climate justice

In a small church in the Albany, NY’s low-income, predominantly African-American South End, forty people were gathered for a community meeting. They were organizing a protest against trains carrying potentially explosive oil – dubbed by the residents “bomb trains” — that were running through their neighborhood. City Counselor Vivian Kornegay told the group that many municipalities had opposed the bomb trains and other dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure, but had little power to protect their residents; it was up to a “people’s movement” to do so. “What we want is for all of us to be free, healthy, and safe – and for our planet to be a better place to live.”

Maeve McBride, an organizer for 350.org, explained that the protest was part of a global campaign of direct action and civil disobedience aiming to keep 80% of all fossil fuels in the ground. Pastor Mark Johnson of the St. John’s Church of God in Christ said, “I heard at a meeting last night that we have a constitutional right to clean water and clean air.” Maeve McBride explained that the action was part of a “new wave” that was drawing on a “new paradigm” – “using civil disobedience to protect the public trust,” which included water, air, and the climate itself.

Organizers had met with officials from the police and sheriff’s offices and reported, “they abhor the trains – and are very supportive of us.” Then the group received direct action training. They read out loud the “action agreement” pledging nonviolent behavior and mutual support. Then they lined up to march and while police officers (played by the trainers) ordered them to move away, they scrambled onto an imaginary railroad track. Later that evening the steering committee for Albany Break Free planned outreach to supporting organizations, phone banks, canvassing, leafleting, and details of the action.

The Albany organizers had learned about the “new paradigm” when 350.org North American co-organizers of Break Free From Fossil Fuels had decided to use the “public trust” principle to frame US Break Free actions and formed a Break Free Public Trust Work Group to spread the idea. Some on the The Break Free Albany steering committee had participated in the working group’s webinar on using the public trust doctrine, and they decided to integrate the Public Trust Proclamation into their “topline message” and to hand out the Break Free Public Trust Proclamation to all participants. (The Proclamation appears at the end of this article.]

A week before the action the Albany Break Free steering committee defined their basic message. Potentially explosive crude oil “bomb trains” roll through Albany and surrounding communities, polluting the air and contributing to the climate crisis. Primarily low-income communities of color are put at risk. The urgent need to address climate change means that fossil fuels have to be left in the ground and a transition made to a “twenty-first century renewable energy economy.” They called for an end to all new fossil fuel infrastructure, including pipelines, power plants, compressor stations, and storage tanks. And they called for a just transition away from fossil fuel energy with training and jobs for affected workers, so “no worker is left behind.”

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Breaking free from fossil fuels in Cascadia: The solutions path forward

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 05/18/2016 - 19:54

By Patrick Mazza - Cascadia Planet, May 18, 2016

Over the first half of May climate warriors put their bodies in the way of fossil fueled business as usual around the world. Break Free civil disobedience events targeted major carbon bombs on six continents.

Here in Cascadia a tent city held a rail line leading into the region’s largest oil refinery complex at Anacortes, Washington for 36 hours. In Newcastle, Australia people power disrupted the world’s largest coal port by land and sea. Some of the largest coal plants in Brazil and Germany, and the world’s largest open-pit coal mine in Britain, were just some of the 20 sites around the world where around 30,000 people stood up to say now is time to break free from coal, oil and gas, and the carbon pollution disrupting weather patterns across the planet. An off-the-charts April temperature spike underscored the urgency of rapid transition to clean, renewable energy.

The Break Free actions were always intended to focus this necessity, to put forward a powerful solutions “yes" to complement the fossil fuels “no.” Now the real work begins.

Fortunately, the solutions are with us, and already working in many places. We can move beyond an economy based on energy from coal, oil and gas. We can make a just transition to a world run on 100% renewable energy, create millions of new jobs, and build stronger communities. Following are eight solutions that we can forward to break free from fossil fuels in Cascadia:

Four Solutions for Clean Energy show how we can move to 100% renewables in electrical power, transportation and buildings.
Four Solutions for a Socially Just Transition line out how to move our communities beyond fossil fuels while improving the quality of life, especially for lower-income people, and providing new opportunities for displaced workers.

