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EcoUnionist News #96

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 03/21/2016 - 18:42

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 22, 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
agricultural workers and peasants
Iron and Earth
Berta Cáceres
health and safety
privatization
capital blight
greenwashing
whistleblowers
disaster capitalism
Thin Green Line
labor and environment

Labor in the Age of Climate Change: Any just transition to a green economy must take place on labor’s terms — not capital’s.

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 03/21/2016 - 14:23

By Stefania Barca - Jacobin, March 18, 2016

Climate change must be stopped. But who will do the stopping? Who, in other words, could be the political subject of an anticapitalist climate revolution?

I am convinced this social agent could be, and indeed must be, the global working class. Yet to play this role, the working class must develop an emancipatory ecological class consciousness.

Fortunately, history is rife with examples of this kind of green-red synthesis — labor environmentalism is as old as the trade union movement.

For much of its existence, labor environmentalism focused on the workplace and the living environment of working-class communities, linking occupational health and safety with the protection of public and environmental health.

In the 1990s, labor environmentalism began embracing the concepts of “sustainable development” and the “green economy.” More recently, as climate change has intensified, “just transition” (JT) has become the idea du jour. JT is based on the notion that workers shouldn’t bear the brunt of the shift to a low-carbon economy, whether in the form of job losses or destabilized local communities.

To this end, blue-collar unions — particularly those in heavy industry, transport, and energy — have forged so-called blue-green alliances with environmental groups across the globe. These convergences demonstrate a growing consensus around the need to tackle climate change, advancing union involvement and sustainability as the means to that end.

Yet important cleavages exist within this consensus, especially when it comes to the just transition. Some groups simply push for job creation in a greened economy. Others, refusing to abide market solutions, have adopted a radical critique of capitalism.

How this schism shakes out will decide whether labor unwittingly bolsters capital — or confronts capital and climate change.

Tags: 
Stefania Barca
energy democracy
just transition
green syndicalism
ecosocialism
green unionism
green capitalism
trade unions
reformism
labor and environment

What Keeping Oil in the Ground Can Do for Economic Inequality

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 03/18/2016 - 17:35

By Yessenia Funes - Yes! Magazine, March 15, 2016

Our lifestyle is inextricably linked to fossil fuels. We pay the industry to heat our homes and power our cars. Though driving might be optional where public transit is available, heat is not during harsh winters. We know about the effects on the climate of burning oil, gas, and coal for energy, but we don’t know what turning our backs on them will do to our economy. Some worry that closing our oil refineries and shutting down our mines would throw the market into a dangerous vortex. That doesn’t need to be the case. A successful energy transition could actually benefit the economy and reduce inequality.

The economy relies on a number of things, including spending, manufacturing, trade, and personal income. The availability of fossil fuels has largely driven these for 150 years. “[Oil] is the world’s first trillion-dollar industry in terms of annual dollar sales,” environmental author Jack Doyle wrote in 1994. In North Dakota, a major oil- and gas-producing state, an oil boom created the $53.7 billion gross domestic product the state sees today.

But booms often have downsides. When the journal Energy Economics compared six states that produced the vast majority of the West’s crude oil and natural gas, it saw per capita income decrease by as much as $7,000 in counties whose incomes relied most on such development. Also, the crime rates and percentage of adults without a college education increased in those counties. The study offers possible explanations, including an increasing reliance on nonlocal workers and changing wage structures.

The oil and gas industries are the largest industrial sources of volatile organic compound emissions—2.2 million tons a year. These chemicals cause smog, which can increase the risks of asthma and premature death. The industry also produces cancer-causing pollutants: benzene, ethylbenzene, and n-hexane, which are emitted during the refinement process.

Low-income communities of color disproportionately bear this health burden and are also least likely to have access to health care, including preventive medicine, checkups, and prescription drugs. The inequality of care only widens the income gap by adding more financial pressures to an already stressed group.

What about jobs? Extractive industries currently employ nearly 200,000 Americans and pay some employees as much as $42.90 an hour. These jobs are a valid concern. The U.S. unemployment rate is finally down to about 5 percent. Surely we don’t want all those people put out of work.

