just transition

By C.J. Polychroniou and Robert Pollin - Truthout, February 24, 2022

Since mid-2020, inflation has been rising, with the level of average prices going up at a faster rate than it has since the early 1980s. In January 2022, prices had increased by 7.5 percent compared to prices in January 2021, and it now looks like the U.S. may be stuck with higher inflation in 2022 and even beyond.

Why are prices rising so dramatically? Are we heading toward double-digit inflation? Can anything be done to curb inflation? How does inflation impact growth and unemployment? Renowned progressive economist Robert Pollin provides comprehensive responses to these questions in the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows. Pollin is distinguished professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

C.J. Polychroniou: Back in the 1970s, inflation was the word that was on everybody’s lips. It was the longest stretch of inflation that the United States had experienced and seems to have been caused by a surge in oil prices. Since then, we’ve had a couple of other brief inflationary episodes, one in the late 1980s and another one in mid-2008, both of which were also caused by skyrocketing gas prices. Inflation returned with a vengeance in 2021, causing a lot of anxiety, and it’s quite possible that we could be stuck with it throughout 2022. What’s causing this inflation surge, and how likely is it that we could see a return to 1970s levels of inflation?

Robert Pollin: For the 12-month period ending this past January, inflation in the U.S economy was at 7.5 percent. This is the highest U.S. rate since 1981, when inflation was at 10.3 percent. Over the 30-year period from 1991 to 2020, U.S. inflation averaged 2.2 percent. The inflation rate for 2020 itself was 1.2 percent. Obviously, some new forces have come into play over the past year as the U.S. economy has been emerging out of the COVID-induced recession.

To understand these new forces, let’s first be clear on what exactly we mean by the term “inflation.” The 7.5 percent increase in inflation is measuring the average rise in prices for a broad basket of goods and services that a typical household will purchase over the course of a year. At least in principle, this includes everything — food, rent, medical expenses, child care, auto purchases and upkeep, gasoline, home heating fuel, phone services, internet connections and Netflix subscriptions.

In fact, prices for the individual items within this overall basket of goods and services have not all been rising at this average 7.5 percent rate. Rather, the 7.5 percent average figure includes big differences in price movements among individual components in the overall basket.

The biggest single factor driving up overall inflation rate is energy prices. Energy prices rose by 27 percent over the past year, and within the overall energy category, gasoline rose by 40 percent and heating oil by 46 percent. This spike in gasoline and heating oil prices, in turn, has fed into the total operating costs faced by nearly all businesses, since these businesses need gasoline and heating oil to function. Businesses therefore try to cover their increased gasoline and heating oil costs by raising their prices.

By David Suzuki - Rabble, February 23, 2022

The fossil fuel industry has gone to great lengths to paint itself as an environmental champion working hard to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It can’t be trusted.

It has fuelled a rapidly accelerating crisis that puts the health and survival of humans and many other living beings at risk—all for the sake of enormous profits.

Industry leaders have been knowingly misleading people for decades about the consequences of wastefully burning their products. About 45 years ago, oil giant Exxon’s own scientists warned that excessive fossil fuel use would bring about climate disruption.

“In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” Exxon senior scientist James Black told the company’s management committee in 1977. The next year, he said doubling CO2 emissions would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celcius, which lines up with today’s scientific consensus. He added that “present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

Exxon did nothing about the looming crisis it was contributing to, but company executives put enormous amounts of effort and money into downplaying the science and sowing public doubt and confusion. They even worked to undermine international climate agreements such as the 1998 Kyoto Protocol.

By Brendan Montague - The Ecologist - February 23, 2022

Investment in reducing emissions from aviation and expanding green transport in the UK would create hundreds of thousands more jobs and cost less than the support given to the industry during the covid crisis, according to a new report from climate charity Possible and employment think tank Autonomy.

An annual cost of £9.5bn would allow investment in technological developments to reduce emissions from aviation, along with an expansion in the rail network to allow people to travel without flying.

A move to rail, low-emissions ferries, domestic tourism, aviation research and development and cleaner fuels generated from electricity to reduce emissions from flights could create a net increase of between 280,000 and 340,000 jobs.

Retrain

Despite receiving a £12bn bailout, including £750m from the Covid Jobs Retention Scheme, the aviation industry cut more than 46,000 jobs during the pandemic.

The report calls on the UK Government to stop giving taxpayer-backed handouts to the industry, and instead put in place policies to reduce flights to protect the climate and start creating environmentally sustainable jobs for the future, given the aviation industry’s poor record on protecting jobs as well as increasing emissions.

A new survey of more than 1,000 people working in aviation also included in the report found that just 21 percent of respondents thought that the industry offered them secure employment for the future.

