green unionism

Dustin Mulvaney interviewed by Dharna Noor - Real News Network (Part 1 | Part 2), August 26, 2019

DHARNA NOOR: It’s The Real News. I’m Dharna Noor.

The solar industry has been soaring over the past several years. The US is now home to some two million solar installations. Solar energy now provides about a fifth of California’s power and it makes sense that environmentalists champion the industry. Almost a third of the Earth’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the energy sector, so renewable energy sources like this are crucial.

But in a new book, our next guest shows that while “the net social and environmental benefits of solar are uncontested— more jobs, higher quality of life, and much less air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions— the industry supply chain still poses problems for specific communities, ecosystems and landscapes.”

By Wojciech Kębłowski - Tribune, August 22, 2019

If we are to believe transport experts and practitioners, abolishing fares for all passengers is the last thing public transport operators should be doing. For Alan Flausch, an ex-CEO of the Brussels public transport authority and current Secretary General of International Association of Public Transport, “in terms of mobility, free public transport is absurd.”

According to Vincent Kauffmann, a professor at University of Lausanne and one of key figures in sustainable mobility, “free public transport does not make any sense.” Getting rid of tickets in mass transit is judged “irrational,” “uneconomical” and “unsustainable.”

However, if we turn to commentators from outside the field of transport, the perspective on fare abolition changes radically. Social scientists, activists, journalists and public officials—often speaking from cities where fare abolition has actually been put to the test—fervently defend the measure.

For Judith Dellheim, a researcher at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Berlin, providing free access to public transport is the “first step towards socio-ecological transformation.” For Michiel Van Hulten, one of the earliest proponents of free public transport in Europe, “it is about returning to the commons.” Finally, according to Naomi Klein, this is precisely what cities around the world should be doing —“to really respond to the urgency of climate change, public transport would have to become free.”

By staff - Bioneers, August 21, 2019

We know that the climate imperative in front of us is to transition as rapidly and comprehensively as possible from a fossil fuel based economy to a global economic system that runs on clean energy. Among the thornier questions involved in this shift is how the bold new economic visions for this large-scale transformation can support working-class families whose livelihoods are currently tied to the fossil fuel-based economy.

“Just Transition,” is the phrase frequently invoked as the answer to this question. In this panel from Bioneers 2019, four leaders answer the question, “What does a Just Transition Mean?” They outline the need for and progress towards proactive labor policies to ensure an equitable future for families and communities. With:

• Vien Truong, Climate Justice Leader and Principal of Truong & Associates.
• Demond Drummer, Co-Founder and Executive Director of New Consensus and key architect of Green New Deal.
• Larry Williams, labor coordinator for Sierra Club’s Labor and Economic Justice Program, President Emeritus at the Progressive Workers Union.
• Sarah White, currently Senior Advisor for Jobs and the Economy at California’s Office of Planning and Research.

This is an edited transcript from a panel hosted at the Bioneers 2019 Conference.

By Mark Bergfield - Jacobin, August 16, 2019

The call to stop the production of coal and cars often sounds like a threat to jobs. But German trade unions have realized that the green transition needs to happen — and they’re fighting to make sure it’s bosses, not workers, who pay for climate justice.

If the summer holidays interrupted the school walkouts, the teenager-led Fridays for Future movement hasn’t let up its fight to save the planet. Ever since the start of the movement, leaders like Sweden’s Greta Thunberg and Germany’s Luisa Neubauer have worked to build broader social ties than previous generations of environmental activists, including with organized labor. In this spirit, September 20 will see the beginning of the “Earth Strike,” a planned week-long general strike around the world to stop production and draw political attention to the climate emergency.

The need to “save jobs” has historically been counterposed to the call to shut down harmful industries. Yet the sheer scale of the catastrophe we face has focused minds on the need to overcome the divide between green and labor activism. In particular, the mainstreaming of the demand for “climate justice” — arguing that the poor, vulnerable, and exploited shouldn’t be the ones paying for the transition to a green carbon-neutral economy — has shown that saving the planet and social justice really can go hand in hand. This is epitomized by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a Green New Deal.

Germany has an especially deep-seated history of ecological mobilization, with even radical campaigns enjoying wide popular support. Its environmental movement has historically been characterized by a strong anti-authoritarian current — indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s, the movement to halt nuclear-waste transports used forms of civil disobedience associated with the US civil rights struggle.

Unlike in many other countries, these movements are not on the fringes of politics but are deeply rooted in neighborhoods and communities. Yet whatever the strength of climate activism, labor unions have traditionally remained aloof from green struggles. But now, riding the wave driven by the Fridays for Future movement, organized labor is beginning to adopt the call for the green transition as its own.

By Carla Santos Skandier - ROAR, August 15, 2019

No other generation understands better the implication of climate change than today’s teens. As sixteen year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has famously summarized it, “this is an emergency.” But despite this emergency, the response from national governments has been to hype up the private sector as the silver bullet capable of providing the financial means and innovations needed to address climate change — even when the private sector itself is pointing out it can neither fund the massive costs nor create the technological breakthroughs necessary to do the job at the pace and scale required.

Fossil fuel companies are the enemy

Over the past few months a handful of US politicians, spurred by a youth-led climate mobilization, have started to wrap their heads around of what it will actually take to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change in the country. This has led to the introduction of the Green New Deal Resolution back in February, and the recently proposed Climate Emergency Resolution.

Despite their different purposes, the proposed resolutions agree in one aspect of the climate fight; if we are to successfully transform our energy system in the next decade mobilization efforts will need to resemble those taken during World War II.

But let’s be clear about how WWII was fought in political-economic terms: when the private sector got in the way of defeating fascism, it was removed from the equation. If we want to win our fight against the fossil fuel industry, we need to center a similar commitment to nationalization.

It is well documented that in both World Wars the US government did not shy away from seizing the control of industries deemed crucial to the war efforts. This included the nationalization of the railroad system, telegraph, telephone and radio networks and manufacturers in World War I, in addition to coal mines, oil companies and refineries, and even a department store in World War II.

But nationalization initiatives did not stop there. In fact, the US nationalized what it considered “enemy” companies — US subsidiaries of German and Japanese companies, such as Merck & Co. If we were to translate those actions to today’s fight to keep any global temperature increase within the 1.5 Celsius limit, that means gaining control over companies that continuously work against climate safety in the country. In other words, fossil fuel companies are the enemy, and we need to treat them as such.