Communities Unite Around A ‘Just Transition’ Away from Dirty Energy with Historic Training Camp

Central Arizona~This week, Navajo community members of the Black Mesa Water Coalition will host a skills sharing and strategy camp for communities impacted by coal and other dirty energy. This camp marks the first of many convergences of indigenous peoples, communities of color, and working-class white communities building a powerful movement to take on climate change while fostering a new economy.  The groups are uniting in a new national campaign launching this week called the Our Power Campaign: Communities United for a Just Transition.

Through the Our Power Campaign, communities are organizing to transition off of dirty energy to foster clean community power, zero waste, food sovereignty, public transit, housing for all, and restoration of ecosystems and watersheds.

“We can create quality jobs by retooling the infrastructure in our regions,” said Bill Gallegos, Executive Director of Communities for a Better Environment and Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) Steering Committee member. “We need to divest from dirty energy and the ‘greed economy’ and invest in a transition to local living economies and community resilience. This camp is about learning the skills and forging the strategies we need to bring this transition home.”

“We can have power without pollution and energy without injustice,” said Jihan Gearon, Executive Director of Black Mesa Water Coalition and CJA Steering Committee member. “Navajo people and Navajo lands have been moving central Arizona’s water and providing much of central Arizona and Southern California’s energy for 50 years. Renewable energy provides a new way forward to bring economic and health benefits to the Navajo people while cutting greenhouse gas emissions at the source.”

The backdrop for the camp is one of the communities creating a ‘just transition’.   Navajo Generating Station, which is run by the Salt River Project and Peabody Coal’s Kayenta Mine, has depleted the Navajo Aquifer, severely impacted the land base, and adversely affected community health. Generating electricity from coal also pumps greenhouse gases into the atmosphere contributing to climate change which the Navajo Nation is already suffering the effects of.

The Black Mesa Water Coalition is proposing Navajo-owned utility scale solar projects and fostering local, sustainable land-based economies.  According to their studies, there is enough old mine lands and good sun on the Navajo Nation to generate over 6,000 megawatts of solar power in the years to come. That would be thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars into the regional economy each year, billions of dollars during construction.

At the groundbreaking training camp, communities along coal’s chain of destruction from the Southwest, Appalachia, the Midwest, and beyond will come together to learn from and exchange with the Black Mesa community. Activities include:

·      June 14- sharing stories of struggles and victories in communities impacted by dirty energy
·      June 15- workshops on topics such as direct action and land-based resilience
·      June 16-17- sessions for communities to strategize together to win shifts away from dirty energy towards local living economies

The Our Power Campaign is launching in three communities impacted by dirty energy– Black Mesa, Arizona; Richmond, California; and Detroit Michigan –and will expand to communities across the country over the coming years. With nearly 40 organizations, CJA’s members are rooted in Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and working-class white communities throughout the United States. Together, they apply the power of deep grassroots organizing, direct action, coalition building, civic engagement, policy advocacy, and a variety of communications tools to win local, regional, statewide, and national shifts.

“This is a historic opportunity to unite working-class communities and communities of color across the nation who bear the brunt of the climate and economic crisis,” said Ife Kilimanjaro, Co-Director of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council in Detroit and CJA Steering Committee member. “Together, we are building a movement that is demonstrating and winning a shift away from dirty energy through investment in the root cause solutions we all need.”

For More information, contact:  Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan (415) 359-7324 (will forward to on-site phone); media@ourpowercampaign.org Angela Angel (510) 759-3177; www.ourpowercampaign.org

In 1940, as Nazi armies marched across Europe, United Automobile Workers Union (UAW) president Walter Reuther made a stunning proposal: Retool the Depression-ravaged auto industry to build 500 planes a year for national defense.  Many scoffed.  But a huge wartime mobilization put tens of millions of unemployed and underemployed workers to work producing what the war effort required, while shutting down wasteful and unnecessary production that would detract from it.

This May, the level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere  reached 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history.

Burning of fossil fuels has led to an increase in carbon and other heat-trapping greenhouse gasses of more than 40% since the industrial revolution.  The atmosphere had this level of carbon three million years ago.  Not surprisingly, the earth was much hotter, the ice caps much smaller, and sea level more than 60 feet higher.

What does this mean for American workers and the leaders of America’s trade unions?  If we continue pouring the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming into the atmosphere at our present rate, we will pass the 450 ppm level in a couple of decades.  America’s workers and workplaces will be devastated along with the rest of our people and the rest of the world.

We can already see the early stages of that devastation.  The giant reinsurance company Munich Re, which has gathered the world’s most comprehensive database of natural disasters, concludes that worldwide, “Floods have more than tripled since 1980, and windstorm natural catastrophes more than doubled, with particularly heavy losses from Atlantic hurricanes.  This rise can only be explained by global warming.”

Floods, fires, droughts, and storms related to climate change are devastating not only to health and the environment, but also the US economy. Superstorm Sandy alone caused an estimated $80 billion in damage. The drought that affected 80% of US farmland last summer destroyed a quarter of the US corn crop, stalled transportation on the Mississippi River, raised food and energy prices nationwide, and did at least $20 billion damage to the economy.

What does all this have to do with jobs?  Consider Sandy.  According to Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytic’s: “Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the job market in November, slicing an estimated 86,000 jobs from payrolls.”  What kind of jobs?  “The manufacturing, retailing, leisure and hospitality, and temporary help industries were hit particularly hard by the storm.”

But isn’t that kind of job loss just temporary?  Consider hurricane Katrina.  In 2004 the New Orleans region had 671,000 jobs.  Katrina wiped out 129,000 of them — about twenty percent.  In 2011, the region had 90,000 fewer jobs than on the eve of Katrina.

The economic threat of climate change isn’t limited to hurricanes.  Heat waves increase energy costs and cause droughts, which kill crops and increase food prices.  Floods destroy houses, businesses, and infrastructure.  Closed businesses and lost earnings represent an economic loss that can never be recovered.  The devastating health effects of extreme weather like heat waves and floods not only harm individuals but represent a cost for the whole economy.

These impacts will affect unions and workers in every sector of the economy.  In the public sector, for example, local and state governments are already finding their budgets savaged by the costs associated with wildfires, floods, droughts, and sea level rise.  In healthcare, resources will be drained to deal with new the effects of heat waves and new disease vectors.  Ports and airports will be devastated by rising sea levels and storm-related flooding.  Agriculture will be hurt in some areas by drought, in others by flood, as the complex consequences of climate change play themselves out.

The 400 ppm threshold is just as real a warning of threat ahead as the Nazi transgression of national borders in Europe in 1941. And we need just as serious a mobilization to deal with it.  It presents union leaders with the opportunity to take a page from Walter Reuther’s book and propose a dramatic response to climate change that will also transform the opportunities open to American workers.

It is often forgotten that in 1941 the US was in the midst of a great debate in which many denied the reality of the Nazi threat and urged that the US simply stand aloof from the impending global conflagration.  Hitler’s apologists reassured Americans that distant Nazi armies were no threat to them.  But some Americans were wide awake to the threat — and promoted a strategy to retool our economy to meet it.

Today, we need to stop listening to the blandishments of the fossil fuel industry that spends millions of dollars persuading us that we have nothing to fear from global warming.  We need to rapidly and radically curtail fossil fuel use and halt the race to 450 ppm or even more.  In its place we need an all-out mobilization to eliminate energy waste and replace fossil fuels with climate-safe energy — to begin the long walk back to the 350 ppm limit climate scientists say is safe.

It’s time for labor again to take the lead.

American workers need jobs.  They also need protection from chemicals and pollutants that threaten their lives, health, environment, climate, and future.  Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, has a unique track record in protecting the environment in ways that also protect and expand jobs.

For the past four years as head of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, Gina McCarthy has exemplified protection of the environment based on US laws and scientific facts combined with common sense strategies to ensure that such regulation promotes rather than hurts jobs.  In testimony at a recent Senate confirmation hearing, for example, she called fighting climate change “one of the greatest challenges of our generation and our great obligation to future generations.”  But she pointed out that, along with public health benefits, those efforts can “create markets for emerging and new technologies and new jobs.”

