just transition

By Kate Aronoff - Yes! Magazine, December 4, 2015

In just a few months at the beginning of WWII, the U.S. auto industry converted to a war machine. We need that kind of rapid, driven transition to get away from fossil fuels. Here's the just way to do it.

Throw a stick at COP 21 and you’re likely to hit something bearing the word “renewable,” written in one language or another. The expansive Climate Generations Area, an official portion of the La Bourget compound open to the general public, is somewhere between an Ikea and a high-production-value science fair. Flanked by booths hosted by a spread of global organizations—from the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance to the Surfrider Foundation—the conference center is full of corporate-sponsored solutions and borderline gimmicky items like bike-powered “power stations” for charging cell phones.

But how can those following the talks start to parse out genuine from greenwashed solutions at COP21? At the Trade Union Forum on Climate and Jobs on Dec. 3, an unlikely international group of greens—trade unionists—came together to make their pitch for one option: energy democracy.

The concept of energy democracy is rooted in calls for democratic rights, a well-funded public sphere, and renewable energy. According to the International Labor Organization, a just transition away from fossil fuels and toward a greener economy means the process must include all stakeholders: The inevitable impacts on society and jobs must be shared by all of us. 

Peter Knowlton, general president of the United Electrical Workers (UE) and a veteran of the anti-nuclear movement, likened the coming transition away from fossil fuels to the periods before and after the Second World War.

“When the U.S. entered into the war, within a period of three months they had completely transformed the auto industry into a war machine,” he said, noting that just 150 cars were produced in the United States from 1942 through 1945. “An entire industry was transformed overnight, from one of producing peacetime vehicles into a war machine. From our perspective, this is the kind of effort that is going to be required in the United States and elsewhere in order to save ourselves from ourselves.”

By Blake Deppe - People's World, December 3, 2015

Photo: Left to right - Clara Paillard, Tony Clark, Andreas Ytterstad. | Blake Deppe/PW

PARIS: As the UN Climate Conference (COP 21) continues, the Trade Union Forum on Climate and Jobs debuted today at Climate Generations. Trade unions gathered with their allies and with one another to discuss the ever-looming dark cloud that is climate change, and how to find a silver lining within it, by creating clean jobs that sustain the labor movement and reduce or eliminate harm to the environment. While that's no easy task and there's a long road ahead for workers and activists, labor leaders presented real plans and logical solutions.

The key word today was "transition," and the ensuing question was, how do workers prepare for the adjustments that will have to be made as the world moves away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy? It was a question that had to be asked, and the Trade Union Forum, an event that began today and which will last through Dec. 7, did just that. First posing that query were members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who shared an assessment report based on their research to reaffirm, once again, that climate change is a real and portentous threat.

Sustainable future a prerequisite for progress

"Climate change is real. The consensus on this is stronger than the consensus that smoking causes cancer," said Jonathan Lynn, head of communications and media relations for the IPCC. "World public opinion has shifted and there is now a greater understanding of this. So a pathway for a sustainable future is a prerequisite for progress. We have to have greener jobs, but at the same time, they have to be unionized and made available to those who become displaced from other work. But we've pissed away a lot of the time we had, and now our window to do this is closing. Unfortunately, there's a lot of money to be made in destroying the planet. Companies like Exxon or people like the Koch Brothers will not deliver a sustainable future."

On the other hand, those who possibly can bring about such a future took center stage as the next phase of the forum, Climate Jobs Now, began. Here, union leaders spoke about the One Million Climate Jobs Campaign, organized by the Campaign Against Climate Change trade union group and supported by eight national unions. Its goal is to create one million green jobs, which would help shift the energy industry to one based on renewables and clean alternatives and which could kick-start the economy.

Press Release - Canadian Union of Public Employees, December 3, 2015

As world leaders are gathered in Paris for the COP21 climate talks, 23 government negotiators including Canada are in Geneva negotiating a secretive trade deal that will give oil and gas companies new powers.

Wikileaks has released a section of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) draft text that, if adopted, would prevent governments from favouring clean energy - such as solar - over more polluting sources - like the tar sands.

The leak reveals TiSA would also make it difficult, or even impossible, to ban fracking or phase out hazardous and polluting energy extraction. This poses enormous barriers to government action, like Alberta’s recent climate change strategy.

“It’s urgent that we collectively phase out – not expand – our fossil fuel use,” says Mark Hancock, CUPE National President. “TiSA keeps our planet on the path to climate disaster, by allowing corporations to continue exploiting dirty energy sources, and preventing governments from favouring renewable alternatives.”

A CUPE delegation to the COP21 climate talks, including National Secretary-Treasurer Charles Fleury, is calling on international leaders to reject any trade deal that hinders the fight against climate change.

“In Paris, we’re pushing for public ownership of renewables. It’s the best way to transition away from fossil fuels and meet ambitious emissions targets,” says Fleury. If Canada wants to show leadership on climate change, it’s time to walk the talk. Our government must reject TiSA.”

Global trade union federation Public Services International has analyzed the leaked text: 

• PSI press release and backgrounder

• PSI TiSA resources page

CUPE is committed to stopping trade deals like the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and TiSA, which put corporate profits ahead of the public interest and the environment.

CUPE is calling for fair trade deals that work for people and the planet – not just a global corporate elite.

Learn more in the Trade section of our website.

To stop climate change and move to a renewable future, we must take the profit motive out of our energy strategy. CUPE supports public ownership of the energy sector and works with allies like Trade Unions for Energy Democracy to find solutions to the climate crisis that can strengthen worker and community power while advancing social and environmental justice.

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).

By Jeff Lusanne  - WSWS.org, October 29, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In the rugged, mountainous region of Central Appalachia—covering West Virginia, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, and Western Virginia—many towns and cities exist because of a particular industry. Sometimes, the name of a town itself shows this: for example, Alloy, WV, where a silicon metal alloy plant is located on the banks of the Kanawha River. Countless towns were built around coal mines, many have which have faded away as mines closed, or become shells of their former prosperity. Indeed, Prosperity, WV is a place, located near the high-quality coal in Raleigh County.

The railroads, built through the challenging terrain of the Appalachian region to transport its valuable resources to domestic and international markets, created railroad towns. The sorting of traffic, maintenance of track and equipment, and administrative tasks created hundreds of jobs in cities across the region.

In the last two months, mass layoffs of railroad workers in response to falling coal traffic have called into question the fate of several towns that are inextricably linked to the railroad industry, where generations of workers have been employed by railroads.

The most severe blow was the sudden October 15 announcement by CSX Railroad that it was effectively ending operations in Erwin, Tennessee, a yard and maintenance base on a major route through the area. Employees of the railroad in Erwin heard the news in the morning at the beginning of their shifts, and then some spent their shift assembling all the equipment in the yard into the last train to leave town. When it did, 300 workers lost their jobs.

On October 20, CSX announced another 180 layoffs of yard and maintenance in Corbin, Kentucky, another major regional terminal. Due to declining coal traffic, the railroad closed the locomotive terminal and car shop, where workers inspect and maintain equipment. A hundred employees will remain and the terminal will stay open.

In both Corbin and Erwin, CSX stated that workers have the option of moving for work outside of the area—which could mean hundreds of miles away. An engineer wrote in the Erwin Record that with the last shift of crews, the conversation was “Where you going, Nashville? Birmingham? Etowah? Tampa?.” Followed by the “It’s been good working with you,” then “the handshakes, the hugs, the misty eyes, the turns and walks away.”

The positions of engineers, conductors, maintainers, and repairman were skilled operating or mechanical jobs with wages that are not commonly available elsewhere in the region, and their loss will have a devastating impact on the local economy and the workers affected.