fossil fuel capitalism

By Abbe Ramanan, Amanda McKay, David Schlissel, Anika Juhn, et. al. - Clean Energy Group, January 18, 2024

By Bob Buzzcanco, Scott Parkin, and Jeremey Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 14, 2023

In the latest Green and Red Podcast, Bob and Scott talk with author, labor historian and activist Jeremy Brecher who’s been engaged at the intersection of labor, the environment, and the climate for decades. Over 50 years ago, Jeremy authored “Strike,” a labor history classic. And then more recently he’s worked at the intersection of the labor and climate movements. We talk with Jeremy about strikes, unions, and union leadership since he first published “Strike;” the recent “Hot Labor Summer” of 2023; the labor-climate movements and much more.

Jeremy Brecher is a writer, historian, and activist who is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements. His works include the labor history classic “Strike” and “Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual.” Jeremy is also a Senior Advisor for the Labor Network for Sustainability.

By Staff - Center for Biological Diversity, January 8, 2024

This is an ongoing pillar of the fossil fuel industry’s playbook in California: front groups organized and funded by the oil companies masquerade as “broad coalitions” of concerned citizens and business representatives but are functionally opaque entities with a single mission: furthering the oil and gas industry’s agenda in the state.

Usually organized as 501(c)(4) nonprofits (“social welfare organizations”), such groups are referred to as “dark money” because they’re able to spend money on certain types of campaigns without revealing their donors. Under California law, these types of groups are legally permitted to spend funds on “issue advocacy” campaigns without revealing their donors.

Because these “issue advocacy” campaigns don’t explicitly advocate for or against ballot measures or referenda, millions of dollars can be spent to subtly influence voters without disclosing the true funders behind the messaging campaign. Because of the lack of donor disclosure, we refer to these groups as “dark money groups.”

This report profiles three such groups that have been actively pushing an oil industry ad campaign to promote anti-SB1137 talking points (higher gas prices, losing good jobs, foreign oil); all three track back to the California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA) and to the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), the top lobbyist for the oil industry in the western United States.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 3, 2024

The appeal of the Green New Deal lies in its drawing together the varied needs of diverse constituencies into a common program that realizes them all. Here’s how that works at the sub-national level.

By Jessye Waxman, et. al - Sierra Club, et. al., January 2024

Climate-driven heat waves, droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires are already causing suffering for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Climate-driven impacts on the economy are already significant: according to one recent peer-reviewed study, the climate crisis inflicted a global economic toll of $16 million an hour in extreme weather damages between 2000 and 2019. Given that these impacts are occurring at only 1.2°C of warming, it’s no wonder that economists, financial institutions, and financial regulators are increasingly worried about the risk that the climate crisis poses to our shared economic prosperity.

“The financial impacts that result from the economic effects of climate change and the transition to a lower carbon economy pose an emerging risk to the safety and soundness of financial institutions and the financial stability of the United States,” concluded the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in a recent report, making it clear that climate-related financial risks are faced by all financial institutions and the broader economy. As long-term fiduciaries, pension funds should be among the investors most alarmed about the economic risk associated with the climate crisis. Some have taken public strides forward, such as announcing net-zero pledges, investing in climate solutions, or defending the right to invest responsibly. These are critical steps forward. However, as this report shows, the institutions responsible for stewarding trillions of dollars on behalf of the American people are failing to address climate-related financial risk in their proxy voting strategies, a key tool investors have to encourage responsible corporate governance and corporate behavior.

This report analyzes the nineteen state pensions in states where a state financial officer — such as the state treasurer, comptroller, or auditor — has indicated it is a priority issue to advocate for more sustainable, just, and inclusive firms and markets, and protect against climate risk. In addition to the nineteen state pensions, the report includes the five systems managed by the New York City Comptroller, who has also indicated these issues are priorities. These funds included collectively represent over $2 trillion in assets under management (AUM).

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Liza Gross and Peter Aldhous - Inside Climate News, December 31, 2023

Scores of California farmworkers are dying in the heat in regions with chronically bad air, even in a state with one of the toughest heat standards in the nation.

For most of July 2019, stifling heat hung over the agricultural fields of California’s Central Valley, as farmworkers like William Salas Jiminez labored under the sun’s searing rays. Temperatures had dipped from 99 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit the last day of the month, when the 56-year-old Puerto Rico native was installing irrigation tubing in an almond orchard near Arvin, at the valley’s southern edge. 

Around 1:30 that afternoon Salas sat down to rest. When he stood up to go back to work, he suddenly collapsed. An hour and a half later, he was dead. Reports filed with the U.S. Department of Occupational Health and Safety, or OSHA, say Salas died of a heart attack.

Salas’ death certificate lists atherosclerotic heart disease as the immediate cause of death. But it also lists “extreme heat exposure” and obesity as significant contributors. Both heart disease and obesity increase the risk of fatal heatstroke.

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 9, 2023

More than 400 delegates of La Via Campesina, representing 185 organizations and movements in 83 countries, together with allies, are gathered in Bogotá, Colombia to celebrate our 8^th International Conference from the 1^st to the 8^th of December of 2023.

