renewable energy

By Jonathan Neale - Global Climate Jobs, December 18, 2015

This post looks at the results of the Paris climate talks, and says what the climate movement and the social movements need to do next, how climate jobs fit into that, and what you can do to help build a campaign for climate jobs in your country.

The Paris Climate Talks

Many have hailed the result of the UN climate talks as a breakthrough, for two reasons. One: all of the countries of the world signed an agreement about climate change. Two: there are some good abstract hopes in that agreement.

But there are also concrete promises about emissions. Some countries have promised to cut emissions by a little in the next fifteen years. They may, or may not, keep their promises. Many more countries, with more emissions, have promised to increase their emissions by a lot. Taken together, these are promises to increase emissions every year between now and 2030. That’s the bottom line. (For the details, see our earlier post, Paris: World Promises to Increase Emissions.)

What We Need to do Now

The good news is that we have a growing and increasingly radical global climate movement. And the organisations who think the agreement is a breakthrough also think it is only a beginning. In addition most people in the climate movement saw the result of Paris coming, so we do not have a demoralised movement.

As we return from Paris, it is clear that the leaders of all the countries in the world have failed us. They did so because nowhere did we have the political and social power to make them take decisive action on climate. So now we have to build that power, country by country. The only force we have on our side is seven billion people. We have to mobilise them.

This will not be an easy or quick task. We all know that. After all, we need cuts of 80% in global emissions, as soon as possible. That means deep changes in energy use and society.

Two kinds of campaigns will be central. One is fighting to leave the coal, gas and oil in the soil. There will be a global day of action against fossil fuels in May; national campaigns; local resistance to pipelines, new mines, new drilling, new power stations, extreme energy, fossil few sponsorship, and investments in fossil fuels.

The other kind of campaign will be to build an alternative. If we are to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, we have to do four things. We need to replace fossil fuels almost entirely with renewable energy. To do that we need renewable energy for all our electricity. We need a switch from cars to public transport, and almost all transport run on renewable electricity. We need conversions of all homes and buildings to save energy, and then to heat and cool all buildings with renewable electricity. And we need to protect and extend the great forests.

We need to do thousands of other things, but those four things will make most of the difference. All that will take a lot of work – we estimate at least 120 million new jobs worldwide each year for 20 years. This is what we mean by ‘climate jobs’ – jobs that have a direct effect in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

(For more detailed explanation in English, French or Spanish, see our booklet on Global Climate Jobs here.)

Moreover, we want government climate jobs programs to ensure a retraining and a permanent job to anyone who loses a high carbon job during the transition. That is only fair, and if we don’t do it we will split unions and communities.

By David Schwartzman - Jacobin, December 1, 2015

IWW EUC Note: readers should be aware that the term "communism" here does not mean "bureaucratic state capitalism", and can be inclusive of ecosocialism, post-scarcity-anarchism, and/or green syndicalism (depending on one's implementation of the ideas discussed here):

The proposals elites are offering at COP21 wouldn’t halt climate change. What would a socialist solution look like?

Jacobin Editor's Note: Leaders from 147 countries have assembled in Paris for COP 21, the most important climate summit since the 2009 Copenhagen meeting. But climate justice activists worry the result will be the same: platitudes and handwringing, with no firm commitment from Global North countries to drastically curb carbon emissions.

What, then, would a just solution look like?

David Schwartzman, a biogeochemist and professor emeritus at Howard University, has been thinking and writing about climate and energy issues for many years. He recently spoke with Jacobin about the state of the climate crisis, the connection between global warming and the military-industrial complex, and why “the communist horizon in the twenty-first century, if there is to be one, will be solar communist.”

What is the current consensus on the climate crisis?

According to Climate Interactive — a major monitor of climate change — based on public commitments from the major carbon-emitting countries, projected warming by 2100 will be 3.5°C (6.3°F), or 1.5°C above the 2°C warming limit (above the pre-industrial global temperature) agreed upon at the 2010 Cancun Climate Change Conference. The United Nations now gives a somewhat lower projected warming of 2.7°C (4.9°F).

Moreover, some leading climate scientists now think that even the 2 degree limit is too high. For example, NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen describes the 2 degree limit as a “prescription for disaster” because of projected impacts such as sea level rise and acidification of the ocean. His assessment is reinforced by a newly published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This evidence reinforces the long-term demand of many poor countries for a 1.5 degree limit.

