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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

Beyond a Band-Aid: A Discussion Paper on Protecting Workers and Communities in the Great Energy Transition

Submitted by x332349 on Fri, 06/10/2016 - 11:31

By Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D - Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Labor Network for Sustainability, June 10, 2016

This discussion paper presents a strategy for protecting workers and communities that may be threatened by the current and future transformation of the U.S. energy system. It is derived from the recognition that recent technological developments have made solar and wind energy, in combination with efficiency, cheaper than continued reliance on fossil fuels. An economical transition to an energy system that is nearly emissions-free is possible. The transition will provide enormous benefits, both in terms of climate protection and to workers and communities. The new energy system will be cleaner, and more resilient. Air pollution will decline. Solar and wind energy require essentially no water at a time when stress on water resources is becoming an ever larger economic and ecological issue.

Notwithstanding these benefits, significant issues of justice will be raised by the transition to a clean energy future. Even though large numbers of new jobs will be created, there is no guarantee that workers and communities which lose existing jobs will have them replaced by new ones. Indeed, unless proactive policies are in place, many current workers in fossil fuel industries will become unemployed. The communities they live in will be disrupted by loss of tax revenues.

Too often these downsides are disregarded because they seem insignificant compared to the benefits of energy transition and climate protection. But no job is insignificant if it is your job; and it will be of little comfort to low-income households if utility bills go down on average, but theirs do not.

Some proposals for transitioning to clean energy include assistance programs for workers who lose their jobs. But often these are little more than extended unemployment compensation and training for jobs that may or may not exist. Often they would be both too little and too late – more like putting a Band-Aid on an accident victim than a well-considered plan to keep people from getting run over. And they disregard some of the most devastating impacts of energy system change, like the loss of the local tax base that often funds critical community services like libraries and parks and provides supplemental money for schools and for fire and police departments.

“Beyond a Band-Aid: A Discussion Paper on Protecting Workers and Communities in the Great Energy Transition” proposes direct investments in local economies dependent on fossil fuel jobs before devastating economic disruption begins. And it proposes a strategy to protect low-income consumers from the effects of that tax increase. However, this discussion paper does not cover the more general longstanding problem of energy affordability for low-income households. Tens of millions of households face high home energy bills, often exceeding 10 or even 20 percent of income. IEER has examined this issue in detail in an energy justice study specific to Maryland and proposed a three-pronged solution that is broadly applicable: limiting bills of low-income households to 6 percent of gross income, increasing energy efficiency, and providing universal solar access to low-income households.

Read the report (PDF).

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

Welcome to Appalachia’s Gulag Archipelago

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 06/08/2016 - 18:38

By Skyler Simmons - Earth First! Journal, June 2, 2016

Exile in the Mountains

It is hard to imagine the hollers and hills of southern Appalachia ever being a place of punishment. With its lush coves filled with ginseng, ramps, towering oaks, and tulip poplars. Its abundant springs, creeks and rivers teaming with trout, crawdads, and hellbenders. The thousands of family farms and backyard gardens providing sustenance, health, and independence. For most of us lucky enough to call this place home, it is pretty much paradise.

The residents of the gated community of Wallens Ridge, however, would beg to differ. Wallens Ridge is a supermax prison in the economically depressed coalfields of southwest Virginia. The facility, completed in 1999, was sold to this struggling community as an economic boon for a region where coal jobs were quickly disappearing.

Shortly after its opening, Wallens Ridge received a fresh shipment of bodies to fill up its cells, not to mention the state coffers. These bodies were 109 men from a private prison run by the security firm Wackenhut in New Mexico. Sick of the inhumane conditions, torture, and violence endemic in prisons, up to 290 prisoners rioted, destroying property, setting fires in four housing units and causing massive damage in August 1999. In the melee, one prison guard was killed.

The state’s response was swift. In the words of New Mexico Corrections Secretary Rob Perry, “The only thing you can do is act with an iron fist, and that’s what we’re going to do.” Another prison official commented, “A lot of people say they should be sent to a barge or an island, this is the closest thing we’ve got to it.”

It turns out that Wallens Ridge was the perfect island of exile that prison officials desired for these rebellious inmates. Shipped nearly 2,000 miles away from New Mexico, they were subject to another form of torture, isolation from family and friends who could not afford to travel across the county for visits. In addition, an overwhelmingly rural, white prison guard staff was sure to deal with the predominately black and brown prisoners ruthlessly. And that they did.

Upon arrival at Wallens Ridge, the New Mexico inmates were subject to vicious beatings and electroshocks with stun guns, all while the guards shouted racist slurs. According to the Richmond-Times Dispatch, inmate Hector Torres was repeatedly asked if he was, “one of the corrections officer-stabbing Mexicans.” Each time he said “No”, the guards shocked him with a stun gun. Remarking on the conditions at the prison, an attorney representing some of the New Mexico inmates in a civil right lawsuit said, “The knowing and deliberate nature of it is really startling… It was as close to a concentration camp or an experience of slavery as anyone would expect to come in this country.”

Wallens Ridge is not unique. An identical supermax prison called Red Onion was built in 1998 in Pound, VA on mine land donated by Pittston Coal Company about 20 miles away. Noted for having the highest rate of solitary confinement of any prison in Virginia, a 1999 Human Right Watch report found that at Red Onion, “racism, excessive violence and inhumane conditions reign inside.” Many inmates, such as New Afrikan Black Panther Party member Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, say they were sent to this supermax prison, not for their crimes on the outside, but as punishment for speaking out against abuse on the inside.

Even with the importing of out of state prisoners and a “tough on crime” attitude, a year after Wallens Ridge and Red Onion were built, the prisons sat only half full. So what did the Virginia legislature do? They created the aptly, if not draconian, named Virginia Exile Program which included mandatory 5 year sentences in a supermax prison for persons convicted of possession of a gun and cocaine, or any felon in possession of a gun. Sure enough, the prisons filled up. As a matter of fact it was so successful that the prisons are now horribly overcrowded.

Tags: 
Prison Ecology Project
class war prisoners
capital blight
green unionism

AFT Local 2026 Resolution on a Just Transition to a Peaceful and Sustainable Economy

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 06/08/2016 - 18:20

Passed by the Representative Council of AFT Local 2026 on May 3, 2016

Whereas, according to NASA, ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position; and

Whereas, the planet is warming at a dangerously rapid rate, primarily as a result of our reliance on carbon-based fossil fuels, deforestation and other human activities that have caused a dramatic increase in the global level of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases; and

Whereas, scientists say that unless we curb the emissions that cause climate change, average U.S. temperatures could be 3 to 9 degrees higher by 2100; and

Whereas, if the trend of the 20th century continues the average worldwide sea level could rise by 3 to 6 feet by 2100; and

Whereas, the inevitable consequencesof major disruptions to global ecosystems will be more frequent extreme weather events of Katrina-like hurricanes, more powerful tornadoes, prolonged draught, larger and more frequent wildfires, reduction to agricultural productivity with resulting food shortages and famine, spread of disease and a spasm of plant and animal loss that threatens to eliminate 20 to 50 percent of all living species on earth within this century; and

Whereas, emergency measures must be taken to prevent catastrophic increases in global warming that will trigger irreversible changes to our biosphere; and

Whereas, at the present rate of global warming we could reach that tipping point by 2050; and

Whereas, these developments have sparked a global movement that is demanding urgent action by our governments, including an encyclical by Pope Francis that describes the moral imperative for transforming our economy and social practices; and

Whereas, the world’s governments met again in Paris in December for the Conference of Parties held by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) and called for significant reductions in the global use of fossil fuels; and

Whereas, the Pentagon and the military-industrial sector that feeds it and feeds off of it together are the largest consumers of fossil fuels and create the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions on the planet; and

Whereas, we have been sold the myth that we must choose between military jobs that do not enhance our nation’s security vs. having no job at all; and

Whereas, there is no good reason why the richest nation in the world cannot fund protection for its workers as we move towards less military spending and minimal reliance on fossil fuels; and

Whereas, millions of good jobs can be created by moving towards greater energy efficiency, reliance on renewal energy, and the rebuilding of our civilian infrastructure; and

Whereas, there are several bills before Congress that create a fee on carbon pollution, such as the Climate Protection and Justice Act, which uses the funds from this fee to provide rebates to households making less than $100,000 per year; and

Whereas, The Clean Energy Just Transition Act is an example of legislation that provides protection for workers whose jobs are lost because of the transition away from fossil fuels; and

Whereas, the American Federation of Teachers has previously passed resolutions at its national conventions calling for an end to the militarization of U.S. foreign policy;

Therefore, be it resolved that the AFT affirms its commitment to significant reduction in the Pentagon budget and to a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy; and

Be it further resolved that the AFT will support legislation that enables a just transition towards reduced military spending and minimal reliance on fossil fuels, with appropriate protections for workers in the fossil fuel industries and military industries; and that in order to speed the transition towards renewable energy, the AFT will support legislation that places a fee on carbon pollution.

