Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 14, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

• A Diet of Austerity: Class, food and climate change - Reviewed by Martin Empson, Climate and Capitalism, June 13, 2016
• The Doomsday Clock: Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change and the Prospects for Survival - By Noam Chomsky, TomDispatch, June 12, 2016
• Asbestos Industry Knew and Kept Secret for Decades That Their Product Was Deadly - By Alex Formuzis, EcoWatch, June 8, 2016
• Leave it in the ground: A new abolitionism needed for climate change - By David Mirtz, People's World, June 7, 2016

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Flush the TPP - Ongoing through 2016 | #FlushtheTPP
• March for a Clean Energy Revolution - July 24, 2016, Philadelphia | #CleanEnergyMarch
• TWAC Cascadia 2016 - August 8th-15th 2016

The Thin Green Line:

• Cowboy & Indian Alliance Plant “Seeds of Resistance” Ponca Corn in Paths of Atlantic Coast & Mountain Valley Fracked Gas Pipelines - By Mark Hefflinger, BOLD Nebraska, June 8, 2016; [related]: Activists plant ceremonial corn against pipeline - By Laura Peters, News Leader, June 6, 2016
• Oregon oil train explosion fuels growing opposition movement - By Sarah Gilman, High Country News, June 8, 2016
• In the Pipeline: In Oregon, a volatile climate for liquefied natural gas pipeline and terminal projects - By Juliet Grable,  Earth Island Journal, June 6, 2016
  

Just Transition:

• Climate Jobs for New York State - By Jonathan Neale, Global Climate Jobs, June 12, 2016
• New U.S. Solar Capacity Just Outperformed Fossil Fuels - By Alejandro Davila Fragoso, Think Progress, June 9, 2016; [related]: Solar Added More New Capacity Than Coal, Natural Gas and Nuclear Combined - By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch, June 9, 2016; [and]: Solar Made Up 64% of New Electric Generating Capacity in the US in Q1 2016 - By Mike Munsell, Greentech Media, June 8, 2016
• Unemployed oil workers find new home in solar industry - By Brenda Salinas, Marketplace, June 7, 2016
• University of Wyoming Helps Displaced Coal Workers - By staff, Associated Press, June 6, 2016
• Transition Economics–Vermont - Ken Jones, Darren Springer, and Jon Erickson interviewed by Jan Mueller, The Energy Exchange, May 27, 2016 
• Denmark’s Energy Transition - Justin Gerdes interviewed by Chris Nelder, The Energy Transition Show, May 18, 2016

Bread and Roses:

• International Launch of La Via Campesina’s 7th International Conference - By staff, La Via Campesina, June 14, 2016
• Brazil Occupation: MST Landless Take Over Suzano and report environmental problems - By Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project, June 13, 2016
• Increase Gained Not Enough: Familias Unidas por la Justicia Members Will Continue the Fight for Fair Wages and Union Contract - By staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, June 13, 2016
• Some thoughts on the Implications of Brexit - By Matt Lobley, Landworkers Alliance, June 13, 2016
• Striking Colombian Campesinos Reach Deal With Government - By staff, TelesurTv, June 13, 2016; [related]: Colombian Peasant, Indigenous Groups Launch 'Agrarian Strike' - By staff, TelesurTv, May 30, 2016
• Peasant members of SPI demand immediate resolution to land dispute at UPT, Bali Village - By staff, La Via Campesina, June 10, 2016 
• False Promises, Smears and Golden Rice: Is This the Solution for Disease, Poverty and Malnutrition? - By Colin Todhunter, CounterPunch, June 9, 2016
• Farmworkers Union Walk Out from the Fields This Morning - By staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, June 9, 2016
• In defense of territorial markets, institutional procurement: Ramona and Angel at CFS Negotiations - By staff, La Via Campesina, June 9, 2016; [related]: Small holder farmers are crucial to ensure food security and nutrition: Javier Sanchez at CFS - By staff, La Via Campesina, June 9, 2016
• MEDIA ROUND-UP: Commentators across the World Wide Web take Publix, Wendy’s to task! - By staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, June 8, 2016
• June 20: Farmworkers Organizing for Justice! Report-back on West Coast Tour - By Heather, Community Alliance for Global Justice, June 6, 2016
• Victims of Colombian Death Squads Can Move Forward With Case Against Former Chiquita Executives - By Valentina Stackl, EarthRights International, June 2, 2016

