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It’s happening: 2016 is the year of climate disobedience

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 06/17/2016 - 17:30

By Kara Moses - Red Pepper, June 14, 2016

Something truly incredible is happening. We're only half way through it, but 2016 is a record-breaking year. The second week of May was extraordinarily spectacular, with records being smashed left right and centre. As tens of thousands of people took direct action in the biggest ever global wave of civil disobedience targeting the world's largest fossil fuel infrastructure projects, energy produced from renewables soared to new heights while coal collapsed to an all-time low, multiple global temperatures records were smashed by the biggest margins ever and Arctic sea ice fell to its lowest ever extent for May.

The 'Break Free' fortnight of action kicked off with Reclaim the Power shutting down the UK's largest opencast coal mine, and went on to see 4,000 people shut down one of Germany’s largest coal mines and power plants for three days; 2,000 people brought the world's largest coal port in Australia to a standstill, and major refineries, rail infrastructure, pipelines, power stations and banks were shut down and disrupted. People took bold action in countries with repressive regimes; Turkey, Nigeria, Brazil, South Africa. The Philippines and Indonesia saw some of the biggest mobilisations, with 10,000 people marching to oppose a new coal-fired power plant in Batangas.

Historic turning point

As thousands stepped up to demand an end to fossil fuels and a switch to renewables, across multiple countries their demands were lived out in reality. In remarkable synchronicity, and what some experts have described as a 'historic turning point', coal generation fell to zero in the UK for the first time in over 100 years. This happened four times in a week (the same week as Break Free) having previously never happened since the first coal-fired generator opened in London in 1882. (This follows a record-breaking day one month earlier when, for the first time, solar produced more power than coal for a full 24 hours). In the same week, Germany's renewables supply met the country's demand (on the third day of occupation of the coal mine and power station), while Portugal ran on renewables for more than four days straight.

Stark reminder

It wasn't all good news though. As a stark reminder of why this sea change is so urgently needed, that same week NASA declared that 2016 was set to be the hottest year ever, probably by the largest margin ever, as April was confirmed to be the hottest April on record - the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records, and smashing the previous record for April by the largest margin yet. This was the third month in a row that the monthly record had been broken by the largest margin ever. When the string of record-smashing months started in February, scientists started talking about a 'climate emergency'.

This came just days after news of the world reaching a 'point of no return' with global concentrations of carbon dioxide reaching the 400 parts per million (ppm) milestone at two important measuring stations, one of which (Cape Grim, Australia) sits in a region of stable CO2 concentrations – climate scientists believe it will never again fall below that point. There is no going back now, a grim forecast indeed.

The record temperatures of recent months are wreaking havoc with ecosystems across the world; a more literal sea change triggered the third recorded global coral bleaching, affecting 93% of the Global Barrier Reefs. In the northern parts of the reef, it’s expected the majority of coral is dead. Meanwhile Arctic sea ice falls to its lowest ever extent for the month of May, prompting fears that this year could set the record of worst ever summer sea ice melt.

Remarkably also during the Break Free fortnight, Shell spilled nearly 90,000 gallons in the Gulf of Mexico - the largest amount of oil since BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster - just shy of qualifying as a 'major' spill under the Coast Guard’s classification system.

All this happened in the space of one fortnight. The fortnight the climate justice movement has been talking about for nearly a year, just the beginning of the promised 'escalation' after the Paris agreement which was predictably inadequate to address the scale of the problem. World governments may have agreed to limit warming to 1.5C but with no legal obligations and no commitments to end fossil fuels, it’s up to us to keep it in the ground. And around the world, people are doing just that and taking matters into their own hands.

Tags: 
climate justice
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Breaking Free
climate change

A Climate Plan that Works for Workers

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 06/15/2016 - 12:30

By James Hutt - Our Times, Summer 2016

For the first time in over a decade, Canada has a government that is not ideologically opposed to even talking about climate change. Instead of criminalizing environmentalists, muzzling scientists and actively lobbying on behalf of the oil industry, Trudeau has promised a new age of cooperation.

Before the election, he committed to developing a national climate strategy by the end of 2016. Last March, all 13 provincial and territorial leaders met in Vancouver to develop that framework.

As the next step, Trudeau has promised to hold countrywide consultations to give people input into the development of the strategy. This is the perfect moment for the labour movement to lead the fight for a solution that tackles unemployment and catastrophic climate change.

By tackling inequity and creating good, unionized jobs, a climate strategy could represent a giant leap forward for the labour movement — but only if we force politicians to act.