Tags: 
just transition
green unionism
American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
teachers

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

NEPA IWW Delivers A Message to Wendy's: We Want Fair Food

Submitted by x332349 on Mon, 06/06/2016 - 16:33

By Alex Lotorto - IWW Local 570, June 4, 2016

On Saturday, members of the Northeast Pennsylvania Industrial Workers of the World (NEPA IWW) picketed on Wyoming Avenue in Scranton in support of a nationwide Wendy's boycott due to farmworker abuses.

Jon Christiansen, an IWW delegate and faculty at Marywood University, and Branch Secretary Treasurer Brendan Regan delivered a letter to the Wendy's restaurant manager asking him to pass it along to his district manager, which he agreed to do. Throughout the lunch hour, the picket persuaded more than a dozen customers to leave the restaurant in support.

As of March 3rd 2016, The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has declared a consumer boycott of Wendy's due to the company's refusal to sign on to their Fair Food Program. Not only has Wendy's refused to sign on with the groundbreaking program to address decades-old farm labor abuses, but the company also stopped sourcing their tomatoes from Florida altogether, opting instead to source their tomatoes from Mexico, where the widespread denial of human rights in the produce industry was the subject of an in-depth expose by the Los Angeles Times just one year ago.

Instead of joining the Fair Food Program and its widely-acclaimed, uniquely successful worker-driven model of social responsibility, Wendy’s released a new supplier code of conduct this past January that contains no effective mechanisms for worker participation or enforcement. Wendy’s new code represents the very worst of the traditional corporate approach to social responsibility driven by public relations concerns rather than the verifiable protection of human rights. The Northeast Pennsylvania IWW supports the CIW and their boycott, and calls on Wendy's to sign on to the Fair Food Program in order to guarantee basic human rights for farmworkers.

ABOUT THE FAIR FOOD PROGRAM: The Fair Food Program, created by the Presidential Medal-winning Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is a groundbreaking partnership among farmworkers, Florida tomato growers, and fourteen major food retailers, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Walmart, heralded as “the best workplace-monitoring program” in the US on the front page of the New York Times. Participating retailers agree to purchase exclusively from suppliers who meet a worker-driven Code of Conduct, which includes a zero-tolerance policy for slavery and sexual harassment.

Retailers also pay a “penny-per-pound” premium, which is passed down through the supply chain and paid out directly to workers by their employers, doubling the piece rate workers receive per pound picked. Since the Program’s inception in 2011, buyers have paid over $20 million into the FFP. In 2015, the Program expanded for the first time beyond Florida to tomato fields in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey, and in the 2015-2016 season, the Fair Food Program expanded to two new Florida crops, strawberries and bell peppers.

Tags: 
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
agricultural workers and peasants
green unionism
Alex Lotorto

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

People’s Manual on the Guidelines on Governance of Land, Fisheries and Forests

Submitted by x332349 on Wed, 06/01/2016 - 19:31

By various - La Via Campesina, et. al., June 2016

This publication is intended to support the use of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. It is not intended to contradict the language of the Guidelines as endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security on 11 May 2012 nor the role of states in their implementation.

This People’s Manual has been developed with the technical assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and with the financial assistance from the European Union (EU), Oxfam and Brazil’s Ministry of Agrarian Development, and the contributions of the organizations participating in and supporting the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC).

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the European Union, Oxfam, Brazil’s Ministry of Agrarian Development and the IPC, concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

The mention of specific companies or products of manufacturers, whether or not these have been patented, does not imply that these have been endorsed or recommended by FAO, the European Union, Oxfam, Brazil’s Ministry of Agrarian Development and the IPC, in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned.

The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) is an autonomous and self-organized global platform of more than 800 organizations of small-scale food producers and rural workers, men and women, and grass root/community based social movements, dedicated to advancing the Food Sovereignty agenda at the global and regional levels.

Read the report (PDF).

EcoUnionist News #106

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 05/30/2016 - 21:17

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, May 31, 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
agricultural workers and peasants
agriculture
Nigeria
agroecology
health and safety
whistleblowers
renewable energy workers
green jobs
labor and environment

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