of how academia was then, and maybe still is, in terms of the role of women, I failed to get a permanent position teaching at the University of Saskatchewan. I then stepped away from the University and decided to use my qualifications in the movement, where my heart really was. I became active in the National Farmers’ Union and became the women’s president, for six years and then for the first time in the history of the NFU, actually in the history of any national farm organization in Canada, they elected a woman as their president. So I was the president of the NFU. This was the late 1980s, and the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations were going on. At the NFU, we had already been resisting the US-Canada free trade agreements, which set the parameters for the neoliberal globalization of agriculture. So we had that experience here in Canada, and we knew this corporatization of agriculture was going to be devastating for small-scale farming. In 1993, we sent a delegate to Mons, Belgium where La Via Campesina was created, and we played a major role in organizing the second International Conference of La Via Campesina in Tlaxcala, Mexico in 1996. We already had good relations with peasant groups in the Central American region.

By J. Mijin Cha, Hunter Moskowitz, Matt Phillips, and Lara Skinner - Maine Labor Climate Council, March 2022

This report, written in consultation with researchers at Cornell University’s Worker Institute, examines the interrelated crises of climate breakdown and inequality, and lays out an ambitious roadmap for how Maine can build a renewable energy economy, create good union jobs, and tackle racial and economic inequality.

The report’s science-based recommendations will broadly help our state achieve four goals: quickly decarbonizing Maine’s economy; ensuring that the tens of thousands of new jobs that get created as part of Maine’s energy transition adhere to high labor standards in terms of pay, benefits, training, and job security; bringing underrepresented workers into the clean-energy workforce through well-run apprentice and pre-apprentice programs; and ensuring a just transition for workers and communities most affected by these changes. 

The report sets bold objectives for building out Maine’s renewable energy economy, including:

• Electrifying all state and local vehicles, including school and city buses, by 2040;

• Building a high speed rail corridor from Bangor to Boston while connecting to Lewiston/Auburn;

• Doing deep energy-efficiency retrofits and installing solar on all K-12 public schools and publicly owned buildings by 2035; and

• Installing 3GW of renewable energy by 2030 and upgrading Maine’s energy transmission and storage capacity

Read the report (PDF).

By Cat Hobbs - Red Green Labor, March 1, 2022

As energy bills soar and the climate crisis deepens, there’s only one long-term solution for the energy sector: bringing it into public ownership.

here’s never been a worse time to run our energy system entirely around shareholders. And there’s never been a better time to run energy in public ownership—for people and planet, not profit.As most of us are all too aware, our energy bills will rise by an astonishing £693 in April. Everyone will feel the impact, and for some, it’ll mean a choice between heating and eating. Six million households will be plunged into fuel poverty.

It’s good to see Labour and other voices calling for a one off windfall tax on oil and gas companies of 10% to cut people’s bills. Of course we need this—but the government needs to go much further. The cost of living crisis and the climate crisis won’t be solved without public ownership.

Other countries are already showing us how it can be done: a permanent windfall tax of 56%, driving forward state investment in renewables, running the energy grid in public hands, and cushioning households with a publicly owned supply company. We can copy sensible policies from countries like Norway, Denmark, Germany, and France instead of putting our heads in the sand.

So far, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has ruled out even a one-off windfall tax—but he has plenty of time to change his mind as the full damage of the energy bills hike becomes ever clearer. By 1 April, We Own It is calling on him and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to make a public commitment to the following four steps.

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, March 2022

Protecting the climate requires rapidly reducing the extraction of fossil fuels. That’s a crucial part of the Green New Deal. While the federal government has done little so far to reduce fossil fuel production, people and governments all over the country are taking steps on their own to cut down the extraction of coal, oil, and gas.

Introduction

The U.S. needs to cut around 60% of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 to reach zero net emissions by 2050.[1] The world will need to decrease fossil fuel production by roughly 6% per year between 2022 and 2030 to reach the Paris goal of 1.5°C. Countries are instead planning and projecting an average annual increase of 2%, which by 2030 will result in more than double the production consistent with the 1.5°C limit.[2]

In the previous two commentaries in this series we have shown how initiatives from cities, states, and civil society organizations are expanding climate-safe energy production and reducing energy use through energy efficiency and conservation. These are essential aspects of reducing climate-destroying greenhouse gas emissions, but in themselves they will not halt the burning of fossil fuels. That requires action on the “supply side” – freezing new fossil fuel infrastructure and accelerating the closing of existing production facilities. That is often referred to as a “phaseout” or “managed decline” of fossil fuels.