Tags: 
green unionism
just transition
Iron and Earth
climate justice
green jobs
labor and environment

Toronto Teach-In Poses Climate Justice Alternative

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 06/15/2016 - 12:23

By John Riddell - East End Against Line 9, June 6, 2016

The People's Climate Plan Teach-in, held in Toronto June 4,[1] took great strides forward in presenting a forceful alternative to the inadequate and deceptive climate action proposals of Canada's federal government. In the opening session, five leading climate activists presented a coherent, unified climate justice strategy, proposing effective action to save the world from climate disaster interlocked with practical measures to assist working people and the poor who are the first victims of global warming. Displayed in the meeting, held in the University of Toronto, were the banners: “Pipelines = Climate Change”; “Stop Line 9”; and (in French) “Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground.”

After lunch, the more than 100 participants split up into training groups of half a dozen to develop skills for effective intervention in the “public consultation” meetings the Trudeau government proposes to hold over the coming three months.

People's Climate Plan

The proposed framework for this intervention is the People's Climate Plan (PCP),[2] a simple structure of three principles (or “pillars”) to guide those taking part in such gatherings.

“We've been to three of these consultations, and we know how they're organized,” PCP activists explained. “Government facilitators divide participants into small groups and then give each group a topic designed to force discussion into a channel favourable to government policy. “For example, they ask ‘How can we combine economic growth with emissions reductions?’ – implying that tar sands expansion is part of the bargain. If you accept the question on their terms, you've already lost the argument.”

If environmentalists argue at cross purposes or try to make too many different points, their voices can be sidelined and ignored. Those speaking for climate justice need to unite around a common focus and strategy. The PCP proposes three principles to assure this focus:

  • Science: keep fossil fuel reserves in the ground.
  • Economics: a rapid transition to a clean energy economy.
  • Justice: for Indigenous peoples, workers affected by the transition, and victims of climate change.

When government facilitators pose inappropriate themes, the PCP spokespersons suggested that we use an “ABC” approach:

  • A: Acknowledge the question posed by the organizers.
  • B: Bridge over to the question you wish to address, which should be aligned with one of the three PCP principles.
  • C: Provide Context to sustain your view, preferably with a personal anecdote or insight that illustrates why you care so much about the issue.

Achieving this degree of focus may seem a tall order for environmental and social activists. Often we use discussion periods to express a broad and seemingly chaotic range of personal viewpoints. We rightly prize our diversity. Yet when entering a discussion structured by a government with quite alien goals, PCP activists suggested, we must harmonize and unify our approaches.

Tags: 
green unionism
just transition
Iron and Earth
green jobs
climate justice
renewable energy
renewable energy workers
Leap Manifesto
Line 9
350
Stand Earth (Forest Ethics)
Idle No More

Why Trade Unionists Should March for a Clean Energy Revolution

Submitted by x332349 on Tue, 06/14/2016 - 17:05

By Joe Uehlein - March for a Clean Energy Revolution, June 14, 2016

Labor Network for Sustainability is calling on trade unionists to go to Philadelphia to march for a  Clean Energy Revolution on Sunday, July 24. Why?

We face the reality of climate change around the world as we digest shocking new data gathered by climate scientists in just the past six months. Climate chaos is upon us and it’s far worse than anyone ever thought.

It is not evident that we, as a society, will meet this challenge.  It’s even less clear that the labor movement will rise to this challenge.  However, the transition is still happening—the clean energy train left the station a decade ago and many are working to keep it moving.

It is time for those of us in the labor movement to rise to the challenge and become a central player in the movement to build a sustainable future for the planet and its people – not only for the survival and well-being of all but also for organized labor’s own self-interest.

Workers need jobs.  The Labor Network for Sustainability’s (LNS) report “The Clean Energy Future: Protecting the Climate, Creating Jobs, Saving Money” outlines a path to 80% greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions by 2050 while creating a lot of high quality jobs in construction and manufacturing at no new costs. It is part of our new  Climate, Jobs, and Justice Project. We consider the Clean Energy Future plan a baseline.  If we are willing to spend more money, we can achieve a lot more.

In fact, organized labor needs to develop its own, worker-friendly plan to protect the climate. Ron Blackwell, former Chief Economist at the AFL-CIO joined with Jeremy Brecher and myself to outline such a plan:  If Not Now, When? A Labor Movement Plan to Address Climate Change. It calls for a massive national program- on the scale of economic mobilization for World War II- to address income inequality and climate change.

Of course, naysayers are fond of repeating that jobs dedicated to fixing the climate aren’t “real jobs,” or good jobs with security, family-supporting wages and benefits. They also like to point out that if these jobs are real, they are mostly non-union. And this is true. We — the labor movement — really need to get busy with strategies to make climate-fixing jobs unionized and part of that is working hard to make them real.

