Can Push for Climate Bill Forge a Lasting Labor-Enviro Alliance?
The push for climate legislation has bolstered an alliance of unions and environmentalists, raising the hopes of liberal activists who have long sought a lasting and influential relationship between green groups and labor.
The Blue Green Alliance — a collaboration of six unions and two environmental groups — arrives after decades of intermittent cooperation and some major disputes.
“Both of these movements have realized they really need each other to get what they want,” said J. Timmons Roberts, a Brown University sociologist who has written on labor-environmental coalitions.
The Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers, after years of work together, formally launched the alliance in 2006. The effort expanded in 2008 and 2009, adding the Natural Resources Defense Council and several unions — the Service Employees International Union, Communications Workers of America, Utility Workers Union of America, Laborers’ International Union of North America, and the American Federation of Teachers.
The alliance has focused largely on supporting legislation that would impose national curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and boost deployment of low-carbon energy sources that both groups say will create scores of new “green jobs.”
… the alliance is booming, with a combined membership of partner groups of 8 million and a budget that has grown sixfold over three years to roughly $6 million this year, said David Foster, the alliance’s executive director and a former Steelworkers official.
About 60 percent of the coalition’s funding comes from foundations and the balance from the member groups, he said. Its paid staff has grown considerably, and last month it registered federal lobbyists for the first time.
The alliance is active in several states to rally support for the climate bill and has brought members to Washington to lobby on Capitol Hill. Last week, it kicked off a national tour with former Vice President Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection that will make the case for the bill in several manufacturing-heavy states.
“I think we represent an extremely potent educational force in the country by being able to reach out through those 8 million members and pull them together around a common vision of how we use environmental investments to improve our economic opportunities,” Foster said.
Stop the Teabaggers, Give Them Green Jobs: Lessons From the Coalfields of West Virginia
West Virginia shows us how we could easily win over this key segment of society, working class whites, with a New Deal-style industrial policy. Currently, 85,000 people in the United States are employed by the wind industry; Slightly more than the 81,000 in the United States working as coal miners.
On election night 2000, the biggest shocker for me wasn’t Florida, but that West Virginia had voted for a conservative Republican presidential candidate for the first time in nearly 70 years.
For decades, West Virginia, with one of the highest rates of unionization in the country, regularly voted for progressive candidates, even being one of only nine other states in 1988 to vote for the epitome of a Massachusetts liberal — Michael Dukakis. To know the story of West Virginia is to know why the progressive movement is failing to win over white working class voters. Because of their primary concern: jobs….
As a result of coal mining, West Virginia has a cancer rate that is nearly 70% higher than the national average . Every day more than three million pounds of ammonium nitrate explosives (a highly carcinogenic substance) are exploded in mountaintop removal. This is the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb worth of explosives being dropped on West Virginia every month. Over 100 billion gallons of toxic sludge are contained in poorly regulated, coal sludge reservoirs from mountaintop mining contaminating local water supplies, leading to mind boggling rates of cancer.
A fact that is equally startling as the destruction of the mountains, is the destruction of jobs in West Virginia. Coal mining jobs have gone down by 75% with the shift to the highly mechanized, mountaintop removal. In the early 1950′s, there were 145,000 miners employed in West Virginia; in 2004 there were just over 16,000 miners employed. While employment has decreased in coal mining, coal production has actually increased dramatically as a result of the environmentally destructive procedures of mountaintop removal.
Three Months From a Climate Summit, Agreement Far Off
Aug. 28 marked 100 days before the beginning of the annual U.N. climate change summit, to be held this year in Copenhagen, which is emerging as the world’s last good chance to craft a new global warming deal. With time running out, however, global negotiators still seem far apart, and there’s a growing fear that the world really could fumble the opportunity.
EPA chief to visit Gary for green jobs events
The nation’s top environmental official will visit northwestern Indiana on Tuesday for an event touting clean energy’s potential to bring new jobs to the state.
UN tackles climate change effects
Officials from UN member states are gathering in Geneva for a five-day conference on climate change. The World Climate Conference will look at ways to help countries cope with the effects of climate change, such as an increase in floods and drought.