That won’t happen if we launch the renewable energy sector in sync. Economists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) have studied this topic since the early 2000s. Their research shows how a transition to renewables can lead to a post-carbon world and a fairer economy.

Tags: 
decarbonization
energy transition
just transition
labor and environment
green jobs
extractivism
fossil fuel capitalism
green unionism
green economics
Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS)
Jeremy Brecher

EcoUnionist News #95

Submitted by x344543 on Sun, 03/13/2016 - 19:20

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 15, 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
agricultural workers and peasants
health and safety
privatization
capital blight
greenwashing
whistleblowers
disaster capitalism
Thin Green Line
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #94 - Berta Cáceres Presente!

Submitted by x344543 on Sun, 03/06/2016 - 11:32

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 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:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
just transition
agricultural workers and peasants
health and safety
privatization
capital blight
greenwashing
whistleblowers
disaster capitalism
Thin Green Line
labor and environment

Teleseminar Transcript: "Just Transition" with Mateo Nube of Movement Generation

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 03/02/2016 - 18:53

By Mateo Nube - Movement Generation, November 4, 2015

Marissa Mommaerts: I’m so happy this teleseminar is happening, because personally I believe that making social justice more explicit in our work is not only the right thing to do, it’s also the only way our movement is going to become powerful enough to rise to the challenges of our time. And I’m very excited to welcome a friend and mentor, someone I deeply respect and admire, Mateo Nube of Movement Generation, to lead today’s call.

Mateo is one of the co-founders of the Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project. He was born and grew up in La Paz, Bolivia. Since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has worked in the labor, environmental justice and international solidarity movements. Mateo has spent the last two decade integrating concepts of popular education into his movement work. He is also a member of the Latin rock band Los Nadies.

We’re grateful Mateo has agreed to lead today’s teleseminar, because we respect and appreciate the work of Movement Generation and the other organizations he will be talking about - and because we recognize the need for more conversations on the link between Transition and social justice.

Our team at Transition US has begun exploring the connections between race, class, and ecology, as have a number of local initiatives and regional hubs in the US and around the world. And in doing this work, we’ve learned that it can bring up a lot of assumptions. So I to get the most out of today’s call, I invite us all to participate with an open mind and heart, in the spirit of reflection and collaboration.

And with that, I will turn it over to Mateo:

Mateo Nube: Thank you Marissa and Carolyne. I’m excited and humbled and flattered to be having this conversation with folks from – if I gather correctly – not just the United States but also a few folks calling in from around the world. I have a lot of admiration for the work of the Transition Towns movement, and a special respect for both Marissa and Carolyne for the work of Transition US. And as has been expressed, what I will be talking about today is the concept of a “Just Transition.” I will both speak to it conceptually and give examples. As you may hear in the background, the garbage truck is passing by our office. It makes it real – I will be talking about zero waste among other concepts – it’s the Ecology Center truck from Berkeley, California where our office is located.*

I will start by stating what I think is obvious and will serve as a platform of sorts for the conversation we will be having today, which is that Transition is inevitable. It’s upon us, and it’s why those of us who are on this call are compelled to be doing the work we’re already doing: because we’re living at a highly pivotal moment in our planetary history, or human history as it relates to human impact on the planet.

So Transition is inevitable, but justice is not. And that’s what the conversation today is meant to really focus on: how is it that we ensure that the lens we’re bringing to the work we’re doing, that is so important and pivotal, is really centered around this concept of a Just Transition.

Tags: 
just transition
green unionism
Movement Generation
green jobs
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #93

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 02/29/2016 - 18:22

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 1, 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
agricultural workers and peasants
health and safety
whistleblowers
greenwashing
labor and environment
Thin Green Line
disaster capitalism

Why I Choose Optimism Over Despair: An Interview With Noam Chomsky (excerpt)

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 02/25/2016 - 17:38

Noam Chomsky interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou - Truthout, February 14, 2016

...You have defined your political philosophy as libertarian socialism/anarchism, but refuse to accept the view that anarchism as a vision of social order flows naturally from your views on language. Is the link then purely coincidental?