In an interview with the Labor Network for Sustainability Gina McCarthy elaborated:

We learned a long time ago that you don’t need to pit the economy against public health.  Why would we want to?  How is that to anybody’s advantage?  I think labor can speak to that better than anybody can.  And we look forward to them doing that, and continuing to work with us, so we get the protections we need and the American people want — but we do it in a way that is as sensitive as possible, as flexible as possible, in a way that doesn’t just protect jobs but that grows them today and tomorrow.

Speaking of EPA regulations of toxic pollutants from utilities under the Clean Air Act, McCarthy said:

Our rules will generate jobs tomorrow, not a decade from now, but will put steelworkers back to work, will put electrical workers back to work, because they will require control technologies while we look at how to reduce carbon emissions through greater efficiencies.  We’re not about jobs, we’re about public health, but we sure like it when it creates jobs and it creates them today when we actually need them.

Gina McCarthy’s track record reveals her commitment in deeds as well as words.  For example, as EPA’s official in charge of implementing the Clean Air Act, Gina McCarthy helped lead the process to establish mileage and tailpipe emissions standards for cars and trucks.   For years, such regulations were stymied by lawsuits, political warfare, and public campaigns claiming they would hurt the automobile industry and destroy jobs.  But Gina McCarthy helped bring together the auto industry, the United Auto Workers, and other stakeholders to work out a common approach.

Was the result good for workers?  Here’s what the UAW’s legislative director testified to Congress: “Based on our experience, the regulation of mobile sources has been a “win-win” that results in greater oil independence for our nation; a cleaner, healthier environment for ourselves and our children; and an increased number of jobs in the auto sector.”

This job creation resulted from “the new technology required to meet tailpipe emissions standards” which “represents additional content on each vehicle.”  That requires “more engineers, more managers, and more construction and production workers.”

Indeed, “The continuing recovery of the automobile industry in the United States has as its foundation the regulatory certainty of these tailpipe emission standards, which is driving innovation in every company and in every vehicle segment.”

Regulations developed by McCarthy’s office in cooperation with the Department of Transportation had other benefits for working people.  “Greater fuel efficiency allows consumers to spend less on fuel, which frees up that money to be spent on other goods and services, rather than flowing to the producers of oil for the U.S. market, the majority of which comes from foreign nations.”

So, “in addition to creating jobs, these regulations are a key mechanism for protecting American families and their standard of living from the effects of rising and unstable oil prices. In other words, this is a bread and butter issue for American families.”

EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act — a program administered by Gina McCarthy — has been attacked by opponents of climate protection as a “job killer.”  However, although any technological modernization can lead to the loss of some jobs, overall the evidence indicates that instead that regulation will increase jobs.  For example, a study by Ceres and the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts titled “New Jobs — Cleaner Air: Employment Effects of Planned Changes in the EPA’s Air Pollution Rules” examines the jobs effects of some of the new regulations — ones that have been harshly attacked by EPA critics. This well-documented study finds that far from being “job killers,” the new regulations will create nearly 300,000 new jobs, especially skilled, high-pay jobs for engineers, project managers, electricians, boilermakers, pipefitters, millwrights, and iron workers.

The regulations would lead to net job increases of more than 120,000 job years in Illinois, 123,000 in Virginia, 113,000 in Tennessee, 76,000 in North Carolina, and 76,000 in Ohio. The study points out that regulation will have many other benefits in addition to increased employment. It will ensure cleaner air, improve public health, promote more efficient, more competitive technologies, reduce greenhouse gasses, and increase state tax revenues. And it will stimulate “induced jobs” that result when workers have money in their pockets to buy things made or sold by other workers.

Gina McCarthy’s confirmation has received support from unions.  The United Steelworkers, the largest private sector union in North America, “strongly endorses” her nomination, saying she is “eminently qualified” to work in “reducing climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, recognizing the delicate balance between maintaining good manufacturing jobs and a clean environment.”

Gina McCarthy is a long-established air quality expert, aptly fitted to work with manufacturers on reducing power plant emissions. Our union has enjoyed a good working relationship with Ms. McCarthy in her role as the head of the Office of Air and Radiation at the U.S. EPA, and we look forward to continue working with her as EPA Administrator.

The BlueGreen Alliance, which includes such major labor unions as the USW, CWA, SEIU, Utility Workers, AFT, ATW, UAW, UFCW, and Sheetmetal Workers, as well as environmental groups, applauded McCarthy’s nomination and noted that “the BlueGreen Alliance and our partners have appreciated the way in which Ms. McCarthy has worked with us over the years to not only address climate change and clean air, but to also better understand the needs and impact of plant workers and surrounding communities.”

Gina McCarthy has a record for bipartisan cooperation that will prove useful in dealing with today’s conflicts over environmental issues.  She worked for five Republican governors in Connecticut and Massachusetts, including George Romney.  Her nomination in 2009 for EPA assistant administrator was approved by Democratic and Republic Senators on a voice vote.

She also has the respect of many industry groups, even some likely to be directly affected by EPA regulation.  Donna Harman, president of the American Forest and Paper Association, says that Gina McCarthy is “very data- and fact-driven, and that’s been helpful for us as well as the entire business community.”  And Cal Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council, says his group’s members “have a lot of confidence in McCarthy’s leadership ability.”

It happens over and over again.  A company proposes some big project, environmentalists oppose it, but unions say it will create jobs.  Or a government agency proposes new regulations, environmentalists say it will halt pollution, but unions say it will destroy jobs.  The result is billed as a conflict of “jobs vs. the environment.”  The Keystone XL Pipeline, the “beyond coal” campaign, the fracking battle, and EPA regulation of greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act have all been treated as examples of that story.  For those who want to overcome this division – to tell a different story — here are five levels at which it can be challenged:

1.  Recognize the common interest in human survival and in sustainable livelihoods.  To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, if God had intended some people to fight just for the environment for the economy and others to fight just for the economy, he would have made some people who could live without money and others who could live without water and air.  There are not two groups of people, environmentalists and workers.  We all need a livelihood and we all need a livable planet to live on.  If we don’t address both, we’ll starve together while we’re waiting to fry together.

2.  Look for alliances around specific issues in the real world.  For example, workers in the transportation industry have joined with environmentalists to advocate shifting from private to public transportation – something that would create large numbers of skilled jobs, greatly reduce greenhouse gasses and local pollution, and save money for consumers.  Unions have joined with environmental, religious, and community groups in Connecticut to fight for “renewable energy standards” that create local jobs and reduce polution by shifting from fossil fuels to renewables and energy use reduction.

3.  Seek win-win solutions to conflicts.  A recent study called Jobs Beyond Coal found that in a number of cases unions representing workers in coal-fired power plants have actually supported the planned closing of their highly-polluting workplaces – because environmentalists and government officials worked with them to ensure a “just transition” in which workers livelihoods and the needs of their communities were addressed.  Similar strategies can be used in many situations.  For example, unions representing pipeline workers could join up with opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline that will carry highly-polluting tar sands from Canada to Texas to demand the creation of thousands of pipeline jobs fixing our failing water and sewer pipelines.  Similarly, climate protection activists pressing colleges and municipalities to divest from fossil fuels could advocate that the funds divested from fossil fuel companies be invested in local job-creating climate protection.  Indeed, every environmental campaign should have a jobs program and every jobs program should be designed to address our climate catastrophe.

4.   Support a broad public agenda for creating full employment by converting to a climate-safe economy.  Just as the New Deal in the Great Depression of the 1930s put millions of unemployed people to work doing the jobs America’s communities needed, so today we need a “Green New Deal” to rebuild our energy, transportation, building, and other systems to drastically reduce the climate-destroying greenhouse gas pollution they pour into the air.  Such a program would put an end the “jobs versus environment” conflict because environmental protection would produce millions of new jobs and expansion of jobs would protect the environment.  Such a program provides a road for both labor and environmentalists to move beyond our current dilemma.