EcoUnionist News #108

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 06/13/2016 - 20:38

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 14, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistleblowers:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
just transition
Thin Green Line
climate justice
agriculture
agricultural workers and peasants
La Via Campesina
renewable energy
renewable energy workers
health and safety
whistleblowers
green jobs
labor and environment

Capital Blight News #108

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 06/13/2016 - 18:42

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 14, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

The Man Behind the Curtain:

Green is the New Red:

Greenwashers:

Disaster Capitalism:

Other News:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW. Please send suggested news items to include in this series to euc [at] iww.org.

Tags: 
capital blight
Eco Unionist News
greenwashing
climate justice
Green is the New Red
privatization
disaster capitalism
ExxonMobil

Advancing Equity in California Climate Policy: A New Social Contract for Low-Carbon Transition

Submitted by x332349 on Mon, 06/13/2016 - 11:15

By Carol Zabin, Abigail Martin, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Manuel Pastor and Jim Sadd - UC Berkeley Labor Center, September 13, 2016

California’s leadership role in climate policy has once again been confirmed by the passage of Senate Bill 32 (Pavley, 2016), which commits the state to the ambitious target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030—staying the course to an 80-percent reduction by 2050. A central issue in the SB 32 political debate, as well as the many related policies that preceded it, is the impact of climate policy on equity: how to ensure that low-income and working-class Californians do not dis-proportionately bear the costs and are included in the benefits of California’s transition to a low-carbon economy. This report presents a Climate Policy Equity Framework to assist California decision-makers interested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in ways that promote economic, social, and environmental equity. We suggest that policymakers, regulators, community groups, advocacy organizations, and business interests should develop a “social contract” to manage a transition to a low-carbon economy that both maximizes the benefits of low-carbon economic development and minimizes the risks to working people and disadvantaged communities. This social contract can strengthen the broad political coalition needed to stay the course on the state’s ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals, particularly in the face of accelerating greenhouse gas emission reductions and a legal challenge to the constitutionality of California’s cap-and-trade system. The Climate Policy Equity Framework can then guide policy development and program implementation to reflect and support the social contract.

But what is climate equity? How can it be defined in a way that promotes both good jobs and prioritizes those communities that are hardest hit by climate change, multiple environmental hazards, and socio-economic stressors? What key criteria can then be used to develop and assess policies such as renewable portfolio standards, incentives for energy retrofits, cap and trade, transit-oriented development, low-carbon fuels and vehicle deployment, and much more? And finally, when faced with trade-offs between different equity criteria or tensions between environmental justice and labor interests, how can decision-makers maximize equity outcomes?

To answer these questions, this report proposes a “Climate Policy Equity Framework” that operates at three levels to:

  • Articulate equity principles and goals to guide policy design;
  • Present key criteria to analyze how close a particular climate policy or program comes to meeting these equity goals; and
  • Propose indicators that point the way to mechanisms and strategies to advance climate equity.

We then apply these equity criteria to assess progress on environmental justice, economic equity, and public accountability goals, using the limited data currently available. Our assessment highlights positive developments, remaining challenges, and the data gaps that must be filled to facilitate more complete assessments in the future. We also apply the criteria and indicators to two specific climate policy arenas—energy efficiency and renewable energy—to illustrate how to improve the equity outcomes of specific climate policies and programs. Finally, we present a preliminary set of recommendations to illustrate some concrete opportunities for equitable climate initiatives.

Read the report (PDF).

Tags: 
just transition
labor and environment
decarbonization
climate change
climate justice
green unionism
University of California
cap-and-trade
labor
unions
reports
publications

Railroad Workers United Former Co-Chair and Organizer Mark Burrows Speaks at Chicago Break Free Rally

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 06/08/2016 - 18:50

On Sunday, May 15th in Whiting, Indiana, former RWU Co-Chair Mark Burrows was invited to speak to a group of community members and environmental activists about rail safety. Mark touched on the Lac Megantic tragedy and frame-up of railroad workers in Canada, crew fatigue and single employee train crews.

Tags: 
Railroad Workers United (RWU)
railroad workers
green unionism
climate justice
just transition
Mark Burrows
Railcon15
health and safety
Lac-Mégantic
Breaking Free

EcoUnionist News #107

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 06/06/2016 - 21:17

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

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

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
just transition
Thin Green Line
climate justice
agriculture
agricultural workers and peasants
La Via Campesina
renewable energy workers
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
health and safety
whistleblowers
green jobs
labor and environment

Abandoning Doubt & Denial, School District Officially Embraces Climate Literacy

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 06/06/2016 - 16:00

By Bill Bigelow, Common Dreams - May 20, 2016

In what may be a first in the nation, this week the Portland, Oregon school board passed a sweeping “climate justice” resolution that commits the school district to “abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity.” The resolution further commits the school district to develop a plan to “address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.”