What about fossil-fuel reduction? Is that making an impact?

Roughly 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from fossil-fuel use, with coal, natural gas (due to methane leakage into the atmosphere), and tar sands oil having the highest carbon footprint. Conventional liquid oil has the lowest carbon footprint, about three-fourths that of coal. (The other greenhouse gases derived from human activity include nitrous oxide, the breakdown product of nitrate fertilizer, with methane also coming from agriculture.)

China is the world’s leading carbon emitter, almost double that of the second-place United States.

The big three — China, the US, and the European Union —produce 55 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. China has committed to leveling off its emissions by 2030 (using carbon emission trading), while the US promises to reduce its greenhouse emissions 26–28 percent by 2025 relative to 2005 emissions.

As Naomi Klein has recently argued — citing the assessment of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research — the US goal falls far short of what is required for even the 2-degree goal, which would require reductions of at least 8 to 10 percent per year.

Projected warming, in combination with lackluster efforts to cut emissions, has created an imminent crisis. This is the reality check for serious activists. Any remaining possibility of keeping warming below 2°C will require rapid and radical cuts in global carbon emissions — starting with the fossil fuels with the highest carbon footprint — and the simultaneous creation of a viable global wind and solar power infrastructure.

By the Admin - A Green Trade Unionist in Bristol, December 1, 2015

Author's Note: This is a talk I prepared for a NEON (the New Economy Organising Network) event to prepare for Bristol Climate March:

Climate change as we know is the most serious long-term challenge facing both our society, and our planet in general.  We are on the verge of reaching the point of no return, the tipping point beyond which catastrophic warming of the planet will be unavoidable, and the habitability of our world serverely undermined.

But as well as a challenge of almost unimaginable horror, climate change is also an opportunity.  As Naomi Klein has recently persuasively argued Climate Change can provide movements for social and environmental justice with a ‘collective lens’, a shared conceptual framework, sense of purpose and set of arguments for moving beyond the extreme Free-Market Capitalism (conventionally labelled NeoLiberalism) that is so impoverishing both our planet and our communities.

For decades the arguments of the alter-globalisation movement – that Free Market fundamentalism was causing spiralling inequality and social stratification – have fallen on death ears.  We now know those exact same policies have greatly exacerbated our excessive consumption of resources and our output of greenhouse gases, endangering life as we know it.

It also presents an opportunity in terms practice solutions it requires.  I don’t want to understand the scale of the problem and the response it needs.  To do our part in preventing catastrophic climate change the few decades we have left to actually do something about it, we need to rapidly transition to a zero-carbon economy.  Tinkering around the edges with carbon trading, taxes and offsetting just won’t cut it.

The amount of carbon already in the atmosphere means that even if we stopped polluting tomorrow we’ve still locked in considerable warming, we have to act now to prevent temperature rises above 2 degrees (which would have extreme consequences across the world).

We need to cut CO2 emissions by around 75-80%.
We can achieve this if we cut our energy usage by half (very achievable with an aggressive program of energy efficiency and home insulation – Britain has the worst insulated homes in Europe, which contribute to an estimated 20,000 death every winter, as well as huge amounts of wasted energy) and supply at least half of that energy from renewable sources.

This will mean the end of many jobs in polluting and fossil fuel dependent industries (an estimated 350,000).  But it will also require millions of new jobs in building new infrastructure, renewable energy, home insulation, public transport and energy efficiency.  The Campaign Against Climate Change, have created a rough blueprint laying out how this might happen.  They estimate that nationally we need to create 1 Million Climate Jobs to do all this work.

By Michael Ware - Socialist Worker, December 1, 2015

The climate justice movement knows what it is against, but what are we fighting for? Michael Ware, of System Change Not Climate Change, has some answers:

EVERYONE BUT a few Republican crackpots now acknowledge that the planet faces a climate emergency. But the bosses at ExxonMobil had a bit of a head start.

A company memo was unearthed this year showing that the oil giant knew since 1977 from its own scientists that burning fossil fuels contributed to global warming. But the findings were hidden, and Exxon continued to be climate change deniers for decades to come.

This revelation speaks volumes about how short-term profits trump everything under capitalism, even human survival. Exxon's research pointed toward what we are living through today: increased temperatures globally, drought, mass flooding, more intense hurricanes, crop failures, extinctions, melting polar regions, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, water scarcity, and on and on.