The solutions are given in an order, but it does not indicate a ranking. All are important and necessary. We need to pursue all eight to meet the huge climate and energy challenges facing us. We can unite a broad movement around these solutions, and create a better world for ourselves and our children. It’s up to us, and the solutions are at hand.

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EcoUnionist News #104 - Special #BreakingFree 2016 Edition

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 05/16/2016 - 20:12

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, May 17, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

LIVE BLOG: Climate Resistance Breaks Free from Fossil Fuels - By staff, Rising Tide North America, May 14, 2016; [related]: Climate Resistance Escalates Against the Fossil Fuel Empire - By staff, Rising Tide North America, May 14, 2016
Break Free or Burn in Hell: a Message From the Canadian Tar Sands - By Paul Street, CounterPunch, May 9, 2016
Exxon scrambles to contain climate crusade - By Andrew Restuccia and Elana Schor, Politico, May 9, 2016
Is a Fear of Death at the Heart of Capitalism? - By James K. Rowe, The Arrow, April 28, 2016

Ongoing Mobilizations:

Convergence In Support of Eco-Prisoners & Against Toxic Prisons - June 11-13, 2016
Flush the TPP - Ongoing through 2016 | #FlushtheTPP
It’s Time For the Rubber Stamp Rebellion - May 15-22, 2016 | #NoNewPermits #NoPipelines #NoLNG
March for a Clean Energy Revolution - July 24, 2016, Philadelphia | #CleanEnergyMarch
TWAC Cascadia 2016 - August 8th-15th 2016

Tags:

agricultural workers and peasants

agribusiness

agroecology

Coalition of Immokalee Workers

labor and environment

whistleblowers

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Anthropocene vs Capitalocene: a Reflection on the Question, “What Have I Done?”

Submitted by x344543 on Sun, 05/15/2016 - 11:58

By Chris Burnett - Counterpunch, May 13, 2016

The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) has yet to recognize, for scientific reasons, our current geological epoch as the Anthropocene, or “Age of Humans”. The term was coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 due to the fact that humans are changing the face of the planet, and are clearly responsible for the current 6th mass extinction event and climate disruption. Eco-radicals – black-red-green – might prefer the term Capitalocene, or the “Age of Capital”.

The former implies that humanity is an undifferentiated whole while the latter suggests that capital, and its system of class and power relations, are the real problem, the real driving force that has altered the planet so extensively. I prefer the latter, of course, for political reasons.

There is no substitute for understanding the historical forces of capitalism that has brought us to the edge. The logic of capitalism is grow or die, and we are all being dragged towards the die part. We need targets of accountability, and we need remedies for the dispossessed. There is a biological debt that must be paid by the most rapacious among us.

But yet, I am still sympathetic to the Anthropocene label because it makes me feel personally responsible. The collective “we”. There is something unsettling about it, and we all need to be immediately unsettled. It puts the burden of action on all of us, and counterintuitively, might pull us out of our comfortable anthropocentric worldview. Eco-radicals rightly put the blame at the doorstep of capitalism and the state, but we should all feel personally responsible, in our collective guts.

There are approximately 150-200 species going extinct everyday. The background rate of the normal extinction process is roughly one to five species a year. We are at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate today due to human activities. As far as the last members of a doomed species might be concerned, humans are responsible, not just the capitalist class. To them, it is the Anthropocene. Might your perspective on this issue be determined by which side of the axe you are on?

If I were to anthropomorphize those lost species, they might provide us an analogy to chew on. They might say, “imagine the surviving members of countless families murdered from bombs dropped by Bush, or assassinated with drones sent by Obama. Do you think they would care about the internal political dynamics of the US after such a tragedy?”