The resolution is the product of a months-long effort by teachers, parents, students, and climate justice activists to press the Portland school district to make “climate literacy” a priority. It grew out of a November gathering of teachers and climate activists sponsored by 350PDX, Portland’s affiliate of the climate justice organization, 350.org. The group’s resolution was endorsed by more than 30 community organizations. Portland’s Board of Education approved it unanimously late Tuesday evening, cheered by dozens of teachers, students, and activists from 350PDX, the Raging Grannies, Rising Tide, the Sierra Club, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, Climate Jobs PDX, and a host of other groups.

The resolution’s “recitals”—its guiding principles—address the characteristics that the Portland school district seeks to nurture in its students: “All Portland Public Schools students should develop confidence and passion when it comes to making a positive difference in society, and come to see themselves as activists and leaders for social and environmental justice—especially through seeing the diversity of people around the world who are fighting the root causes of climate change; and it is vital that students reflect on local impacts of the climate crisis, and recognize how their own communities and lives are implicated…”

Portland’s resolution also calls for training in green jobs, and notes that “as our society moves rapidly and definitively away from fossil fuels, we will need to prepare our students for robust job opportunities in green technologies, construction, and restoration efforts…”

The school district’s commitment to rid itself of text materials that encourage students to doubt the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity was prompted by the school district’s long use of materials that do just that. One textbook still in use in Portland schools is Physical Science: Concepts in Action, which informs high school students that “Carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, and other sources may contribute to global warming”—implying that motor vehicles and power plants may not contribute to global warming. The book’s brief section on climate change consistently uses may and might and could to sow doubt about the severity and human causes of climate change.

Another text used with almost all Portland high school students is Holt McDougal’s Modern World History, which includes a scant three paragraphs on climate change, the second of which begins: “Not all scientists agree with the theory of the greenhouse effect.” Presumably, Portland’s new policy will require that these texts be abandoned.

Rather than asking for the adoption of new textbooks, Portland’s resolution imagines a collective process to create and disseminate new materials: The school district will commit itself “to providing teachers, administrators, and other school personnel with professional development, curricular materials, and outdoor and field studies that explore the breadth of causes and consequences of the climate crisis as well as potential solutions that address the root causes of the crisis; and do so in ways that are participatory, imaginative, and respectful of students’ and teachers’ creativity and eagerness to be part of addressing global problems, and that build a sense of personal efficacy and empowerment…”

Portland’s resolution also acknowledges that this curriculum development will not come from education corporations, but needs to be a grassroots process, “drawing on local resources to build climate justice curriculum—especially inviting the participation of people from ‘frontline’ communities, which have been the first and hardest hit by climate change—and people who are here, in part, as climate refugees…”

In their testimony in support of the climate justice resolution, a number of activists mentioned how they were inspired by their participation in the recent “Break Free” demonstrations at the Shell and Tesoro oil refineries in Anacortes, Washington. High school student Gabrielle Lemieux told the school board, “We put our bodies on the line by risking arrest with protests and even a blockade of the railroad tracks leading to two major oil refineries.

“I am 17 years old. While I was there, I was asked several times why at my age, I felt it was necessary to risk arrest by standing with other activists. People said to me, ‘You have a whole lifetime ahead of you to get arrested, to do this kind of work.’

“My response is: We don’t have my lifetime to wait. We don’t even have the couple years it will be before I’m truly an adult. My action starts now, or it works never.”

The school board did not accept all components of the resolution introduced by climate justice activists. One plank called on the school district not “to engage in any partnerships with fossil fuel companies, which offer legitimacy to these companies”—targeting Chevron’s Donors Choose program. Another plank in the activists’ version of the climate justice resolution—which the school board omitted—asked the school district to express solidarity with the recent Portland City Council measure opposing “expansion of infrastructure whose primary purpose is transporting or storing fossil fuels in or through Portland or adjacent waterways.”

Still, climate justice resolution organizers and their many supporters who attended this week’s school board meeting were jubilant after the board’s unanimous vote. The vote was greeted with tears, hugs, high fives, and a standing ovation.

As Lincoln High School teacher Tim Swinehart commented after the vote. “Now the real work begins: transforming the principles of this resolution into the education of climate literate students across the district who feel empowered to work toward a more just and sustainable future.”

Read the full text of the Climate Justice resolution here (pdf).

Tags: 
green unionism
teachers
Oregon Education Association
climate justice

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