We, the peasants, rural workers, landless, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, artisanal fisherfolk, forest dwellers, rural women, youth and diversities and other peoples who work in the countryside around the world and united within La Via Campesina, declare that “Faced with global crises, we build food sovereignty to ensure a future for humanity!” towards a just and decent food system for all, recognizing peoples’ needs, respecting nature, putting people before profit and resisting corporate capture.

The 8^th Conference is happening at a time when the Colombian social movements are celebrating a major political victory, the creation of an agrarian jurisdiction, and the constitutional recognition of peasants as political subjects with rights. Our participation in the monitoring and follow-up of the peace agreement in Colombia inspires us as peasants to continue building peace worldwide.

By staff - Fair Square, December 9, 2023

The image of climate-friendly menus being pushed at this year’s global climate conference, COP28 in Dubai, UAE, clashes with the stark reality faced by vulnerable communities in the host country, and its impact on the environment, a new report released today unveils.

The official COP28 website proclaims that, “Our focus is to deliver sustainable, affordable, delicious, and nutritious food. COP28 UAE will deliver a catering menu which is largely plant based, emphasizing local and regional produce and promoting environmentally-friendly food consumption.” The site also describes how the COP28 Presidency is “striving to show the world how climate-friendly food can be tasty, healthy and affordable.”

However the team of investigators behind the report – who are based in the Gulf and remaining anonymous to protect their safety – found that outside the venue, the reality for many workers in the UAE was in stark contrast to “environmentally-friendly food consumption”.

The 40-page report, Harvesting Disparity: Climate Change, Food and Water Security, and Migrants of the UAE, explores pronounced disparities in access to quality, nutritious food for migrant workers who grapple with working hours and wage theft that hinder their ability to secure proper meals, while also examining the broader impacts of UAE food supply chain practices on climate and vulnerable communities abroad.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Alex Nieves - Politico, December 4, 2023

One of California’s most powerful unions is not loosening its grip on oil jobs.

Despite the Biden administration and California lawmakers pouring billions of dollars into new climate-friendly industries like electric vehicles, hydrogen and building electrification, a key player in state politics is still defending fossil fuel interests that provide thousands of well-paying jobs.

President Joe Biden’s investment in clean energy sectors through a pair of massive spending bills — which promise lucrative tax credits for projects that pay union wages — was supposed to speed up the labor transition away from oil and gas. That hasn’t happened in deep-blue California, home to the country’s most ambitious climate policies — and most influential labor unions.

“We believe we’re still going to be working in the oil and gas space for the foreseeable future,” said Chris Hannan, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, which represents nearly 500,000 members across dozens of local unions, from pipefitting to electrical work.

Unions’ longstanding — and well-founded — distrust of the renewable energy industry as a reliable source of labor-friendly jobs is slowing the “just transition” that Biden, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders around the country have pushed.

With federal officials trying to get clean energy funding out as fast as possible ahead of the 2024 election, and California politicians cracking down on the fossil fuel industry, unions’ reluctance to relinquish fossil fuel jobs undermines Democrats’ aggressive climate targets, according to a lawmaker who serves both a union- and oil-rich area of the state.

While the union embrace of fossil fuels is unique to California — one of the few blue states with significant oil production — the struggle highlights a larger question over how states can quickly build massive amounts of clean energy infrastructure without undercutting labor.

By Alan Thornett - Ecosocialist Discussion, November 29, 2023

COP28 (along with planet Earth itself) is faced with “an absolutely gobsmackingly bananas increase in the global temperature”

COP28 – the annual UN global summit on global warming – is taking place from November 30^th until December 12 – under the auspices of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that was launched in 1992 to protect the planet against “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”, which now takes place annually. It is the 28^th UN climate change summit since 1992, and will take place in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

COP28, along with other recent such summits faces a deadly, and indeed existential, contradiction between the relentless acceleration of global warming ­ i.e. of the average global surface temperature of the planet – and the inability of the COP process to bring it under control, or even hold it to a maximum increase of 1.5°C in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.

It became clear in August that 2023 would be of a different order of magnitude in terms of temperature when July turned out to be the world’s hottest month ever recorded.

The UN Secretary General António Guterres – the most radicle the UN has had on climate change – responded rightly by declaring that this meant that “the era of global warming had ended, and the era of global boiling has arrived”. It meant, he said, that: “Climate change is here, it is terrifying, and it is just the beginning. It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C (above pre-industrial levels), and avoid the very worst of climate change, he said, but only with dramatic, immediate climate action.”

The September figure, however, was a whole lot worse. It was a staggering 0.5°C above the previous such record. The Guardian’s environmental editor Damian Carrington quoted climate scientist Zeke Hausfather who had tweeted that: “This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. It beat the prior monthly temperature record by over 0.5°C, and was around 1.8°C warmer than preindustrial levels.” He noted that datasets from European and Japanese scientists confirmed the leap.

It’s worth noting that the difference in the average global temperature between now and the depths of the last ice age when these islands were under a kilometre of ice is around 5.0°C.

In mid-November Guterres went further warning that. “Present trends are racing our planet down a dead-end 3C temperature rise. This is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the vulnerable, and a massive missed opportunity. Renewables have never been cheaper or more accessible. We know it is still possible to make the 1.5 degree limit a reality. It requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.”

He added: “Leaders must drastically up their game, now, with record ambition, record action, and record emissions reductions. No more greenwashing. No more foot-dragging.”