From the survivors perspective, it is the US government, the US Empire system, that killed their relatives. Our friends pondering this analogy for us might just make the same argument in regards to the human race: “yes, okay, we understand there are class distinctions. But, from our perspective, you are the problem. You are that system.”

I am reminded of Noam Chomsky’s use of the word “we” when discussing the crimes of empire. I recall feeling defensive when he implied we all had responsibility, because, well, I opposed imperialism! But I think he was right. In his 1967 essay, The Responsibility of Intellectuals, he writes, reflecting on Dwight Macdonald’s question as to what extent the people are responsible for their own government’s crimes,

“We can hardly avoid asking ourselves to what extent the American people bear responsibility for the savage American assault on a largely helpless rural population in Vietnam… As for those of us who stood by in silence and apathy as this catastrophe slowly took shape over the past dozen years – on what page of history do we find our proper place? Only the most insensible can escape these questions.”

Continuing at the end of the essay,

“Let me finally return to Dwight Macdonald and the responsibility of intellectuals. Macdonald quotes an interview with a death-camp paymaster who burst into tears when told that the Russians would hang him. “Why should they? What have I done?” he asked. Macdonald concludes: “Only those who are willing to resist authority themselves when it conflicts too intolerably with their personal moral code, only they have the right to condemn the death-camp paymaster.” The question, “What have I done?” is one that we may well ask ourselves, as we read each day of fresh atrocities in Vietnam – as we create, or mouth, or tolerate the deceptions that will be used to justify the next defense of freedom.”

That is the question we are all faced with today, “What have I done?”, as we observe fresh atrocities committed against the biosphere and all life on this planet. Only those that resist authority and capitalism have the right to condemn our modern death-camp paymasters.

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SEIU 1021 Resolution in support of Climate Justice Work

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 05/13/2016 - 16:33

By SEIU 1021 - Resolution Adopted April 13, 2016

Note: The IWW is not affiliated with SEIU or any of its locals. This is posted for informational purposes only.

I. Climate Change is real. It is here. It is advancing. The only question is how bad things will become. We in Local 1021, our neighbors, and communities are already experiencing the effects of Climate Change in our work and lives. In California, headlines have focused on the drought caused by climate change, but the real effects will be far deeper and more severe than even that.

II. The world's scientists are almost unanimous in reporting that our environment is about to cross a point of no return that could endanger human life itself. This past year, SElU leaders and members were in Paris for the COP 21 meeting where the United States and 158 other countries established the ambitious goal of limiting the world's temperature rise to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

III. Climate Change is largely fueled by carbon energy sources whose emissions are overwhelming our earth's ability to absorb that carbon. The buildup of carbon in our atmosphere is trapping heat and cooking our planet.

IV. Our economic system depends on extracting and depleting resources and creating waste at unsustainable levels. The environment is treated as an unlimited resource and waste dumping ground. Products are designed to be disposable to spur new sales and waste.

V. The same economic system that treats our environment as disposable also treats workers as disposable-leading to our country's extreme economic inequality. When corporations search the globe for ever lower wages and working conditions to produce the same product, it means wealth for a few but reductions in standard of living for the rest of us.

VI. SEIU's 21st Century Blueprint Committee report identified Climate Change and Income Inequality as major trends that are inherently linked, and that pose major challenges to all of us. The committee report states that: "...it is poor and working people who typically bear the greatest impact of pollution and extreme weather. In this respect, climate change is not only a global threat, but also major expressions of inequality."

VII. The combination of Economic lnjustice and Environmental lnjustice dumps a double dose of hurt on poor people, communities of color and other marginalized people that have historically borne the brunt of pollution and environmental hazards in their neighborhoods, resulting in severe and chronic health problems as we see in lower income communities from Richmond to Fresno to South LA.

