Press Release - Railroad Workers United, April 1, 2016

Whereas, the continued extraction and combustion of fossil fuels such as coal and oil has been scientifically proven to represent a threat to the environment and the future of the planet; and

Whereas, there is a mass movement domestically and globally to radically reduce the continued use of such fuels to power economic development; and

Whereas, other alternative energy sources – wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric–are developing rapidly and appear to be the wave of the future; and

Whereas, railroad corporations have traditionally hauled large amounts of fossil fuel–especially coal–but the future of this traffic appears uncertain or possibly even non-existent within a few decades; and

Whereas, the burden of shifting from an economy based on fossil fuels to one based upon renewal energy should not be unfairly born by workers, including railroad workers; and

Whereas, to ensure that such a transition to alternative energy does not create an economy of low paid jobs for working people-including railroad workers-whose jobs could conceivably be threatened by such a transition;

Therefore, Be it Resolved that RWU supports a “Just Transition” to an economy based upon renewal and clean energy; and

Be it further Resolved that RWU demand workers who are displaced from environmentally destructive industries be provided living wage income and benefits through public sector jobs or a universal basic income; and

Be it Further Resolved that RWU demand that workers who are displaced from environmentally destructive industries be provided with commensurate rates of pay and benefits while retraining; and

Be it Further Resolved that RWU demands that fossil fuel extraction dependent regions such as Appalachia be locations where investments of alternative energy are made to offset the economic dislocations that workers and communities would face from such a transition; and

Be it Finally Resolved that RWU call upon the rail industry and the rail unions to work together to move away from unsustainable practices - specifically the hauling of environmentally destructive commodities--and work towards expanding the railroads’ business prospects in areas such as mail, passengers, trailers and containers, renewal energy components, etc.

By Candice Bernd - Truthout, April 3, 2016, ©Truthout; reprinted with permission.

Lliam Hildebrand says he had a moment of clarity during an apprenticeship at a steel-fabricating shop in Victoria, Canada. He was learning the metal-working skills he would need to become a boilermaker, to eventually move on to work on the many steel vessels -- including furnaces, pipelines, "cokers" and "exchangers" -- that make up the oil industry's vast infrastructure in Alberta, Canada's oil sands fields.

During that apprenticeship, Hildebrand would come into the fabricating shop and see a pressure vessel on one side of the shop being made for the oil sands, and at the same time, on the other side of the shop, his own project -- a wind farm weather station. Hildebrand says he walked into the shop one morning, and the contrast between the two ventures struck him sharply. That was the moment when he realized, "We are the trade -- the building trade -- that's really going to help address [climate change]."

From then on he has felt as though he's been living two lives. Coming out of his apprenticeship, he started looking for jobs in the renewable sector, but was unable to find work. Six years ago, he reluctantly decided to apply his skills where there were plenty of jobs: the Canadian oil sands fields.

But after years of working in an industry that one top climate scientist has called "the biggest carbon bomb on the planet," Hildebrand came to realize that he was not the only oil worker in Alberta who felt "guilty about developing the infrastructure that is creating climate change."

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, April 4, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

• Fueling Fascism: The Secret History of How Texaco Supplied Oil to Fascists in Spain - Adam Hochschild interviewed by Nermeen Shaikh and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, March 31, 2016
• Reframing The Economics Debate Could Lead To More Action To Fight Climate Change - By Farron Cousins, DeSmog Blog, March 30, 2016
• Recycling is important: and recycling workers deserve better conditions - By Gail Bateson and Barbara Rahke, ILWU Dispatcher, March 29, 2016
• Death of a Shale Gas Salesman - By Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee, March 28, 2016
• Cuba’s sustainable agriculture at risk in U.S. thaw - By Miguel Altieri, The Conversation, March 25, 2016

Ongoing Mobilizations:

• Break Free 2016 - May 2016
• Convergence In Support of Eco-Prisoners & Against Toxic Prisons - June 11-13, 2016
• Earth Day to May Day! - April 22-May 1, 2016
• Flush the TPP - Spring 2016 | #FlushtheTPP
• March for a Clean Energy Revolution - July 24, 2016, Philadelphia | #CleanEnergyMarch
• TWAC Cascadia 2016 - August 8th-15th 2016

The Thin Green Line:

• Big Oil’s time running out at the Port of Vancouver? We hope so - By Dan Serres, Colombia Riverkeeper, April 2, 2016
• FERC Denies Jordan Cove LNG! Oregon LNG: You’re Next! - By Dan Serres, Colombia Riverkeeper, April 2, 2016
• Your Call: Utah coal stirs up concerns in Oakland - By Laura Flynn, KALW 91.7 FM, March 29, 2016

Just Transition:

• Canada: Leap Manifesto unites broad forces, builds climate justice campaigns - By John Riddell, Climate and Capitalism, April 3, 2016
• Catching The Sun: Documentary Highlights Link Between Solar Energy And American Job Creation - By Alex Kotch, DeSmog Blog, April 3, 2016
• New investments bring ray of hope for Winnipeg Transit - By Lynne Fernandez, Rabble.Ca, March 31, 2016
• Study: ‘Quiet recreation’ brings in $173 million, employs more than 1,700 - By Rebecca Moss, Santa Fe New Mexican, March 31, 2016
• 568,979 Clean Energy Workers In Midwest (2016 Survey) - By Jake Richardson, Clean Technica, March 30, 2016
• 2.5 Million Americans Work In Clean Energy (Report) - By Jake Richardson, Clean Technica, March 30, 2016
• Report: Re-Member-ing the Electric Cooperative - By John Farrell, Matt Grimley & Nick Stumo-Langer, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, March 29, 2016

Bread and Roses:

• First union of agricultural women workers launched in Pakistan - By Staff, International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations, April 2, 2016
• Berry Farmworkers Toil 12 Hours A Day For $6. Now They’re Demanding a Raise - By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, Think Progress, April 1, 2016
• Honoring Cesar E. Chavez’ Legacy - By Staff, Boycott Sakuma Berries, April 1, 2016
• Hunger pangs of starving farmers met by a barrage of bullets - By Zeph Repollo, 350.Org, April 1, 2016; [related] 3 dead, 87 missing, 116 hurt as police fire on Cotabato human barricade - By Jeff Caparas, InterAksyon.com, April 1, 2016
• Boycott Driscoll’s West Coast Tour at Driscoll’s HQ in Watsonville - By Bradley Allen, Bradley Allen, March 31, 2016
• “Wendy’s has lost my respect as well as my patronage…” - By Staff, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, March 31, 2016
• 5 Million Nigerians Oppose Monsanto’s Plans to Introduce GMO Cotton and Corn - By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch, March 29, 2016
• Global Agribusiness, Dependency and the Marginalisation of Self-Sufficiency, Organic Farming and Agroecology - By Colin Todhunter, CounterPunch, March 29, 2016
• HC&S sugar plantation in Hawaii to close - By Staff, ILWU Dispatcher, March 29, 2016

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

• Biotech Tree Company ArborGen Settles with Defrauded Employees - By Staff, Global Justice Ecology Project, April 1, 2016
• In Coal Blood: Feds Seek Maximum Sentence for Don Blankenship - By Russell Mokhiber, CounterPunch, March 30, 2016
• The Assassinations of Honduran Activists: Where Are the Roots of the Violence? - By Staff, Peaceful Uprising, March 29, 2016
• Averting Thousands of Vehicle Exhaust Deaths - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, March 29, 2016
• Thousands of Peru Mineworkers Struggle for Decent Work - By Oscar Muro, AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, March 29, 2016
• Malibu Toxic Schools Case Clears Hurdle for Trial - By Kirsten Stade, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, March 28, 2016

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, April 4, 2016

A supplement to Eco Unionist News:

Lead Stories:

• Black Thursday: Layoffs hit 500 Wyoming coal miners - By Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile, March 31, 2016 
• Steel crisis: we need urgent action to save tens of thousands of jobs - By Charlie Kimber, Socialist Worker (UK), March 30, 2016
• Excuse me — do you know where my Appalachia is? - By Eve Andrews, Grist, March 29, 2016

Other Carbon Bubble News:

• Texas leads the way in another rig count drop - By Jordan Blum, FuelFix, April 1, 2016
• BNSF furloughs have hit 4,600 employees nationwide - By Max B. Baker, Forth Worth Star Telegram, March 31, 2016
• Devon Energy to close Houston area office, cut about 60 jobs - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, March 31, 2016
• Maersk Oil to close Houston office, cut remaining local jobs - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, March 31, 2016
• Oil bust claims another 1,100 jobs across Texas - By Robert Grattan, FuelFix, March 29, 2016
• Peabody Lifeline Vanishing as Bowie Loan Deal Said to Be Dropped - By Michelle Davis, MichelleF_Davis, Jodi Xu Klein, Bloomberg, March 29, 2016
• U.S. Lifted The Crude Oil Export Ban, And Exports Went…Down - By Charles Kennedy, OilPrice.com, March 29, 2016
• Yellen: Another oil price drop could spill over into global economy - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, March 29, 2016
• Electric Vehicles Will Deflate Demand For Oil - By Andreas de Vries and Salman Ghouri, Energy Post, March 28, 2016

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW. Please send suggested news items to include in this series to euc [at] iww.org.

Al Weinrub - Yes! Magazine, November 12, 2015

On September 21, Pa Dwe, a 16-year-old student at Oakland’s Street Academy, spoke out against the export of coal through the Port of Oakland to City Council members: “I’m opposed to this coal export because it will make my community in West Oakland sick. I support jobs, but not the kind of jobs that make us sick. There are clean job alternatives, like Community Choice energy, and this will be good for the health of my community. This is my generation; I want to have a healthy life.” 

Pa’s comments exemplify a growing awareness that the people of California can only successfully address climate change by breaking with fossil fuels and the state’s investor-owned utility companies.

These utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), control about 75 percent of the electricity market in California, with the other 25 percent being supplied by public (municipal) utilities.

By creating slick, misleading ad campaigns about how green they are, the monopoly utilities have done their best to fight renewable energy programs. This often happens behind the scenes, and with the willing assistance of the scandal-ridden California Public Utilities Commission—the agency that is supposed to regulate these behemoth energy enterprises.

Back in 2002, in the wake of the Enron-induced crash of California's electricity system—which to this day has left rate-payers bailing out the utility companies— California passed AB 117, the Community Choice Aggregation law. This law allows a city, county, or any grouping of cities and counties, to “aggregate” electricity customers in their jurisdictions for the purpose of procuring electricity on their behalf. Under this arrangement, a public agency—the newly formed Community Choice program—decides where electricity will come from, while the incumbent utility delivers the electricity, maintains the electric lines, and bills customers.

The new program is a hybrid between a public agency and a private utility. The utility owns the distribution infrastructure, but the public is in the driver’s seat regarding energy decisions.

“It puts our community in control of the most important part of our electricity system,” explains Woody Hastings of the Center for Climate Protection in Sonoma County, one of the jurisdictions that has opted for a Community Choice energy program. “That means we can purchase more renewable and greenhouse-gas-free energy on the market than PG&E offered us. But more importantly, we can build renewable energy assets right here in the County. We not only get the benefits of low carbon electricity, but we get the economic benefits—the business opportunities and clean energy jobs—that come from investing in our own community.”

Sonoma County’s Community Choice customers get power that is 30 percent lower in greenhouse gases than PG&E. They also pay up to 9 percent less on average than PG&E customers. In addition, electricity net revenues go back into the community rather than into the pockets of PG&E shareholders and overpaid executives.

By Reid Frazier - The Allegheny Front, March 30, 2016

Web Editor's Note: This campaign involves members of the IWW.

As the chain saws revved nearby, Elise Gerhart was literally up a tree Tuesday protesting a pipeline slated to course through her family’s wooded property.

Gerhart, 29, of Huntingdon, and about 20 protesters coalesced around the Gerhart property as a work crew—chaperoned by local sheriff’s officers—took down trees along the property. Two protesters were arrested as the work crews cleared land for Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 2 pipeline, which will carry natural gas liquids from Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia area.

The company was granted a right-of-way on the Gerhart’s land by a judge through eminent domain in January. Though they are appealing that decision, the Gerharts were ordered by Huntingdon County Common Pleas Court Judge George Zanik Monday to stay clear of the chain saw crews.

Elise Gerhart said she didn’t know what else to do, so she climbed a tree early Tuesday to keep the crews away from at least one tree. 

“We’ve been forced to do this because the government isn’t protecting us,” Gerhart said, wearing a helmet and sitting on a platform wedged between branches of the tree, 40 feet in the air. “These agencies aren’t doing their job to protect the people and the environment.”

