Sean Sweeney recently joined the Murphy Institute to direct the International Program for Labor, Climate and the Environment. This past December, Sweeney spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! about the potential effects of the since-vetoed Keystone XL pipeline on job creation. See the video here.
Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) got a plug in the Guardian on Tuesday with a letter from Bert Schouwenburg, International Officer of GMB, the energy union in the UK. The letter was in response to an article by Mark Lynas called We must reclaim the climate change debate from the political extremes.
From Schouwenberg:
Had Lynas attended the alternative people’s summit at the COP 20 climate change talks in Lima last year, he would have heard a succession of speakers from Latin America’s indigenous communities rejecting development models imposed on them by transnational capital. They are in the frontline of the fight against climate change and are struggling to stop the destruction of their environment by mining and mono-crop agriculture for export. They would not see themselves in terms of left or right, but fully understand that an economic model based on infinite growth, with the commensurate depletion of the planet’s natural resources, is incompatible with saving the Earth from the catastrophic effects of global warming.
This does not mean sufficient energy cannot be provided for the needs of future generations, but that it must be responsibly sourced and publicly owned instead of being left to market forces and monolithic corporations whose priorities lie in ripping off consumers and making money out of burning fossil fuels. As an energy trade union, we support the necessary, just transition to a low-carbon economy, and are members of the global network Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. As the slogan read in Lima: “Let’s change the system – not the climate.”
Profit-driven approaches to our energy supply are not working. Emissions continue to rise and our climate is rapidly changing. How can we move toward “energy democracy,” shifting to a more sustainable, equitable energy system? And what’s the role of trade unions in getting us there?
This video from RLS–NYC and Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) points the way:
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=A2c9vsJeGFM]
This article was originally featured in Monthly Review Zine.
By Kafui Attoh
“Once labor has been embodied in instruments of production and enters the further process of labor to play its role there, it may be called, following Marx, dead labor [. . .]. The ideal toward which capitalism strives is the domination of dead labor over living labor.” — Harry Braverman “[T]here are no jobs on a dead planet.” — Bill McKibbenIn a recent essay in New Labor Forum, authors Jeremy Brecher, Ron Blackwell, and Joe Uehlein urge the labor movement to take a more active role in the fight against climate change. Many unions, they lament, have been reluctant to engage the issue, and indeed others have actively taken positions at odds with the climate movement’s most basic tenets. Where unions have been asked to choose between job security and the environment, many have understandably chosen the former. In this fraught context, the authors argue that unions must not only work to reveal the “jobs versus environment” choice as a false one, but that they must do so by developing a climate protection strategy of their own. Continue reading Dead Labor on a Dead Planet: The Inconvenient Truth of Workers’ Bladders
This weekend, over 300,000 people took to the streets to demand action on climate change. Many of the protesters took pains to demonstrate that climate change and global warming are not “just” environmental issues — they are closely connected to issues of labor, civil rights and housing, too.
In a report recently released by the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, Murphy Institute instructor Samuel Stein connects the risk of rising sea levels to the question of affordable homeownership. New York City’s coastal areas are home to tens of thousands of single family homeowners, and a large portion of them are working and middle class. For decades, city planning decisions made the waterfront the site of not just public housing, but low-income home ownership opportunities. Today, both climate change and rising flood insurance costs threaten to displace these homeowners, and could compound the city’s affordable housing crisis.
In their report, “Rising Tides, Rising Costs: Flood Insurance and New York City’s Affordability Crisis,” Samuel Stein and Caroline Nagy explore this dilemma through quantitative research, historical narratives, homeowner and policy-maker interviews, informative graphics and more.
Photo shows Master’s degree alum Bill Cali marching with the Committee of Interns and Residents, SEIU.
By Stephanie Luce
Murphy faculty, staff and students were among the over-310,000 people who participated in the People’s Climate March on September 21. Labor unions first gathered for a rally at 57th Street and Broadway before the march began, and union leaders and members spoke about the importance of the march and the issue of climate change.
Many union members were impacted directly or indirectly by Superstorm Sandy, and they are eager for the city to make necessary changes to prevent future storms from having a catastrophic impact. Continue reading Labor and the People’s Climate March