VIII. For too long, our government at all levels and our public employees have been subjected to unprincipled attacks that undermine the value of our democracy and the services our communities rely upon. As Climate Change deepens, only public institutions will be able to develop the plans and marshal the resources needed to mitigate its worsening impact.

IX. As Public Employees and Members of SElU Local 1021 we are in a unique and strategic position to prove that government and our Unions defend the "Common Good" and are a force for good in our community. As Union Members and Working People, we have the ability to fight for solutions to climate change that specifically prevent disproportionate impacts on our communities and are "dedicated to improving the lives of workers and their families and creating a more just and humane society."

X. As public sector workers, we are responsible to education and create good environmental programs, policies, and solutions. We must demand the resources, training and capacity to do so; and must also fight to capture savings from innovations and efficiency so they are equitably shared with workers.

XI. We know that Winning for Working People requires building strong organizations and Alliances with Allies to fight for both Economic and Environmental Justice; and both SElU and Local 1021 have begun to build these alliances through local and national fights for economic and environmental justice.

Therefore be it resolved: SElU Local 1021 Leaders recognize Climate Change as a challenge and threat to the welfare of our Union's Members, workers, and communities everywhere; SElU Local 1021 Leaders recognize that while our Union's program of Organizing works to build power for members to win greater economic, social and racial justice, our efforts alone are not enough to win the "more humane society," all workers deserve; and we must partner with Allies in all progressive movements, and particularly Climate Change and Environmental Justice movement if we are to protect the healthy planet that all workers deserve;

SElU Local 1021 Leaders also recognize that we must work with our Allies to recognize and fight for Climate Change solutions that recognize the legitimate rights of workers to organize, their demands for economic justice and security, and the need for a Just Transition for workers in industries impacted by the move away from carbon to renewable energy sources.
To Accomplish these Goals SElU Local 1021 Leaders commit to making Climate Justice a part of our Union's Program. Some of these goals may include:

Educating Members, Officers and Staff about climate change and the need for climate justice. To include illustrating the interconnectedness and impact on, working people and our larger fights for economic and racial justice.
Developing a program of Action on Climate Change that puts to use our skills and expertise as Union Members and Public Employees to promote solutions that contribute to mitigating and adapting to the Climate Crisis and that protect and advance the rights and interests of all workers and our communities as a part of our Union Work, including areas such as but not limited to:
- Common Good Campaigns
- Bargaining Demands
- Labor Management Partnerships
- Political, Policy and Budgeting Work
- Participation in State, County, Local "tables," where mitigation
- and adaptation policies are being developed
- Movement Coalition Building with Allies
- Mobilizing Members to Action

Tags:

Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

Bay Area

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The Future of the Food Justice Movement

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 05/10/2016 - 16:57

The food justice movement -- a loose but expansive conglomeration of organizations working to create a more just food system in the United States -- has accomplished a great deal over the last 30 years. But can it manage to converge in its diversity and create a countermovement potent enough to transform the current food regime? Or is it too shallow and too spread, destined to disappear in its disjointedness.

Things may seem a little out of sorts when one in six Americans -- residents of the most affluent country on the planet -- don't have enough to eat, and when the percentage of hungry people in the United States has gone up 57 percent since the late 1990s. Sprinkle in that little detail about how Black and Latino neighborhoods are often left practically devoid of fresh produce but flooded with fast food restaurants (something that contributes to high rates of obesity, diabetes and thyroid disease), and you might start to question one or two things.

Toss in the fact that many of the 2 million farm laborers who produce US consumers' fruits and vegetables are not only subjected to brutal labor conditions but also can't afford to consume the very same food they pick, and you might really start to wonder. And when you top off this gallimaufry with one more slight detail -- that there are 1 billion people around the world suffering from malnourishment, a number that hasn't changed significantly since the 1970s -- the inequity of the current food regime becomes pretty clear. It was the food justice movement that first recognized this reality, and it has spent the last 30 years challenging and redressing these inequalities.