Two protesters were arrested for violating the judge’s orders. Huntingdon County District Attorney Dave Smith says the protesters were Elizabeth Glunt of Altoona and Alexander Lotorto of Milford. Bail for each was set at $100,000.

The chainsaw crew was attempting to finish the cutting by March 31, the end of tree-clearing season established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect migratory birds and the Indiana bat.

Elise Gerhart said she would stay in the tree until the end of the week, when the tree-clearing season ends.

The Gerharts bought the property in 1982 and have participated in a state program to preserve forestland on their property.

As she watched a chainsaw crew cut down a tall tree, Ellen Gerhart, Elise’s mother, teared up.

“It’s our little part we thought we could do some good in by at least protecting three acres of Pennsylvania.” 

The Gerharts are among dozens of property owners in Pennsylvania fighting with Sunoco over Mariner East 2. The $2.5 billion pipeline travels through 2,700 properties in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Company spokesman Jeff Shields said in an e-mail that the pipeline will carry “mostly propane and butane, with some ethane.” These liquids can be used for home heating but also as the raw materials for plastics. Shields says the ethane would be exported from the Marcus Hook industrial complex in Philadelphia overseas but eventually could be “part of other petrochemical processing units” at the complex. 

“(T)oday Sunoco Pipeline proceeded under the law and continued with our tree-felling activity in Huntingdon County,” Shields said. “We will continue to work with landowners to address their individual needs and concerns, but as the court noted, protesters do not have the right to prevent Sunoco Pipeline from conducting lawful activity.”

By Hamza Hamouchene - Jadaliyya, March 23, 2016

Ouarzazate is a beautiful town in south-central Morocco, well worth visiting. It is an important holiday destination and has been nicknamed the "door of the desert." It is also known as a famed location for international filmmaking, where films such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Mummy (1999), Gladiator (2000), and Kingdom of Heaven (2005) were shot, as was part of the television series Game of Thrones. That is not all what Ouarzazate has to offer as its name has recently been associated with a solar mega-project that is supposedly going to end Morocco's dependency on energy imports, provide electricity to more than a million Moroccans, and put the country on a “green path.”

If we were to believe the makhzen's (a term that refers to the king and the ruling elite around him) narrative, recycled without nuance or critical reflection by most media outlets in the region and in the West, the project is very good news and a big step toward reducing carbon emissions and tackling climate change. However, there is space for scepticism. One recent example of such deceptive talking points was the official celebratory announcements of a "historic" agreement at the COP21 in Paris.

My recent visit to Ouarzazate has prompted me to deconstruct the dominant narrative around this project. In particular, to scratch beneath the surface of the language of "cleanliness," "shininess," and "carbon emission cuts" in order to observe and scrutinize the materiality of solar energy. This analysis examines the project through the lens of the creation of a new commodity chain, revealing its effects as no different from the destructive mining activities taking place in southern Morocco. As Timothy Mitchell argues, analyzing this materiality of such a project can help us trace the kinds of economic and political arrangements that particular forms of energy engender or hinder (Timothy Mitchell 2011).

Last year, I wrote a critique and an assessment of the Desertec solar project, advancing arguments for why it failed and why it was misguided from the start. A similar approach is necessary to understand the political and socio-environmental implications of what is currently being dubbed the largest solar plant in the world. Actually, most of the arguments made in the Desertec piece still stand. The purpose here is not to be gratuitously harsh or cynical, but to raise a few important questions and points in order to contribute an alternative perspective to the hype surrounding existing media coverage.

What seems to unite all the reports and articles written about the solar plant is a deeply erroneous assumption that any move toward renewable energy is to be welcomed. And that any shift from fossil fuels, regardless of how it is carried out, will help us to avert climate chaos. One needs to say it clearly from the start: the climate crisis we are currently facing is not attributable to fossil fuels per se, but rather to their unsustainable and destructive use in order to fuel the capitalist machine. In other words, capitalism is the culprit, and if we are serious in our endeavors to tackle the climate crisis (only one facet of the multi-dimensional crisis of capitalism), we cannot elude questions of radically changing our ways of producing and distributing things, our consumption patterns and fundamental issues of equity and justice. It follows from this that a mere shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, while remaining in the capitalist framework of commodifying and privatizing nature for the profits of the few, will not solve the problem. In fact, if we continue down this path we will only end up exacerbating, or creating another set of problems, around issues of ownership of land and natural resources.