Possible is also calling for a “right to retrain” scheme to support people working in aviation who would like to move into lower-carbon sectors, and a frequent flyer levy to fairly reduce demand for flights while raising funds to invest in low-carbon transport.

By Jesse Bedayn - Cal Matters, February 17, 2022

A leading environmental lawmaker has proposed a bill that would create a state fund to support and retrain thousands of oil industry workers as California tries to phase out fossil fuel production.

The idea of guiding California’s 112,000 oil industry workers out of their current field and into other careers is often referred to as “just transition,” and is considered by policy researchers a necessary step to counter job losses as the state strives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

But even with a Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature, such a proposal faces an uphill battle because it’s pitting unions against unions.

Community and environmental groups say the state should start moving half the industry’s workforce out of oil fields, refineries and plants now in order to meet California’s goal of cutting 40% greenhouse gas emission by 2030. But a union that represents a portion of these workers has opposed efforts in the past. 

The State Building and Construction Trades Council of California – known as the Trades – which represents labor groups that include Ironworkers, electrical workers and Teamsters, worry about losing good-paying jobs. Last year, The Trades opposed a bill that would have prevented oil drilling near schools and communities, citing job losses. 

This time, however, the Trades is being countered by another group of unions including steelworkers, municipal workers and teachers. Although the current bill doesn’t specify an amount, those unions hope the state will dedicate $470 million annually for wage subsidies and training to help workers move into the growing green energy sector. 

Trades leaders say that beginning to dismantle the industry now will only push workers into lower-paid jobs. Instead, Trades officials say, the state should invest in big-ticket infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail and offshore wind projects that will create comparable jobs to what workers have been doing for decades.

Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi’s bill exposes a rift among labor unions on how the state should address the transition to a green economy at a time of growing income inequality and fewer well-paying jobs for middle-class workers. 

It also puts labor’s main organizing body, California Labor Federation, in an uncomfortable position after Steelworkers requested that the organization convene “labor to labor” talks on the subject. Both sides say talks haven’t happened yet.

By staff - Global Climate Jobs, February 15, 2022

The 2022 Lisbon Declaration on Climate Jobs and Just Transition was written as part of the training that took place in January 2022, in Lisbon, and was attended by 20 participants from 11 different nationalities. The declaration was later presented at the final plenary of the V International Ecosocialist Encounters, which took place in the same month, in Lisbon. At that time it was signed by more participants of the Encounter.

The text calls for environmental, climate justice, trade unions, labour and other civil society organizations to come together to support existing campaigns and create new Climate Jobs Campaigns, which seek to create decent jobs that contribute to reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, stoping climate collapse and building an economy with life at its center.

The climate is changing. Increases in average temperatures and disruptions to local climates are resulting in extreme weather events and ecological catastrophes. As a consequence, the livelihoods, identities, and cultures of people are threatened and are already being destroyed. These impacts are inherently unjust as the regions and communities with the least historical responsibility for GHG emissions are the ones most affected and often the ones least listened to.

Science has told us that we need to drastically reduce emissions within a relatively short timeframe if we wish to avoid climate collapse. In order to do this, we need to create millions of new jobs that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. This will facilitate a fast transition away from ecologically destructive industries while also being fair to those who contribute to, or would be affected, by this transition.

Within this challenge are the opportunities of creating new emission-cutting jobs that are dignified, with fair wages, while respecting environmental, health, hygiene and safety rules. We refer to these as Climate Jobs. These must be in renewable energies, public transportation systems, building and infrastructure energy efficiency, forest protection, waste management, professional training and re-qualification, and agriculture that respects the natural cycles of our global and local ecosystems. Large amounts of funding will have to be mobilized, carrying out actions without the need to maximize profits, but rather guaranteeing direct and immediate jobs to workers that will lose their old jobs due to the transition. These have to be public jobs, created in the optic of public service, to ensure they are stable to the workers and beneficial to all of society.

Governments, international institutions and the “invisible hand of the market” have failed in their responses to the climate crisis. Nevertheless, we know that historically the biggest developments in democracy, social rights, and access to public services, such as healthcare and education, have been gained due to the organized struggles of the working class. This was so because the workers if organized and united through their different oppressions of class, race, gender expression and sexuality, have massive power.

Similarly, stopping climate change can’t be done without a massive popular movement. Indigenous people have been fighting against the destruction brought upon by multinational corporations that have been ensuring climate and ecological catastrophe. Recently we have seen the strengthening and internationalization of a climate movement that has been demanding climate justice all around the world. This movement is seeking to unite workers everywhere to ensure a just transition.