The Black Panthers' Free Breakfast for School Children Program, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, and the family farming caucuses that swept the United States during the 1980s were early proponents of food justice. And while these original players have been all but subsumed by the passage of time, they have been replaced by hundreds of thousands of farmworkers, urban and rural farmers, activists, consumers and academics who are all working to institute a fairer and more just food system. This effort is what Eric Holt-Giménez, the executive director of Food First, calls "converging in our diversity," and it is the linchpin of creating a just food system: a system that stresses the right of communities everywhere to produce, distribute and have equal access to healthy food, irrespective of class, gender or ethnicity.

Just when that Rust Cohle-like pessimism seems to have obtruded on our collective consciousness -- foregrounded by our failure to engineer any overhaul of the US financial system and scientists' incredulous predictions on global warming -- the food justice movement could be that slow-cooked countermovement that we have all been waiting for. Everyone has some kind of a relationship with food. It is the cornerstone of culture and life, as well as of the capitalist system. If any revolution is going to be successful, this seems like a good place for it to start.

Tags:

food

green unionism

agricultural workers and peasants

La Via Campesina

Coalition of Immokalee Workers

food sovereignty movement

climate justice

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Stranded Assets and Thermal Coal in Japan: An analysis of environment-related risk exposure

Submitted by x332349 on Tue, 05/03/2016 - 16:24

By Ben Caldecott, Gerard Dericks, Daniel J. Tulloch, Lucas Kruitwagen, and Irem Kok - Oxford, May 2016

Deploying a ‘bottom up’ asset-level methodology, we analysed the exposure of all of Japan’s current and planned coal-fired power stations to environment-related risk. Planned coal capacity greatly exceeds that required for replacement - by 191%. This may result in overcapacity and combined with competition from other forms of generation capacity with lower marginal costs (e.g. nuclear and renewables), lead to significant asset stranding of coal generation assets. Stranded coal assets in Japan would affect utility returns for investors; impair the ability of utilities to service outstanding debt obligations; and create stranded assets that have to be absorbed by taxpayers and ratepayers.

Read the report (PDF).

Tags:

coal

mining

fossil fuel capitalism

jobs versus environment

jobs

labor and environment

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Alpha, Arch, Peabody Energy: Bad Business Decisions are the True War on Coal

Submitted by x332349 on Sun, 05/01/2016 - 13:55

By staff - Public Citizen, May 2016

Over the past year, three of the United States’ major coal companies filed for bankruptcy: Alpha Natural Resources in August 2015; Arch Coal in January 2016; and Peabody Energy in April 2016.3 Although these companies and their trade association allies have often blamed environmental regulations for their precarious financial state, the truth is that debt-fueled acquisitions hobbled their finances at a time when market conditions were rapidly souring. Namely, Alpha Natural Resources, Peabody Energy, and Arch Coal bet big on future Chinese coal demand growth in 2011, going into debt to finance major expansions into metallurgical coal production during the year it was at peak price, only to see markets decline soon after the transactions were complete. At the same time, top executives were awarded record financial compensation, while slashing employee benefits and laying off workers.

Read the report (PDF).

Tags:

coal

fossil fuel capitalism

mine workers

Arch Coal

Alpha Natural Resources

labor and environment

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climate justice

EcoUnionist News #106

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

EcoUnionist News #105

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

This Is What Insurgency Looks Like

Breaking free from fossil fuels in Cascadia: The solutions path forward

EcoUnionist News #104 - Special #BreakingFree 2016 Edition

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistleblowers:

Anthropocene vs Capitalocene: a Reflection on the Question, “What Have I Done?”

SEIU 1021 Resolution in support of Climate Justice Work

The Future of the Food Justice Movement

Stranded Assets and Thermal Coal in Japan: An analysis of environment-related risk exposure

Alpha, Arch, Peabody Energy: Bad Business Decisions are the True War on Coal

Pages

The Fine Print I:

The Fine Print II:

Official IWW Notice: