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| NASA Climatologist James Hansen |
By Industrial Labor Relations News Center, Cornell University, October 23, 2012
The world's most well-known climate scientist, James Hansen of NASA's
Goddard Institute, addressed 75 union leaders and allies at a global trade
union roundtable in New York City this month.
Entitled "Energy Emergency, Energy Transition," the event
was convened by ILR's Global Labor Institute (GLI), part of the new Worker
Institute at Cornell. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's New York City office
partnered with GLI in organizing the Oct. 10-12 event.
"The truth is, we have a planetary emergency," Hansen said.
Union representatives from 18 countries listened in silence as Hansen described
what is happening to the earth's climate, ice sheets, oceans and weather
patterns.
Hansen's presentation can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dbmqhon5TY.
"The volume of Arctic sea ice has been reduced by 75 percent in
just 30 years. Greenland's ice sheet is losing mass at about 300 cubic kilometers
per year. Sea levels are going up, and there is a danger that the ice sheets
will begin to collapse and we could get several meters (of rising sea levels)
in one year – which would be disastrous," Hansen said.
"The frequency of extreme weather events is changing because the
planet is getting warmer. It was exceedingly hot this past summer, and the
frequency and area covered by these events are both increasing."
"We have only burned a small fraction of the fossil fuels, but we
can not burn all of them. And yet the governments are going right ahead,
encouraging even more use of fossil fuels through mountain top removal, tar
sands, tar shale, drilling in the Arctic. We can't do that if we want to be
fair to our children."
Solutions for the climate problem and for our children's futures are
really going to depend on workers understanding the situation, he said.
"It's hard to communicate with people if they feel their job is
threatened, but the jobs associated with clean energy technologies would be
good jobs. Workers will get much better opportunities. We need to have
cooperation and understanding between labor and environmental organizations and
people who are concerned about the future of their children."
In an interview following the presentation, Hansen said, "Unions
are an important force globally. They represent hundreds of millions of workers
and their families. The thought of having them joining in the effort to bring
about an energy revolution to fight climate change is very exciting. Stabilizing
the climate is a battle for survival that needs everyone involved." Hansen
said he was speaking as a citizen, and not a NASA employee.
In his talk, Hansen urged that a price be placed on carbon emissions
at source. This, in turn, he said, would unleash the development of clean and
renewable energy, energy conservation and next-generation nuclear power, which
Hansen regards as an important option in the global effort to reduce global
warming pollution.
Hansen's policy proposals sparked a spirited debate among the
attendees. Union representatives from Latin America and South Africa questioned
whether pricing carbon should be the main solution, given the capacity of the
fossil fuel companies to control the political debate.
Energy unions from Canada, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, and Russia
echoed Hansen's call for unions to be part of the solution to climate change
and to seize the opportunities to build unions and create jobs.
Others addressing the international group included leading commentator
James Gustave Speth, a professor at Vermont Law School; Wenonah Hauter,
executive director of Food and Water Watch; and Robert Howarth, a Cornell
scientist concerned with the global warming effects of methane leakage from
"fracking" for shale gas.
More
information about the roundtable, including participants, presentations and
trade union statements on climate change and energy, is available at
http://energyemergencyenergytransition.org/.
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