What
does the future hold for the relationship between environmentalism and
organized labor? Judging from the highly-publicized controversy over the
Keystone XL pipeline, America might appear to be entering a new era of conflict
over environmental protection versus jobs. But in a recent speech to the UN Investor
Summit on Climate Risk, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka opens the way for expanded
labor-environment cooperation around climate protection. Trumka argues that
addressing the climate crisis is the way to address the jobs crisis. He calls
for a new dialogue between labor and environmental movements based on that
frame. Yet he also repeats some of the arguments and allegations that have
fuelled labor-environmental conflict in the past. How should labor activists
who care about climate and environmental advocates who care about workers
respond?
The
climate threat
President Trumka begins with a forthright statement of the
climate threat. “Scientists tell us we are headed ever more swiftly toward
irreversible climate change - with catastrophic consequences for human
civilization.” And far from being a threat only in a distant future, “Climate
change is happening now.” That demands action: “The carbon emissions from that
coal, and from oil and natural gas, and agriculture and so much other human
activity - causes global warming, and we have to act to cut those emissions,
and act now.”
While
the AFL-CIO has gradually accepted the reality of man-made global warming, this
represents a far more forceful statement of the severity of the problem and the
urgency of action. However, the AFL-CIO still has not endorsed even the minimal
targets for carbon reduction proposed by the world’s leading body of climate
scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), let alone the
reduction of carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million that America’s
leading climate scientist, James Hansen, says is necessary to prevent those “catastrophic
consequences for human civilization.” Having recognized the reality of the
threat, it’s time for the AFL-CIO to endorse the cuts in carbon necessary to
forestall them.
Climate
jobs
President Trumka poses the question whether the climate threat is
something we should disregard in the face of our global economic problems.
Again his position is forthright: “Addressing climate risk is not a distraction”
from solving our economic problems. Indeed, it is critical to the solution. “Every
factory and power plant, every home and office, every rail line and highway,
every vehicle, locomotive and plane, every school and hospital, must be
modernized, upgraded, renovated or replaced with something cleaner, more efficient,
less wasteful.” That means “retooling our world.” And that means there is
plenty of work to be done. “If we are going to rebuild, restore, modernize or
replace everything we inherited in just 30 years” we need “the skill and effort
of all of us.”
Trumka
recognizes that this will not happen simply through current market forces. “By
themselves, capital markets will not properly incorporate climate risk and
reward into pricing investment opportunities.” Investors need “government
policies to make sure that critical investments get made - investments in
building retrofits, in high speed rail and the smart grid, in carbon capture
and sequestration.”
Trumka
does not discuss what kind of economic tools may be required. Such a discussion
should certainly be part of any proposed labor-environmental dialogue.
While
“putting a price on carbon” is necessary, both labor and environmental
movements need to recognize that it is not likely to be adequate. Trumka
observes that “not since World War II” have Americans “faced an equivalent
national challenge.” But that challenge was not met by letting companies that
failed to shift to war production to buy “permits” that exempted them from such
responsibilities. It was met by a combination of economic planning, public investment,
and national resource allocation. The government contracted with corporations
to produce for wartime needs or met them itself; nonessential production was
curtailed; and resources were allocated to the war effort. The result was the
greatest investment in production the world had ever seen and the creation of
millions of jobs. That is the kind and scale of effort that will be necessary
for “retooling our world.”
Trumka
says “we as a nation must return to the work of passing a climate bill.” But to
be effective in protecting the climate or creating jobs, such a bill will need
to be far different from the climate bills that emerged in Congress in 2009.
For one thing, those bills largely exempted the largest carbon polluters from
making serious reductions in their emissions. For another, they relied on “cap
and trade” incentives to encourage companies to make carbon-reducing
investments. They did not provide for the necessary public investment in new
infrastructure that is necessary to move to a low-carbon economy. And they did
not provide for a just transition for workers and communities impacted by
climate policies. Although as Trumka notes climate legislation is currently
blocked by the domination of climate deniers in Congress, labor and environmentalists
need to start a dialogue now on such a new approach so that a powerful
coalition can be drawn together for legislation that offers real solutions to
both our climate and our jobs problem.
A just transition: A matter of justice
President
Trumka points out that “too often, we have failed to consider who bears the
cost of change and ensure that change is managed fairly and respectfully.” He
calls for “those who care about climate change” to “engage with the people
whose livelihoods are tied up with carbon emissions.” Any other approach is “fundamentally
unfair.”
“We
must ask ourselves, ‘How well does this pathway serve the least, the hardest to
reach, the most likely to be left behind.’ Places like West Virginia and the
Ohio Valley must come first, not last.” In short, we need a “Just Transition to
a low carbon-emissions economy.”
It is
entirely appropriate for organized labor to pose environmentalists the
challenge of making a “just transition” to a low-carbon emissions world. But
such a transition will inevitably impact some of those whose livelihoods are “tied
up with carbon emissions.” Organized labor needs to develop a strategy for
protecting the livelihoods of people that is compatible with changing the jobs
they do.
A
just transition: A political necessity for climate protection
President Trumka
says “we are not acting fast enough” in response to the climate crisis, and he
asks why that should be when “tens of millions need work, when investors have
billions in cash parked making almost nothing and the risks of doing nothing
are mounting?”
He
says an important part of the answer lies in the fact that many people see
climate protection as threatening their jobs and economic wellbeing. In many
places “there is fear that the ‘green economy’ will turn into another version
of the radical inequality that now haunts our society - another economy that
works for the 1% and not for the 99%.” He asks “why, in an economy without an
effective safety net, would the good men and women of my hometown [Nemacolin,
PA] and a thousand places like it surrender their whole lives and sit by while
others try to force them to bear the cost of change.”
Dealing
with their concerns is essential for climate protection. “Addressing climate
risk” is a path that is only open “if it is a path to an economy that works for
the 99% who seek good jobs, economic security and healthy communities - not
just in New York, but in Nemacolin, and in countries around the world, from
Australia to Poland to South Africa to China, countries that face the same
issues and share the same climate with you and me.”
To
get there, Trumka calls for “those who care about climate change” to “engage
with the people whose livelihoods are tied up with carbon emissions.”
Investors, companies, workers, environmental activists, governments - need to
be part of this dialogue. “Any other approach to addressing climate risk is not
just fundamentally unfair, it simply won’t work in our democracy.”
Coal
President
Trumka is the son and grandson of coal miners, and was the president of the
United Mine Workers Union before becoming president of the AFL-CIO. So it is
not surprising that he puts the issues of coal front and center. His main theme
is right on target: The basic principle that those who work in coal producing
and using industries should not pay the cost of a socially necessary
transition. But there are a number of factual and analytical issues that need
to be looked at with a critical eye.
Trumka
says that Mayor Bloomberg advocates that we stop burning coal “this afternoon”
and “cut the power in the U.S. grid by 50 percent.” He adds, if we did, “He’d
be reading handwritten memos by candlelight this evening.” Bloomberg did indeed
give the Sierra Club a $50 million grant to campaign to move “beyond coal.”
What the Sierra Club is calling for, however, is not an instant shutdown of all
coal-fired power plants but a planned closing of at most a third of the nation’s
oldest coal-fired power plants by 2020.
A
thoughtfully planned transition from coal to other forms of power has been the
basis for labor-environmental cooperation in phasing out coal-fired power
plants in places like Centralia, Washington and Madison, Wisconsin in ways that
cut emissions while protecting workers. Labor-environmental-community dialogue
is required to develop such plans for a worker-friendly transition beyond coal.
But the only concrete proposal Trumka advocates for coal is to assure that
companies that commit to retrofits to reduce mercury and sulfur emissions will
have time enough to complete them.
A
just transition for coal miners
Part of the environmental-labor dialogue needs
to be a far broader approach to the wellbeing of coal-related workers and
communities.
Trumka
speaks eloquently about the role of coal in his hometown of Nemacolin, Pennsylvania,
where his father and grandfather were coal miners. He says that when folks in
Nemacolin hear the slogan “End Coal,” it sounds like “a threat to destroy the
value of our homes, to shut our schools and churches, to drive us away from the
place our parents and grandparents are buried, to take away the work that for
more than a hundred years has made us who we are.”
However,
the traditional mining that Trumka describes is steadily becoming a thing of
the past. In Appalachia the accessible coal seams have almost all been used up.
Instead, in Appalachia coal is increasingly produced by techniques like
mountaintop removal that devastate the environment but create few jobs.
Meanwhile, most of the industry has shifted to the West. Wyoming produces
nearly three times as much coal as West Virginia, yet Wyoming employed fewer
than 6,000 coal miners. The United Mine Workers Union, which once had half a
million miners on its rolls, has only 86,000 members, many of whom are retirees
or are not even miners. There are fewer than 50,000 underground miners left in
the US. It is the coal companies pursuing profits, not environmental
protection, that is destroying the way of life in Nemacolin. In fact, the coal
companies are already “ending coal” as the Trumka family knew it. After
operating nearly 70 years, the coalmine in Nemacolin shut down production in
1986.
This
is not to argue that coal miners and their communities should have to bear the
burden of climate protection - that, as Trumka points out, would simply be
unjust. But the way to provide them a decent future is not to perpetuate the
use of coal-fired power plants. Instead, it is to develop a serious plan for a
just transition. Labor should join hands with environmentalists and local
communities to demand:
Massive
public and private investment in renewable energy and energy conservation in
declining coal regions like Appalachia.
A
redevelopment strategy like that used for military bases that have been closed
under the Base Closing Commission.
A
“GI Bill”-style retraining program, including full college education or its
equivalent, for those who have lost employment due to climate protection
policies.
Retirement
with good pensions and full medical benefits for all for whom such retraining
is not an appropriate solution.
These
are demands on which organized labor and “beyond coal” advocates can join
hands. They should be part of the national policy of both. Equally important,
in every community where there is a possibility that coal plants will be shut
down, there should be a labor-environment-community alliance to promote just
transition policies.
The
future of the dialogue
President Trumka closed by proposing that “all of us sit
down together on the basis that we live on one planet, and that we share a
common humanity that requires respect for each others’ families and
communities. In particular we need dialogue between environmentalists and
workers and communities about the future of coal. About what the global labor
movement calls a Just Transition to a low carbon emissions economy.” He added, “The
AFL-CIO is ready to host that dialogue.”
The
Keystone XL pipeline divided the labor movement itself and divided it from its
crucial environmental allies. To rebuild that alliance will take just the kind
of dialogue that Trumka has called for. Furthermore, Trumka’s speech
articulated a superb frame for such a dialogue. But realizing the objectives of
that frame will require both labor and environmentalists to rethink some
established positions and develop more effective solutions - and to do so in
dialogue with each other.
There
is a “grand bargain” to be made here. Let organized labor put its full weight
behind the targets, timelines, and action plans necessary to prevent “irreversible
climate change” with its “catastrophic consequences for human civilization.”
Let the climate protection movement put its full weight behind the targets,
timelines, and action plans necessary to end today’s devastating mass
unemployment by putting every available worker to work realizing those action
plans. Let us mobilize our human and material resources the way we did to fight
World War II and to rebuild Europe with the Marshall Plan. The result will
transform the politics of climate - and the life prospects of the 99%.
Let the dialogue begin!