Such a transition will have to also involve sectors of work that capital considers non-productive. Any kind of organizing for Climate Jobs campaigns will have to involve, organize, and mobilize workers doing care work, which are mainly women and racialized persons. Reproductive labour is very often made invisible and left out of the labour movement, even though these workers – that ensure the pillars of the capitalist system – are the most marginalized and thus the most fragile of the working class. This transition has to change the path of our economy from a profit-extracting march of death to an economy with life at its centre. In the process, this builds a new system that cares for both people and planet, that values indigenous and peasant knowledge, and respects nature and its cycles.

Workers have been left out of the discussions on how to carry this transformation. Attempts to transition so far have occurred without considering workers interests, rights and demands, while at the same time has not resulted in an actual decrease in global greenhouse gas emissions or in an improvement of local ecological conditions. On the contrary, any plan that aims to solve the climate crisis should not be dictated by the needs of companies but instead by the needs of both workers and life on Earth. A Just Transition plan needs to specially include workers and communities affected by the climate crisis and/or by the transition, so it can result in the improvement of living conditions everywhere. It should never result in an increase of exploitation or extractivism, but on the contrary, should be built upon international solidarity, with the goals of peace and democracy at its core.

The points of convergence between the workers and the climate justice movements are immense. As so, we call for environmental and climate justice organizations, workers’ movements and unions, as well as other civil society groups, to come together to create and raise support for Climate Jobs campaigns. Multiple international campaigns would shift the global conversation about Just Transition, rescuing it from the hands of profit, and would mobilize workers and the climate justice movement everywhere – and in this process creates a future for all.

By Marisol Cantu, et. al. - Richmond Progressive Alliance - February 14, 2022

By Wenonah Hauter - In These Times, February 14, 2022

For years now, any discussion about climate action or the need to move off fossil fuels has run headlong into a familiar quandary: The industries fueling the climate crisis create good jobs, often in areas of the country where finding work that can support a family is incredibly difficult. 

This leaves activists gesturing towards well-intentioned goals like a ​“just transition,” a promise that likely rings hollow for workers and many labor unions because it’s hard to see where this has actually happened — even though, by every measure, we need to create some real policies that turn this vision into reality. While there are encouraging examples of labor unions throwing their support behind robust climate plans, it has proven difficult for the climate movement to find its way out of the jobs versus environment framing. 

But that is especially true when we refuse to question the original premise. The truth is that the fossil fuel industry wildly inflates its employment record, and the recent data show they are producing more fuel with fewer workers. Instead of avoiding this reality, perhaps it is time to tackle it head on. Dirty energy corporations are not creating jobs as much as they are cutting them these days, and that provides an opening to envision the kinds of employment — in areas like orphaned well clean up and energy efficiency — that will provide employment for the thousands of workers the industry is no longer employing. 

Some of the most common jobs estimates are produced by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the powerful oil and gas trade association. Over the years, API has released reports claiming that the domestic fracking industry creates somewhere between 2.5 million to 11 million jobs, both directly and indirectly. These numbers — or versions of them — are floated in political debates and in the media, but they are significantly out of step with other estimates, including the federal government’s labor reports. Food & Water Watch, an organization I founded, created a more accurate model that relies on direct jobs and relevant support activities, including pipeline construction and product transportation. The total comes to just over 500,000 in 2020, or about 0.4 percent of all jobs in the country. 

How to explain the massive gap between industry propaganda and reality? The API figures include a range of employment categories; in addition to direct industry employment, they add indirect jobs (those within a supply chain) and induced jobs (those that are supposedly ​‘supported’ by direct and indirect jobs). These categories make up the vast majority of their total. Convenience store workers, for example — working where gas happens to be sold — make up almost 35 percent of the industry’s supposed employment record.

By Claire - Campaign against Climate Change: Trade Union Group, February 14, 2022

In a rich country like the UK, people should not have to choose between warm homes and decent food. But with a combination of rising gas prices, a failure to insulate homes or build enough renewable energy, and a deeply unequal society after a decade of austerity and benefit cuts... this is the reality for many.

On 12 February there were protests around the country about the cost of living crisis. Further days of action have been called for 5 March and 2 April.

The crisis is being used by some in the rightwing media and Conservative party to argue that we 'can't afford' climate action, or that pumping more fossil fuels from the North Sea could solve the problem - despite the obvious fact that in a global market, oil companies will export their product to wherever they get the best price.

As families struggle, oil companies' profits have shot up with rising gas prices.

Shell recorded $19.3 billion profits in 2021, while BP raked in $12.8 billion

A windfall tax on energy giants' profits would help ensure that no one has to choose between eating and heating their homes - sign the petition here

The current situation also makes clear that the current system of privatised energy - and the assumption that what's good for the big oil companies is good for all of us - is broken and dangerous. Find out more about campaigning for public ownership.

By Tom BK Goldtooth, Kali Akuno, Elizabeth Yeampierre, Inkza Angeles, and Keenan Rhodes - Climate Justice Alliance, February 11, 2022