green unionism

By Steve Ahlquist - RI Future, November 30, 2015

Two safety inspectors who worked on Spectra Energy’s proposed methane gas pipeline that will cut through Burrillville, RI, say the company cut corners when it came to project, worker and environmental safety.

“Right now, what they’re hoping to do, is they’re hoping to slam all this through, and then at the end ask for forgiveness,” said one of the former inspectors. “Oops, sorry about that, I didn’t know, let me write you a check. Because once this thing’s turning meter, they’re going to be making millions of dollars a day. It doesn’t matter what your problems are…”

The other added, “We were told to shut the fuck up or quit.”

Both men, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, were subcontracted by Spectra and both were terminated from the project this summer. I was introduced to them through FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas), an environmental group that opposes the project, and have spent time talking with both men by phone as well as reviewing audio interviews and emails provided by FANG.

“Like every other company, Spectra gives a tremendous presentation about their commitment to safety, but their actions lack any kind of resolve. No one ever says, ‘Safety’s #2 here,’” said the first inspector. “At every turn when I made a safety suggestion, I was met with monumental resistance from the company on every level.”

Perhaps suspecting their days are numbered, fossil fuel companies are rushing to build the infrastructure required to keep us dependent on methane or “natural” gas for the next 50 years or more, even as evidence mounts that methane is a major contributor to climate change. This gives lie to the claim that methane will serve as a bridge fuel, something to ease the transition from fossil fuels to green energy sources, as the infrastructure investments being made are long term and permanent. Companies are investing billions laying pipelines, building compressor stations, and constructing energy plants and other infrastructure ahead of industry-wide extinction.

In their rush to build, safety and environmental concerns are being brushed aside, suspect many experts. A recent “Pipeline Safety Trust analysis of federal data,” shows that, “new pipelines are failing at a rate on par with gas transmission lines installed before the 1940s.”  Sarah Smith writes that Carl Weimer, director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, told attendees at a National Association of Pipeline Safety Representatives annual meeting in Tempe, AZ that, “The new pipelines are failing even worse than the oldest pipelines.”

Though some of the problems may be related to workers learning how to implement the latest technologies, Weimar says, “there’s also some suggestions that we’re trying to put so many new miles of pipeline in the ground so fast that people aren’t doing construction … the way they ought to.”

In the same piece Smith quotes Robert Hall, of the National Transportation Safety Board Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations, who agreed that, “the rapid construction of pipelines in the U.S. is likely a contributing factor to ‘people … out there possibly taking shortcuts or not being as diligent’ as they would be if the pace of construction were less fervent.”

Coming forward to confirm these observations are two former Spectra contractors I’m calling Inspector One and Inspector Two. Both wish to remain anonymous for this piece for personal and professional reasons, though they know that their former bosses may be able to identify them.

By various - Carbon Trade Watch, December 2015

Over twenty years have passed since governments within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began to discuss the impending climate crisis. Year after year, we witness the talks moving further away from identifying the root causes of climate change while the increasing impacts affect even more peoples and regions. Every meeting has given more space for corporate involvement and less to the voices of those directly affected by these climate policies. Despite the promoters’ fancy “green” campaigns and videos, the main focus at the climate negotiations continues to be about saving the free-market economy for those who are holding the cards – the biggest transnational corporations and financial institutions. The same corporations that are largely behind the destruction of forests, rivers, diversity, territories – as well as the violation of human and collective rights and so on – are also the main polluters and plunderers of the Earth.

The climate crisis poses a real threat to the current economic model which is based on the continuous extraction and production of fossil fuels, hydrocarbons and “natural resources” such as land, minerals, wood and agriculture. If talks were to seriously address climate change, there would need to be a discussion on the many ways to support the hundreds of thousand of small-scale farmers, fishers, Indigenous Peoples, forest-dwelling communities and others whose territories and livelihoods are at risk from capital expansion, and how to transition to different economic systems where fossil fuels could be kept underground; where the consumption “mantra” would shift towards more local, diverse and collective discourses and practices. However, the hegemonic and colonial powers are once more violently closing doors, creating more “structural adjustments” and, ultimately, harming the people who are the least responsible for current and historical pollution levels suffering the most from the impacts.

The fallacy that we can continue with the same economic model is irremediably flawed, bankrolled by big polluters, and intrinsically linked to land and livelihoods grabbing, especially in the Global South. Nonetheless, mechanisms like carbon markets, which expand the extractivist and free-market logic, continue to be promoted as unilateral, program- matic “solutions” to mitigate climate change and address deforestation and biodiversity loss. From carbon trading to forests and biodiversity offsets, the climate crisis has been turned into a business opportunity, worsening the already felt impacts, especially for those who are the least responsible. Debates over molecules of carbon being accounted for and “moved” or “stored” from one location to the other detracts from the necessary debates on shifting away from extraction, unjust power structures and oppression. While being fully informed of the causes of climate change, international climate negotiations strive to ensure that the hegemonic economic model expands and rewards polluters.

The consequence is that “climate policies” (aka economic policies) finance the most destructive industries and polluters, often destroying genuinely effective actions that support community livelihoods and keep fossil fuels in the ground. Moreover, these policies further the “financialization of nature” process, which presupposes the separation and quantification of the Earth’s cycles and functions – such as carbon, water and biodiversity – in or-der to turn them into “units” or “titles” that can be sold in financial and speculative markets. With governments establishing legal frameworks to set these markets in place, they also have provided the financial “infrastructure” for negotiating financial “instruments”, by using derivatives, hedge funds and others. While financial markets have a growing influence over economic policies, the “financialization of nature” hands over the management to the financial markets, whose sole concern is to further accumulate capital.

Read the report (PDF).

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 1, 2015

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

Lead Stories:

• Protest Ban? What Protest Ban? - By Danny Chivers, New Internationalist, November 29, 2015
• Can a WA State climate policy train wreck be averted? - By Patrick Mazza, Cascadia Planet, November 27, 2015
• “We Need Not Be Polite” Hears First National Conference On Oil Train Threats - By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog, November 25, 2015
• Dhaka: Climate refugees and a collapsing city - By Sohara Mehroze Shachi, UNDP, November 23, 2015

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Flood the System - Fall 2015: Flood, blockade, occupy and shut down the systems that jeopardize our future! | #FloodTheSystem
• Jobs, Justice, Climate: Rally to Defend New England's Future! - December 12, 2015
• People’s Climate Strike - November 26 - December 12, 2015
• Railcon15 - Next Conference TBA | #Railcon15

The Road to Paris:

• Why the Paris climate talks are doomed to failure, like all the others - By Steffen Böhm, The Conversation, November 30, 2015
• COP21 actions go ahead: 'We are not defending nature - we are nature defending itself' - By Nadine Bloch, The Ecologist, November 28, 2015
• Environment activists plan to defy Paris ban on protests at UN Climate Conference - By Larissa Dubecki, The Age, November 28, 2015
• Climate change rally: Tens of thousands gather in Melbourne ahead of UN talks - By Sara Phillips, Australian Broadcasting Company, November 27, 2015
• Paris climate activists put under house arrest using emergency laws - By Arthur Neslen, The Guardian, November 27, 2015
• If 'Life Must Go On,' say Groups, France Must Lift Ban on Climate Protests - By Jon Queally, Common Dreams, November 26, 2015
• Climate Jobs Activities in Paris - By Jonathan Nancy, Global Climate Jobs, November 25, 2015
• Our call for climate justice will be heard - By Ragina Johnson, Socialist Worker, November 25, 2015
• “Filthy Foxes” Guard the Paris COP Hen House - By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International, November 24, 2015
• It’s Too Late to “Save” the Climate, But Not Too Late to Save Ourselves - By Aaron Lehmar Craig, World Shift Vision, November 23, 2015
• Mainers will head to Paris as they push for Obama to make climate deal - By Randy Billings, Portland Press Herald, November 23, 2015
• 'Now More Than Ever': In Paris and Beyond, Climate Movement Will Be Heard - By Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams, November 23, 2015
• Thousands of protesters demand action on climate change - By Oakland North, San Francisco Chronicle, November 23, 2015
• What’s really at stake at the Paris climate conference now marches are banned - By Naomi Klein, The Guardian, November 20, 2015
• Why climate activists should support nationalisation and direct public investment - By Zane Alcorn, Green Left Weekly, November 20, 2015
• Is the Paris Climate March Cancellation a 'Gift to the Movement'? - By Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone, November 19, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• A farmers´ climate appeal to policy - By Georg Janßen, et. al., La Via Campesina, November 30, 2015
• Water can't be for sale - By Mike Gonzalez and Nick Evans, Socialist Worker, November 30, 2015
• ‘Fruits of Justice’ – Activists & Lawyers in Support of Familias Unidas por la Justicia - By Staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, November 26, 2015
• Food for Thought on Thanksgiving Eve… - By Staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, November 25, 2015
• Thousands protest in Seoul against the government policies - By Staff, La Via Campesina, November 25, 2015
• What's Missing From Our Thanksgiving Menus? Justice for Farm Workers - By Jennifer S. Hirsch, Huffington Post, November 25, 2015
• Behind Your Holiday Sweet Potato Dish, Hard Work In The Fields - By Dan Charles, NPR, November 24, 2015
• Salmon Fishermen and Consumer Groups Criticize FDA Approval of Frankenfish - By Dan Bacher, East Bay Express, November 23, 2015

By Teresa Albano - People's World, November 27, 2015

Everybody likes to talk about the weather but nobody can do a damn thing about it. Or can they?

Severe weather events that have caused deaths and destruction are linked to climate change - like 2012's Hurricane Sandy that pummeled New York and New Jersey, or the drought in Syria that forced people off their lands and into the cities, helping to create, according to reports, conditions that caused the devastating civil war.

And there is something people can do about climate change.

Despite the billions that Big Oil companies like Exxon Mobil have poured into spreading all kinds of climate change denial narratives, the world's scientists agree overwhelmingly that the planet is warming and it's due to the unprecedented release of human-created greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

And this warming has a cascading effect that even scientists cannot forecast. For one thing, glaciers and gigantic ice floes are melting into the oceans causing sea levels to rise, which in turn, threatens island nations like Fiji or low-lying regions of the United States, like the Florida Everglades. It's changing ocean currents and atmospheric patterns, leading to extreme weather events of all kinds - yes, including more severe blizzards too.

And who are the biggest victims of climate change? Working people around the world - the poor, the underpaid, the jobless, the exploited.

Now, unions worldwide are preparing to make sure the voices and needs of working people are included in the final United Nations Climate Change Summit in Paris, Nov. 30 - Dec. 11. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) plans to lobby negotiators and leaders of some 190 countries during the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference on three issues:

Raise the level of "ambition" in the emission targets and by doing so "realize" job creation potential in the greening of economies;

Guarantee the most vulnerable people and nations get the maximum financial help;

Commit to a "just transition" for workers and their communities involved in industries that rely on fossil fuels.

Among the U.S. union delegates will be Sean Sweeney, PhD, who is the coordinator of a global network called Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. He is also the director of the International Program for Labor, Climate and Environment, which is part of the City University of New York's Murphy Institute. Sweeney told People's World that there will be official union participation that focuses on the formal talks in Paris, but unions will also collaborate with other social movements in hosting discussions, debates and networking events outside of the official UN summit.

On Dec. 8, TUED and other union groups will host Naomi Klein, author of "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate," and British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in a conversation entitled, "Now Is Not the Time for Small Steps: Solutions to the Climate Crisis and the Role of Trade Unions."

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, November 24, 2015

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

Lead Stories:

• "Environmental Goods." Really? - By Lee Anderson, Blue Green Alliance, November 23, 2015
• Obama’s trade deal is in trouble - By Ian Swanson and Bob Cusack, The Hill, November 17, 2015
• Thanksgiving and the Slanderous Myth of the Savage Savage - By John Horgan, Scientic American, November 24, 2014

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Flood the System - Fall 2015: Flood, blockade, occupy and shut down the systems that jeopardize our future! | #FloodTheSystem
• Jobs, Justice, Climate: Rally to Defend New England's Future! - December 12, 2015
• People’s Climate Strike - November 26 - December 12, 2015
• Railcon15 - Next Conference TBA | #Railcon15

The Road to Paris:

• Prelude to Paris: Four Tragic Tactics by President Obama and Four Climate Justice Proposals He Must Support - By Eric Mann, Huffington Post, November 23, 2015
• France Cancels Major Climate March, Groups Say They Won’t Be Silenced - By Nadia Prupis, EcoWatch, November 19, 2015
• The Paris attacks make climate protests more important than ever - By Nick Dearden, The Ecologist, November 19, 2015
• Climate Activists Vow to Continue with Protests Ahead of Paris Talks - Alix Mazounie interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzáles, Democracy Now, November 18, 2015
• France forbids massive climate march in wake of Paris attacks - By James West, Grist, November 18, 2015
• Paris Attacks Complicate Upcoming UN Climate Talks - By Kieran Cooke, EcoWatch, November 18, 2015
• Climate Movement, Don't Back Down at Paris #COP21 - By Tim DeChristopher, timdechristopher.org, November 17, 2015
• Climate Activists Vow to Demonstrate During Paris Talks - By Katherine Bagley, Inside Climate News, November 16, 2015
• After the massacres of Paris: dread, revolt, action: statement from Attac France - By Attac France, Reclaim the Power, November 14, 2015
• 'False Solutions' Won't Save Mother Earth: Tom Goldtooth on COP21 - By Dominique Godrèche, Indian Country Today, November 5, 2015

Bread and Roses:

• Costco Warehouse in Sacramento Target of Pre-Thanksgiving Protest - By Staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, November 21, 2015
• Kao Bart Village, Thailand: Peasant Women in Struggle for Land Rights and Well Being - By Staff, La Via Campesina, November 20, 2015
• Let’s talk about the rights of women farmers! - By Maria Vogt and Monika Thuswald, La Via Campesina, November 20, 2015
• Farmworkers, allies march on Big Apple Headquarters of Wendy’s Board Chairman, Nelson Peltz! - By Staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, November 19, 2015
• Syngenta convicted in Brazil - By Staff, La Via Campesina, November 19, 2015
• A chance for the EU to amend bad policies in the milk sector - By Genevieve Savigny and Jose Miguel Pacheco Gonçalves, La Via Campesina, November 18, 2015
• Greek Farmers Protest Austerity Measures - By Jennifer Baker, Revolution News, November 18, 2015
• Unlikely bedfellows on the Liverpool Plains - By Tom Morton, Australian Broadcasting Company, November 17, 2015
• After Decades in a Food Desert, These Neighbors Are Building a $2 Million Co-op—And They Own It - By Liz Pleasant, Yes!, November 12, 2015

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• Morale Charades at Chemical Safety Board: Managing Director Scapegoated as CSB Stalls Mandatory Morale Survey Analysis - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, November 20, 2015
• When Temp Workers Die While Being Taken to the Job, Who’s Responsible? - By Spencer Woodman, In These Times, November 20, 2015
• Manslaughter charges filed in deadly 2012 platform blast - By Associated Press, FuelFix, November 19, 2015
• Second train worker sues BNSF over Casselton oil train explosion - By Emily Welker, Inforum, November 19, 2015
• USDA Sued to End Scientific Censorship: Unconstitutional Restraints on Publishing and Weak Integrity Protections at Issue - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, November 19, 2015
• [TRIGGER WARNING] Mongolian trade unionist burns himself alive in a shocking act of protest (VIDEO) - By Staff, Russia Times, November 17, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Union Pacific to close Burnham repair yard in Denver - By Alicia Wallace, The Denver Post, November 17, 2015
• Worldwide oil job losses climb to 233,000, recruiter says - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, November 17, 2015
• Enbridge to cut 5 percent of workforce amid slump - By Robert Grattan, FuelFix, November 16, 2015

Just Transition:

• Major Poll Shows African Americans Support Clean Energy, Clean Jobs, & Clean Power Plan - By Cynthia Shahan, Clean Technica, November 23, 2015
• Is your pension fund in climate denial? - By Marc Lee, Rabble.Ca, November 19, 2015
• New Report on "Connecticut’s Clean Energy Future" - By Marc Lee, Labor Network for Sustainability, November 19, 2015
• Blockade of Chicago Petcoke Facility Calls for Green Jobs Instead of Toxic Fossil Fuels - By Will Reynolds, Huffington Post, November 16, 2015

Other News:

• The Ticking Climate Bomb - By Jay Youngdahl, East Bay Express, November 18, 2015
• ‘Keep It in the Ground’ Victory: BLM Utah Halts Oil and Gas Lease Sale - By Sage Grouse Rebel, Canyon Country Rising Tide, November 17, 2015
• Big Coal Comes to Oakland - By Catherine Schuknecht, Sierra, November 16, 2015

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.