Already, climate change causes 300,000 to 400,000 deaths per year, mostly in the Global South, according to a study conducted on behalf of the UN several years ago.

In order to keep the increase in global temperatures under 1.5 degrees Celsius by mid-century and avoid catastrophic environmental changes, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 5-10 percent each year. Already, the global temperature increase has been almost 1 degree Celsius.

The emergence of a green capitalism sector, increased energy efficiencies and limited expansion of renewable energy have done little to bring down the estimates of average temperature increases. Without a radical change of course, the increase will be between 4 and 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Clearly, just educating politicians and business leaders about the threat isn't enough. We need movements and protests strong enough to force big changes in the way humans produce and consume energy.

The urgency around halting climate change creates a unique political dynamic. The need for social change is always urgently felt by the oppressed, but for the first time, we have an environmental timer showing that the huge task of transitioning to a sustainable world must take place in this century, or humanity will face the consequences of an inhospitable planet.

Fighting for this kind of change will necessarily threaten capitalism. Yet it's hard for most people to envision a world without corporations, car culture, oil wars, oppression and a market for everything, including pollution.

By Climate - Capitalism vs the Climate, November 16, 2015

There’s going to be a climate rally at the state Capitol soon about replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. That all sounds good, but we want to form a contingent that’s loud and clear about the need for systemic social change. We hope you’ll join.

Look for us with the banner that says ‘End capitalism’ at the bottom.

• Capitol Building Hartford CT
• Saturday, Nov 21st, at 12 PM
• https://www.facebook.com/events/1518104615179767/

“100% renewable energy” isn’t enough.

We need community control and a rejection of false solutions. Putting a wind turbine on top of a genocidal system doesn’t make it green. Did you know Solar City has been installing solar panels made by prisoners paid pennies to the dollar? That Malloy’s been counting renewable mega-hydro power as green despite its infringement on indigenous Innu land in Quebec? That Bridgeport takes trash from surrounding suburbs and burns it in a low-income neighborhood in order to produce so-called renewable energy? Sometimes renewable energy is just as socially and environmentally destructive as fossil fuels.

Rallies and lobbying aren’t enough

We need direct action. We don’t think the Keystone XL would have been (partially) stopped if it hadn’t been for the countless actions and arrests of the Texas tree-sitters, the Lakota spiritual campers, the White House protesters and others. We’d like to see climate campaigners in CT learn from the (partial) KXL victory and step it up a little bit.

Get Spectra out of Connecticut

Spectra Energy’s fracked gas pipeline expansion could endanger tens of millions of lives, due to its dangerous location near the Indian Point nuclear power plant and its contribution to global climate change. We see Spectra’s expansion as a symptom of the deadly grow-or-die system that’s squeezing the Earth and its inhabitants to extinction. Isn’t stopping Spectra one of the things we can unite around, or is naming it being too specific and divisive for those trying to play nice with Malloy?

By J. Mijin Cha, Lara Skinner and Josh Kellermann - Global Climate Jobs, September 11, 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 2014-2015, the New York labor movement and its allies in other movements launched two complementary Climate Jobs initiatives for New York City and New York State. The city-level campaign, Climate Works for All, is anchored by ALIGN, the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA) and the NYC Central Labor Council (CLC). Climate Works for All is a broad coalition of over 40 community, labor, environmental justice, faith and other organizations united to ensure that efforts to address climate change also create good, career-track jobs and prioritize low-income, climate-vulnerable communities. The coalition released a 10-point platform in early 2015 that focused on five primary sectors that contribute most to NYC’s climate crisis: Buildings; Energy; Transit; Waste; and Community and Infrastructure Resiliency. The 10-point platform ranges from demanding a mandatory energy efficiency retrofit program for large privately-owned buildings, to solar installations on 100 schools, to flood and stormwater infrastructure improvements, to making NYC’s public hospitals more resilient to climate change impacts.

The New York State initiative, coordinated by The Worker Institute at Cornell, brings together unions in the building, energy and transport sectors to develop a comprehensive climate jobs plan for New York State. A Climate Jobs report for New York State will be released in Fall 2015 along with specific climate jobs policy proposals for the energy, transport and buildings sectors – policies that the labor movement along with its allies will push to implement in the next year. The Worker Institute at Cornell and its union partners have also developed a labor-climate training curriculum for union members and leaders that will be used to build engagement and support for the climate jobs work in NY.