climate change

By Staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 2021

New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has announced that New York State’s Common Retirement Fund, valued at over $226 billion, will decarbonize by 2040. The plan includes interim trajectory goals, rigorous reporting, staff hiring, and transparency.

New York State is the largest pension fund in the world to take this kind of bold and comprehensive climate action. The announcement follows an eight-year campaign by #DivestNY, a coalition of more than 40 different groups.

Nancy Romer, chair of the environmental justice working group of Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York(CUNY)/American Federation of Teachers 2334, representing 30,000 faculty and professional staff at CUNY, says, “As state workers, we stand in solidarity with other state workers who can rest assured that their hard-earned pension funds will be protected from the failing fossil fuel sector of our economy and from the destructive effects it has on our planet’s climate.” Doug Bullock, a state pensioner and Albany County Central Federation of Labor first Vice President, says:

I urge the members and leadership of my union the Public Employees Federation and CSEA (Civil Service Employees Association) and NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) to support “decarbonize the NYS Pension Fund” which includes divesting from fossil fuel corporations and is a major step forward by Comptroller DiNapoli. This divestment will be converted to investing in renewable and sustainable energy sources, making our fund more fiscally responsible and valuable during the climate change crisis. The Albany County Central Federation of Labor passed a resolution supporting divestment in fossil fuels as did the Troy Area Labor Council (TALC). As First Vice President of ACCFL and Delegate to TALC, I urge the entire labor movement to decarbonize pension funds.”

DivestNY and Local unions in NYSUT are now calling for fossil fuel divestment from the New York State Teachers Retirement System as a next step.

By staff - Environmental Defense, January 2021

This brief investigates the actual state of employment in Canada’s fossil fuel industry. It explains why the clean economy transition is manageable for workers in fossil fuel industries and should start now. And it provides ten principles that we should be following to make this transition fair and effective.

This brief summarizes the findings of Employment Transitions and the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels, a report authored by economist Jim Stanford at the Centre for Future Work.

Read the text (PDF).

By Jim Stanford - Centre for Future Work, December 16, 2020

Climate change poses a fundamental threat to the well-being and security of people everywhere. And Australia is on the front lines of the challenge. We have already experienced some of the fastest and most intense consequences of climate change, in many forms: extreme heat, droughts, floods, extreme weather and catastrophic bushfires (as in 2019-20). Climate change is no longer an abstract or hypothetical worry. It is a clear and present danger, and we are already paying for it: with more frequent disasters, soaring insurance premiums, and measurable health costs.

The problem of climate change is global; emissions and pollution do not respect national borders. But to address the global threat, every country must play its part. And Australia has a special responsibility to act, and quickly, for several reasons:

• We are suffering huge costs because of climate change.
  We are a rich country, that can afford to invest in stabilising the climate.
• We are one of the worst greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters in the world.
• In fact, as shown in Figure 1, Australia has the highest GHG emissions per capita of any of the 36 industrial countries in the

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Our emissions – around 22 tonnes of CO2 equivalent for every Australian – are almost twice as high as the OECD average. We emit 4 times per person more than the average Swede.

Worse yet, Australia has been very slow in addressing climate change with effective and consistent policies. Climate policy has become a political wedge issue, subject to reversals and changes in direction depending on the fleeting political imperatives of the day. After a temporary decline (largely sparked by a short-lived national carbon tax, which was then abolished in 2014), Australia’s total emissions have increased again in recent years (see Figure 2). Under existing policies, emissions are projected to stay at or above current levels over the coming decade.

Read the text (PDF).

By various - Oil Change International, December 13, 2020

By Staff - Fossil Free, December 9, 2020

New York — Today, New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli announced that the $226 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund (Fund) is moving to divest from the riskiest oil and gas companies by 2025 and decarbonize by 2040. 

New York’s announcement is the biggest leap forward worldwide on climate finance action in 2020, an otherwise bleak year for the planet. It creates the most comprehensive program of any large public fund worldwide to divest from fossil fuels, decarbonize across a massive portfolio, and put major financial pressure on public companies — from auto companies to utilities — to align their operations with the scale of climate action needed to stave off worldwide catastrophe.

The victory comes eight years after New Yorkers launched the #DivestNY campaign, days ahead of the December 12 fifth anniversary of the Paris climate accord signing, and sets the bar for climate finance action ahead of COP26 next year in Scotland.

Comptroller DiNapoli is taking a ground-breaking, systematic approach to reviewing and assessing each fossil fuel company sub-sector, with a process grounded in fiduciary responsibility. The results of the first review, targeting the coal sub-sector and completed earlier this year, resulted in divestment from 22 coal companies. Similar divestment action is anticipated from the current tar sands review, which is set to conclude next month. After the tar sands review, the Comptroller will review fracking companies,Oil majors, fossil fuel service companies, and oil and gas transportation and pipelines. All reviews and divestment actions will be completed by 2025.

Just like New York City’s 2018 announcement of a five-year plan to divest its massive pension funds from fossil fuels, today’s announcement by Comptroller DiNapoli will reverberate globally, boosting divestment and climate finance campaigns across the nation and around the world. The commitment to decarbonize the Fund by 2040 is ten years sooner than any other US pension fund. This plan also includes interim trajectory goals, rigorous reporting, staff hiring, and transparency. 

NYS-CRF historically has held over $12 billion in fossil fuels, including more than $1 billion invested in ExxonMobil alone. Divestment will ensure that the NYS fund will end such financing. 

To celebrate this victory and encourage funds across the country and around the world to take similar action, the multiracial, multi-generational #DivestNY coalition is hosting a virtual press conference and rally at 10amEST today, featuring youth activists, pensioners, financial experts, and academics, along with Bill McKibben, New York State Senator Liz Krueger, and Assemblymember Felix Ortiz. The legislators co-prime sponsored divestment legislation and pushed for such historic action.

The #DivestNY coalition, composed of 40+ groups, won this campaign through focused and diligent campaigning over many years. The campaign demand launched after Superstorm Sandy devastated the Northeast in 2012, costing nearly $70 billion in damages.

In the face of COVID-19, the coalition shifted into virtual campaigning and video conference advocacy and lobbying, escalating momentum toward this victory. In September, 1100+ Academics sent a letter to Comptroller DiNapoli urging him to divest from fossil fuels. To date, over 1300 institutions representing more than $14 trillion in assets have committed to some level of fossil fuel divestment.

Today’s announcement also builds momentum for activists and experts to convince the $120 billion New York State Teachers’ pension fund to divest. The #DivestNY coalition will continue to work alongside Comptroller DiNapoli, the expanding team at the Comptroller’s office working on climate finance, and public officials at all levels to ensure this commitment, its benchmarks, and a fossil free world become reality.

By Sharan Burrow, et. al. - International Trade Union Confederation, December 9, 2020

By Jeremey Brecher - Labor Network for Sustinability, December 8, 2020

The climate plan released by Joe Biden in August presents a wide-ranging program for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The previous commentary, “The Biden Climate Plan: What it Proposes–Part 1” summarizes that plan. This commentary identifies the points of conflict on climate policy and related social policies that are likely to emerge within a Biden administration. It concludes by assessing how advocates of a Green New Deal can take advantage of the Biden program to fight for a climate-safe, worker-friendly, socially-just outcome. To read this commentary, please visit: this page.

By various - Labor Network for Sustainability, December 5, 2021

With the election of a President who acknowledges the threats of climate change and of ongoing economic devastation for working people, we have an opportunity to seriously address how to make a transition to a climate-safe, socially-just, worker-friendly society. The primary objective of the Just Transition Listening Project (JTLP) is to ensure workers and community voices are central to the conversation of a Green New Deal and other climate policies. 

On Saturday, Dec. 5 at 12 p.m. Eastern, the Labor Network for Sustainability and the JTLP Organizing Committee will bring together labor and policy leaders to share perspectives, stories, and strategies from the frontlines of the struggle for a just transition globally. This will be the sixth webinar in the JTLP series. In addition to the webinar series we conducted interviews with more than 100 community leaders and workers to learn of their experiences and perspectives on Just Transition. Our report from these interviews will be available in January.

From the experiences of metalworkers in South Africa to the coal miners in Spain, to workers across sectors in Latin America and across the world, the struggle for a just transition is truly global. In order to effectively address the worldwide transitions we are facing in our jobs, environments, and homes, we must demand a worldwide response. Join us on Saturday, Dec. 5 as we learn from each other and set the stage for finalizing and distributing our report to help us win the struggle to protect jobs, communities and the right to thrive as we work toward a society that is ecologically sustainable and just. 

By Beth Stratford - Open Democracy, December 4, 2020

It’s time to stop talking past each other and unite against the real enemies of environmental justice.

The row about ecological limits to growth is back with a vengeance. On one side are those who are deeply sceptical about the idea of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’. They argue that to be sure of offering a good life for all within planetary boundaries, we need to kick our addiction to consumption growth (in wealthy countries at least). These ‘green growth sceptics’ include those advocating for ‘degrowth’, ‘prosperity without growth’, ‘steady state economics’, ‘doughnut economics’ and ‘wellbeing economics’.

In the opposite corner are ‘green growth’ advocates who believe that the historical relationship between GDP and environmental impact can be not just weakened but effectively severed. For green growthers, the key to maintaining a habitable planet is decoupling — reducing the environmental impact associated with each pound or dollar of GDP. By deploying new technologies, and shifting the nature of our consumption, they argue we can do our bit for the environment while continuing to grow GDP, even in wealthy countries.

Green growth sceptics do not dispute the need for decoupling, but observe that the faster we grow the faster we have to decouple. Even a modest goal like 2% growth per year implies doubling the scale of consumption every 35 years. Unfortunately, we have never approached the rates of decoupling that would be necessary for rich countries to get back within their fair share of ecological space while maintaining that kind of exponential growth.

Green growth advocates tend to respond that the historical record shouldn’t be taken as a guide to what is possible in future. Pessimism about future technological breakthroughs will be self-fulfilling, they say.

For some this is a compelling and entertaining debate. But it is not going to be settled in a timeframe that is useful for maintaining a habitable planet. In the meantime, these adversaries are in danger of delivering a major own goal. Because the more time we spend in nerdy (and sometimes venomous) exchanges about decoupling, the less time we have to build the broad-based movement we need to take on the vested interests who benefit from the status quo.

By staff - Biofuel Watch, December 2020

A negative emission technology (NET) is a technological approach to removing greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into the atmosphere. That differs from “mitigation” which focuses on preventing emissions in the first place. Aside from concerns about how future availability of NETs might undermine current and near term mitigation efforts, there are further serious concerns: the technologies that are currently proposed are unproven at commercial scale and may never prove scaleable. They are extremely expensive and could worsen rather than improve our climate woes.

Biofuelwatch has produced a new briefing about Negative Emissions Technologies, with a focus on Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and Direct Air Capture (DAC).

Aside from being unproven, if adopted BECCS could result in yet more forest destruction for bioenergy production. While Drax has a pilot BECCS project at its Yorkshire power station, it has so far failed to store any carbon. DAC is another expensive and unproven technology that aims to bind CO2 with a medium so it can then be separated, compressed and stored underground.

Read the text (PDF).