By Dan Fischer - Capitalism vs. the Climate, March 29, 2016

Fracked-gas pipeline projects and power plants receive stamp after stamp of approval from governor Dannel “Methane” Malloy. With such a friend of fracking in power, gas companies are in paradise. Welcome to CH₄ Connecticut!

CH₄—that’s scientific shorthand for methane, the climate-cooking main component of natural gas. It’s made of one atom of carbon and four of hydrogen. Malloy has known the substance is deadly since at least 2010, when he travelled across the state campaigning to be governor. That February, a gas plant exploded in Middletown, killing six workers and injuring dozens. “As towering plumes of dark smoke poured into a dazzling blue sky, scores of ambulances, fire engines, police cars and helicopters streamed to the scene on the west bank of the Connecticut River,” the New York Times reported.

For some, that deadly explosion may have been a wake-up call, but drowsy Dannel hit the snooze button. Once elected, Malloy went ahead with his plan to vastly expand gas infrastructure, despite these projects being backyard bombs and greenhouse-gas grenades. In 2013, Malloy signed into law the Comprehensive Energy Strategy, committing the state government to “expanding natural gas across Connecticut,” in the executive summary’s words. In 2015, Malloy signed Senate Bill 1078, making ratepayers pay subsidies to corporations expanding gas pipelines.

By Trans and/or Women’s Action Collective - Earth First! Journal, March 29, 2016

EUGENE, OR – Members of the Trans and/or Women’s Action Collective are no strangers to direct action. Since the early formation of TWAC from amongst the membership of groups like Earth First!, the collective – which was created initially to address patriarchal behavior, misogyny, and transphobia within the radical environmental movement – has been involved in campaigns against resource extraction, corporate prisons, trans-exclusionary legislation, ICE raids, destruction of public and Native lands, criminalization of sex workers, wildlife culling, and police brutality and racism. On March 5th, TWAC activists and allies found themselves once more embattled as they confronted members of the transphobic group Deep Green Resistance at the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon.

Deep Green Resistance, a group founded by trans-exclusionary radical “feminists” Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen, has been a bone of contention in the radical environmental scene for many years, contention which came to the fore again in 2013 with the release of DGR member Rachel Ivey’s video monologue “The End of Gender”  in which she reiterates the radical feminist rhetoric that transgender people (or, “people who call themselves transgender”) are in fact champions of the patriarchal gender binary, as well as deeply dangerous to feminism and women. This video, Ivey’s public speaking tour, and the continued presence of Deep Green Resistance in environmentalist spaces such as the Law & Disorder Conference and PIELC, spurred protest from trans activists and allies around North America.

In 2014, the PIELC organizers were protested for inviting Lierre Keith to be one of their keynote speakers, despite her well-known anti-trans rhetoric and the very public transphobic views of DGR as a group. Over 1,000 emails expressing concern over Keith’s presence were sent to the University prior to the event, and local and national environmental groups petitioned PIELC and UO to cancel Keith’s talk with a letter signed by more than 30 organizations across a broad spectrum of social and environmental causes. Protests culminated in a collective walk-out during Keith’s keynote speech. PIELC organizers have not yet apologized or addressed the issue, though DGR has been invited back every year since.

On Saturday March 5th, dismayed at DGR’s increased presence at PIELC this year, activists and their allies covered the DGR table with a banner declaring “DGR Not Welcome! No Transphobia in Defense of Mother Earth” and stood by their words as conference organizers tore the banner in half and demanded that the protesters leave the area. The protesters remained by the DGR table even after their banner was destroyed, engaging with the public and holding space for conversations about transphobia and trans rights. 

“Deep Green Resistance entwines their transphobic views with their vision of an ecologically healthy future,” says trans activist Shane Lenartz, who has worked with groups such as Earth First!, Rising Tide, and the Trans and/or Women’s Action Collective (TWAC). “Their degrading and dehumanizing attitude towards trans people, especially trans women, is not a new thing, and it’s not excusable. We have been fighting this issue for years. As environmental activists, we are sick and tired of having to come to conferences like this and see transphobic groups like DGR being openly represented and given space.”