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• Union demands SF make Uber, Lyft, pay for drivers’ business licenses - By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, San Francisco Examiner, June 8, 2016
• Another coal miner killed on the job - By Ken Ward Jr, Charleston Gazette-Mail, June 7, 2016
• Minister blames Chinese cost cutting for Ramu death - By staff, The National aka The Loggers Times, June 6, 2016
• South Africa in crisis: splits at the top, stirrings from below - By Tom Bramble, Red Flag, June 3, 2016; [related]: South Africa's Economic Freedom Fighters: Julius Malema and the Struggle to Continue the Revolution - By Dr. Marsha Cole, Black Agenda Report, May 31, 2016
• Needless radio communications are too distracting, union leader says - By staff, Progressive Railroading, June 1, 2016

Whistleblowers:

• New Nevada monument to be rutted by off-road desert race - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, June 13, 2016
• Whistleblower: EPA Official Covered Up Methane Leakage Problems Across US Natural Gas Industry - By staff, NC WARN, June 8, 2016; [related]: Key government reports were wrong about methane leaks' severity, environmental group alleges - By Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2016
• EPA pushing huge hike in drinking water radioactivity - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, June 7, 2016

By Nashieeli Valencia Nuñez - People and Planet, April 18, 2016

The NUS represents 7 million students and passes policy at their annual conference. In collaboration with the Zapotec Indigenous community, UK students from the University West of Scotland and beyond are proposing an amendment to the Divest-Invest motion (502b) to support a just transition to renewable energy that does not reproduce the colonial models of extraction employed by the fossil fuel industry. Please act on their call for our solidarity.

To the National Union of Students
To all students in the UK

Dear friends,

I’m writing to you from my hometown, the Zapotec Indigenous community of Ixtepec, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico.

Our community is currently setting up a community-controlled wind farm in collaboration with Yansa, a non-profit that has been supporting our struggle. The wind project will be a tool for community development.

By Patrick Mazza - Cascadia Planet, April 17, 2016

We are out of time on Planet Earth.

In the three months since the Paris climate summit declared a 1.5° C global warming target to hold climate disruption dangers in check, rapidly escalating world temperatures came within a hair’s breadth. The average for the January-March timeframe was 1.47°C above the 1890s, the baseline before mass fossil fuel burning began to significantly heat the planet, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported. For the first time in the historical record the planet has neared or crossed the agreed danger threshold for three months in a row.

Never has radical climate disruption caused by fossil fuel pollution been so visible. Besides the temperature spike, the Arctic is raising red flags. An Arctic Ocean ice pack at record lows could be setting up a record melt season. The Greenland ice melt season started around a week ago, nearly a month ahead the previously recorded start and two months before normal.

Whether this is a temporary spike or a jump to a new climate state, the message is clear. We have used up all time or space for anything but the most urgent actions to eliminate the carbon pollution that is twisting the climate. We need a people power upsurge to demand immediate, deep reductions in fossil fuel burning and pollution. That is the goal of Break Free, a worldwide popular mobilization in May aiming for the greatest wave of direct actions against the fossil fuel industry in history. The Pacific Northwest action targets refineries in Anacortes, Washington, source of nearly half the vehicle fuels used in the region.

By Patrick Mazza - Cascadia Planet, April 14, 2016

We now know we can run the world 100% on clean, renewable energy. The question is whether we can do it in time to prevent the world from plunging into full-blown climate chaos. 

An avalanche of studies points the way to a 100% world largely based on wind and solar energy. They illuminate how to reach 100% in all sectors – electricity, transportation, and heating/cooling – by 2050.  Most prominent are roadmaps for 139 countries and 50 U.S. states done by Stanford’s Mark Jacobson and his team, and the Energy Revolution series done by Greenpeace.  There are many others.

This is more than an academic exercise. Nations are acting. Costa Rica plans to reach 100% renewable electricity this year, and Scotland by 2020.  Denmark has targeted 100% in electricity, heating and cooling by 2030, and to end all fossil fuel burning by 2050. Sri Lanka aims for 100% renewable electricity by 2030.  Hawaii is the first U.S. state to enact a 100% renewable electricity standard, with a 2045 goal.  Some 50 cities including 15 in the U.S. have made a 100% commitment including San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Copenhagen, Sydney, Frankfurt, Munich and Vancouver, B.C.  Some cover only electricity, while others sweep in all sectors.  Four U.S. cities now draw 100% of their electricity from renewables, as do 74 German localities. Companies aiming at 100% renewable electricity include Google, Facebook, Apple, Nike, Starbucks and Proctor & Gamble.

A 100% renewable world is possible. The big question is - Can we achieve it fast enough to avert a complete climate meltdown?  Because oil companies systematically monkeywrenched the political system to prevent significant carbon regulation for over 25 years, we are very late in the game.  With carbon pollution growing at a record rate, the world is on track for the worst-case climate havoc, a nature-wracking, civilization-destroying 4-5° C heat upsurge this century.

How fast do we need to drop carbon pollution to get off this dead-end track? Almost unimaginably fast.  Some would say at a rate that is impossible. Nonetheless, we must let the best climate science set the goalpost and work backwards from there to make the scientifically necessary the politically feasible.  That means we must break through the political deadlock that has stalemated real progress.  And that calls for a people power revolution.  The upcoming Break Free actions, aiming at the largest wave of civil disobedience against the fossil fuel industry in history, are an opening salvo.  Northwest actions are slated for the Anacortes, Washington oil refineries May 13-15. 

By Carl Sack - Socialist Action, January 20, 2016

Photo: Demonstration for climate justice near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Dec. 12. David Sassoon / Inside Climate News

After 10 days of talks at the COP 21 climate conference in Paris, negotiators from 195 countries celebrated the adoption of an agreement that calls for a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5^o Centigrade above pre-industrial levels.

On one hand, the agreement goes farther than any previous accord to acknowledge the need for a rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Its preamble includes the “principle of equity” that rich countries must do more than poor countries. It even pays lip service to indigenous rights, gender equality, and a “just transition of the workforce.” It calls for holding the global average temperature “well below 2^o C above pre-industrial levels”—the suicidal temperature ceiling advocated by the U.S. and European countries—and aspires to limit the temperature rise to 1.5^o C. Many poorer nations pushed for the 1.5^o target.

On the other hand, despite the enlightened preamble, the document is utterly empty of any concrete measures to curb planet-destroying carbon emissions. It relies on countries to set their own “intended nationally determined contributions” or INDCs, which are to be updated every five years. The language used is revealing; INDCs are voluntary pledges that are non-binding and therefore have no real impact.

The agreement does not lay out any roadmaps for how individual countries will achieve their pledges. It fails to even mention reducing the consumption of fossil fuels beyond a vague reference to “domestic mitigation measures.” Even if all countries were to follow through on all of the pledges made just prior to the Paris conference, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research peg the result as a disastrous 2.7^o C warming by the year 2100—just 0.9 degrees below the “business-as-usual” scenario.

Worse, like its predecessors, the Paris agreement endorses counterproductive market-based carbon-trading schemes. Carbon markets introduced under the Kyoto Protocol (called the “Clean Development Mechanism”) have attracted rampant corruption, promoted big development projects like hydropower dams that displaced sustainable communities, and ultimately collapsed due to a lack of demand for carbon offsets. Forest protection credits, sold as carbon offsets under the UN REDD program, have accelerated corporate land grabs in developing countries and hastened the conversion of natural forests into private monoculture tree plantations.

Provisions of the agreement could also be interpreted as promoting speculative carbon-capture technologies and risky geo-engineering schemes.

NASA climate scientist James Hansen called the agreement “a fraud” and “a fake.” “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises,” Hansen said in an interview with The Guardian. Hansen supports a carbon tax with public redistribution of the proceeds as a means of curbing fossil fuel use.

Perhaps proving Hansen’s point, the Paris talks do not seem to have spurred any immediate action to curb emissions by the world’s worst polluters. In fact, just before the Paris talks, President Barack Obama signed a transportation bill including a provision that fast-tracks environmental review of new oil and gas pipelines and strictly limits lawsuits aimed at stopping such projects. Just after the talks, he signed a spending bill that ended the 40-year-old oil export ban, allowing U.S. fossil fuel corporations to ship crude oil overseas.

Edward P. Louie and Joshua M. Pearce - Energy Economics, 2016

Although coal remains the largest source of electricity in the U.S., a combination of factors is driving a decrease in profitability and employment in the coal-sector. Meanwhile, the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry is growing rapidly in the U.S. and generating many jobs that represent employment opportunities for laid off coal workers. In order to determine the viability of a smooth transition from coal to PV-related employment, this paper provides an analysis of the cost to retrain current coal workers for solar photovoltaic industry employment in the U.S. The current coal industry positions are determined, the skill set evaluated and the salaries tabulated. For each type of coal position, the closest equivalent PV position is determined and then the re-training time and investment are quantified. These values are applied on a state-by-state basis for coal producing states employing the bulk of coal workers as a function of time using a reverse seniority retirement program for the current American fleet of coal-powered plants. The results show that a relatively minor investment in retraining would allow the vast majority of coal workers to switch to PV-related positions even in the event of the elimination of the coal industry.

Read the report (PDF).