Such a phaseout of fossil fuel production is necessary to meet the goals of the Green New Deal and President Joe Biden’s climate proposals. The original 2018 Green New Deal resolution submitted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a national 10-year mobilization to achieve 100% of national power generation from renewable sources. Biden’s Build Back Better plan sought 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and net zero GHG emissions by 2050. These goals cannot be met without reducing the amount of fossil fuel that is actually extracted from the earth.[3]

While the US government and corporations are failing to effectively reduce the mining and drilling of fossil fuels, hundreds of efforts at a sub-national level are already cutting their extraction. 50 US cities are already powered entirely by clean and renewable sources of energy. 180 US cities are committed to 100% clean energy.[4] According to a report by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International, Indigenous resistance has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one-quarter of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions.[5] Such reductions are an essential part of a widespread but little-recognized movement we have dubbed the “Green New Deal from Below.”[6]

By staff - Climate Justice Alliance, March 1, 2022

Climate Justice Alliance Calls on White House, Congress, UN to Center Frontline Wisdom/Solutions & Reject False Techno Fixes Accelerating Climate Change

We must keep fossil fuels in the ground; If we take anything away from Part 2 of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment, that should be it. Like so many times before, once again we find ourselves calling on the White House and Congress, and all world leaders to act boldly and courageously to reduce and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions at their source.

As Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) Co-Executive Director, Ozawa Bineshi Albert pointed out after participating in the most recent UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), “we must act with an urgency that is not happening now and we need community leaders experiencing harm to lead with solutions.”

Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of the working group that issued the report explains, “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet… Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.”

However, we cannot rely on unproven fossil fuel industry backed, techno-fixes and market schemes that are really just band-aid approaches to solving the climate crisis: practices that do not guarantee a reduction or elimination of emissions at their source, such as geoengineering approaches like carbon capture and storage, solar radiation management, carbon removal and the like. We must safeguard Earth and all her creatures for generations to come. That means stopping the harm that continues to pollute her for future generations. We must center frontline solutions that are grounded in a Just Transition as we move away from the dig, burn, and dump economy to local, community-controlled renewable and regenerative models that reduce emissions while building community wealth and justice at every turn. 

Together with 1,140 organizations and as a part of the Build Back Fossil Free Coalition in a letter issued last week, we called on President Biden to use his Executive powers to immediately 1) ban all new oil and gas contracts on federal areas, 2) stop approving fossil fuel projects, and 3) declare a climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act that will unlock special powers to fast track renewable projects that will benefit us all.

Additionally, as this report rightly points out, the United States must pay its fair share as the major culprit of climate change and heed the traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples as we craft real solutions and reject false ones that will only serve to accelerate climate chaos in Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and other low-income and vulnerable communities. We must invest in mitigation and adaptation resources for all frontline communities, in the Global South, and all other nations immediately. 

At the same time that the United Nations was preparing to craft this damning report on the fossil fuel industry, the largest delegation of badged participants at the COP26 were fossil fuel lobbyists. Only a few from vulnerable and most impacted communities were allowed in. This is unacceptable – the UN must end rules that restrict and keep out those most impacted by climate change from fully participating in future climate change conferences. Finally, we call on the UN to end its long practice of bowing to pressure from fossil corporations and member nations aligned with them, and reject false solutions that enable polluters to continue business as usual while doing nothing to stop emissions at their source.

This most recent IPCC Assessment focuses on impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation. An upcoming section in April will focus on ways to reduce emissions, and the final part will present lessons to member states during the next Climate Change Conference (COP27) to be held in Egypt. If the nations of the world truly want to solve the climate crisis they will heed the calls of those most impacted and look to them to lead rather than those who created the crisis in the first place; here in the United States that looks like addressing this issue as the emergency that it already is.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability - March 2022

In November 2022 the Biden Administration prepared to sell oil and gas permits for 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico – the largest such sale in US history. Now a federal court has halted the sale because of the failure to adequately assess the impact on climate change.

The court ruled that the Biden Administration must consider the emissions and climate impacts in the leasing program. This ruling will stop not only Lease Sale 257 but future leasing decisions as well.

A sign-on letter urges President Joe Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland not to appeal the decision.

The DOI should now accept the court’s ruling on Lease Sale 257 to vacate the sale and correct the Trump administration’s flawed climate impact assessments that falsely conclude that the resulting emissions from offshore drilling would have no impact on the climate crisis. The DOI should not continue to defend unlawful drilling for oil and gas in public waters in appellate court given the impacts on our climate, clear violations of federal environmental standards, and public commitments made by President Biden to end the practice. https://www.labor4sustainability.org/strike/climate-safe-energy-production-from-below/