It's more than coincidental, but much less than deductive. At a sufficient level of abstraction, there is a common element - which was sometimes recognized, or at least glimpsed, in the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. In both domains, we can perceive, or at least hope, that at the core of human nature is what [Russian anarchist Mikhail] Bakunin called "an instinct for freedom," which reveals itself both in the creative aspect of normal language use and in the recognition that no form of domination, authority, hierarchy is self-justifying: Each must justify itself, and if it cannot, which is usually the case, then it should be dismantled in favor of greater freedom and justice. That seems to me the core idea of anarchism, deriving from its classical liberal roots and deeper perceptions - or beliefs, or hopes - about essential human nature. Libertarian socialism moves further to bring in ideas about sympathy, solidarity, mutual aid, also with Enlightenment roots and conceptions of human nature.

Both the anarchist and the Marxist vision have failed to gain ground in our own time, and in fact it could be argued that the prospects for the historical overcoming of capitalism appear to have been brighter in the past than they do today. If you do agree with this assessment, what factors can explain the frustrating setback for the realization of an alternative social order, i.e., one beyond capitalism and exploitation?

Prevailing systems are particular forms of state capitalism. In the past generation, these have been distorted by neoliberal doctrines into an assault on human dignity and even the "animal needs" of ordinary human life. More ominously, unless reversed, implementation of these doctrines will destroy the possibility of decent human existence, and not in the distant future. But there is no reason to suppose that these dangerous tendencies are graven in stone. They are the product of particular circumstances and specific human decisions that have been well studied elsewhere and that I cannot review here. These can be reversed, and there is ample evidence of resistance to them, which can grow, and indeed must grow to a powerful force if there is to be hope for our species and the world that it largely rules.

While economic inequality, lack of growth and new jobs, and declining standards of living have become key features of contemporary advanced societies, the climate change challenge appears to pose a real threat to the planet on the whole. Are you optimistic that we can find the right formula to address economic problems while averting an environmental catastrophe?

There are two grim shadows that loom over everything that we consider: environmental catastrophe and nuclear war, the latter threat much underestimated, in my view. In the case of nuclear weapons, we at least know the answer: get rid of them, like smallpox, with adequate measures, which are technically feasible, to ensure that this curse does not arise again. In the case of environmental catastrophe, there still appears to be time to avert the worst consequences, but that will require measures well beyond those being undertaken now, and there are serious impediments to overcome, not least in the most powerful state in the world, the one power with a claim to be hegemonic.

In the extensive reporting of the recent Paris conference on the climate, the most important sentences were those pointing out that the binding treaty that negotiators hoped to achieve was off the agenda, because it would be "dead on arrival" when it reached the Republican-controlled US Congress. It is a shocking fact that every Republican presidential contender is either an outright climate denier or a skeptic who opposes government action. Congress celebrated the Paris conference by cutting back [President] Obama's limited efforts to avert disaster.

The Republican majority (with a minority of the popular vote) proudly announced funding cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency - one of the few brakes on destruction - in order to rein in what House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers called an "unnecessary, job-killing regulatory agenda" - or in plain English, one of the few brakes on destruction. It should be borne in mind that in contemporary newspeak, the word "jobs" is a euphemism for the unpronounceable seven-letter word "pr---ts."...

Read the rest of the interview, here.

Tags: 
Noam Chomsky
climate justice
green syndicalism
jobs versus environment
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #92

Submitted by x344543 on Sun, 02/21/2016 - 09:55

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 22, 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:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Greenwashers:

Whistleblowers:

Disaster Capitalism:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
just transition
carbon bubble
disaster capitalism
health and safety
whistleblowers
greenwashing
Thin Green Line
Flint
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #91

Submitted by x344543 on Sun, 02/14/2016 - 11:32

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 15, 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
carbon bubble
disaster capitalism
health and safety
whistleblowers
greenwashing
Thin Green Line
Flint
labor and environment

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