As hybrid cars gobble rare metals, shortage looms
The Prius hybrid automobile is popular for its fuel efficiency, but its electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals, a little-known class of elements found in a wide range of gadgets and consumer goods.
On continent’s boggy Arctic fringe, scientists search for signs of future climate calamity
Researchers say air temperatures here in northwest Canada, in Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic have risen more than 2.5 C (4.5 F) since 1970 “” much faster than the global average. The summer thaw is reaching deeper into frozen soil, at a rate of 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) a year, and a further 7 C (13 F) temperature rise is possible this century, says the authoritative, U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Vice President Biden and Energy Secretary Chu announced this week the winners in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Clean Cities program intended to prompt development of cleaner alternative transportation fuels to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and lower carbon emissions.
Vice President Biden and Energy Secretary Chu announced this week the winners in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Clean Cities program intended to prompt development of cleaner alternative transportation fuels to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and lower carbon emissions. In response to the announcement, The American Clean Skies Foundation (ACSF), a nonprofit organization focused on energy and environmental education, especially as it relates to natural gas, has issued the following statement after noting a significant portion of the funding will be allotted to natural gas infrastructure projects:
“We applaud the U.S. Department of Energy for its decision to award a significant portion of the $300 million in funding for the Clean Cities program to natural gas projects. As the DOE has recognized, American-produced, clean-burning natural gas has a significant role to play in reducing carbon emissions as well as our unsafe dependence upon foreign oil. This funding will support development of natural gas vehicles and natural gas refueling stations, thereby leading to increased usage of natural gas as a transportation fuel in the coming years.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
“As hybrid cars gobble rare metals, shortage looms” should remind us that the world economy is so large that we are reaching ecological limits of many resources, not just of energy.
“Aug. 28 marked 100 days before the beginning of the annual U.N. climate change summit, to be held this year in Copenhagen, which is emerging as the world’s last good chance to craft a new global warming deal.”
We must all, as Joe stated in his Portland, ME presentation, spend as much time as we possible can, in any way that we can, to press for strong climate action.
With this in mind, Greenpeace published a clever newspaper, “The Martha’s Vineyard Future Times”, dated Thursday, August 27, 2020, and distributed it on the Island Thursday. It presented two future scenarios for the Island: one with effective climate action, and one without. The centerfold was a letter to the President.
Volunteers passed out thousands of these free newspapers to pedestrians on the Island.(See link below.) They also floated a sign in the harbor. Obviously, the hope is that this created enough of a stir that someone from the White House entourage, on the Island for the President’s vacation, accessed it.
Kudos to Greenpeace. We should do this is every town in the world!(And kudos to Gail for this idea)!
(see:http://usaphoto.greenpeace.org/Vineyard/MVT-Newspaper-08-20-09.pdf.)
A news item today that contrasts with the good news that has been coming from China
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090831/ap_on_bi_ge/cn_canada_petrochina_oil_sands
PetroChina to take oil sands stake for $1.7B
CALGARY, Alberta – PetroChina Co., Asia’s largest oil and gas company, is making a $1.7 billion investment in the Canadian oil sands.
Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. said Monday that PetroChina is buying a 60 percent working interest in its Mackay River and Dover oil sands projects in northeastern Alberta.
Bill Gallacher, chairman of privately held Athabasca, said it is hard to finance oil sands developments in the traditional equity markets. He said a joint venture with one of the world’s largest oil companies will ensure the two projects are completed on time.
… The projects are estimated to contain 5 billion barrels of oil.
Alberta is home to vast reserves of oil sands. Industry officials estimate the region could yield as much as 175 billion barrels of oil, which would make Canada second only to Saudi Arabia in crude oil reserves.
However, the cost of getting the oil out of the sand is prohibitive. Analysts say oil needs to be at $80 a barrel for new oil sands projects to be viable. Oil futures have recently been trading near $70 a barrel, well below their July 2008 highs above $147 a barrel.
Amazing!
Maybe the US is the place in the world where labor unions use BLUE color.
I am used to labor unions use RED banners and Red Flags (maybe with hammers and sickles). Here in Latin America, and also in Europe, “liberal” means right-wing , pro ultra-free-markets, and “left” is associated with social-democrats, socialists and communists.
In Europe, the Green Parties usually form electoral blocks together with Communist Parties.