5. Pursue the vision of a new economy. Just expanding the kind of economy we have will just expand the problems of inequality and environmental catastrophe our current economy is already creating.   Instead we need to be guided by the vision of a new economy where we all have secure livelihoods based on work that builds the kind of sustainable world.

The approach of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 provides us an opportunity to reflect on the “long, strange trip” shared by the environmental movement and the labor movement over four decades here on Spaceship Earth.

A billion people participate in Earth Day events, making it the largest secular civic event in the world.  But when it was founded in 1970, according to Earth Day’s first national coordinator Denis Hayes, “Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!”

Less than a week after he first announced the idea for Earth Day, Senator Gaylord Nelson presented his proposal to the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO.  Walter Ruther, President of the UAW, enthusiastically donated $2000 to help kick the effort off – to be followed by much more.  Hayes recalls:

“The UAW was by far the largest contributor to the first Earth Day, and its support went beyond the merely financial.  It printed and mailed all our materials at its expense — even those critical of pollution-belching cars.  Its organizers turned out workers in every city where it has a presence.  And, of course, Walter then endorsed the Clear Air Act that the Big Four were doing their damnedest to kill or gut.”

Some people may be surprised to learn that a labor union played such a significant role in the emergence of the modern environmental movement.  When they think of organized labor, they think of things like support for coal and nuclear power plants and opposition to auto emissions standards.

When it comes to the environment, organized labor has two hearts beating within a single breast.  On the one hand, the millions of union members are people and citizens like everybody else, threatened by air and water pollution, dependent of fossil fuels, and threatened by the devastating consequences of climate change.  On the other hand, unions are responsible for protecting the jobs of their members, and efforts to protect the environment sometimes may threaten workers’ jobs.  First as a working class kid and then as a labor official, I’ve been dealing with the two sides of this question my whole life.

I was raised in Cleveland.   It was a union town, and both my parents were trade unionists.  We were going to the union hall all the time; that’s where the picnics and social functions and concerts happened.

At the same time, we kids were swimming in Lake Erie, and I watched them post the signs saying, “don’t swim in the lake.”  We were catching fifty to a hundred perch every weekend and eating them until they posted the signs, “Don’t eat the perch.”

So we experienced this switch from where the smoke coming out of the steel mill chimneys meant bread on the table to a realization that we were messing up the lake that we loved and enjoyed.

I was there when the Cuyahoga River caught fire, and that was an alarming wakeup call.  The burning river and the dying lake led the first Earth Day in Cleveland to be a monumental event.  According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, an estimated 500,000 elementary, junior high, high school and college students took part in campus teach-ins, litter cleanups, and tree plantings.  More than 1,000 CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY students and faculty staged a “death march” from the campus to the banks of the Cuyahoga River.  The headline in the Cleveland Press read, “Hippies and Housewives Unite to Protest What Man is Doing to Earth.”

After high school I went to work in central Pennsylvania in an aluminum mill and when the mill was flooded out by hurricane Agnes I got a job doing flood cleanup at Three Mile Island, which was under construction at the time, and joined the laborers union.  That really got me involved in the labor movement.  At 19 or 20 I became a full-time shop steward on safety and health issues.

The environmental movement was protesting the construction of the power plant.  My local union had a bumper sticker that said, “Hungry and Out of Work?  Eat an environmentalist!”  I objected, and I went to the local and said, really, you know, they’re not really our enemies.  They’re protesting the construction of this power plant because it wasn’t built to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707.  And the airport’s right there.  So it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?”

I’ve been making the same kind of argument ever since.

That long, strange trip

In the 1980s, the same Industrial Union Department that had helped start Earth Day initiated perhaps the first labor-environmental coalition, called the OSHA Environmental Network.  I was appointed its field director.   We had active coalitions in 22 states with the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth and IUD member unions.  At first, labor’s “job-protection heart” came to the fore: The United Mineworkers Union was afraid that the alliance might encourage limits on the high sulfur coal that caused acid rain, thereby threatening some miners’ jobs; it insisted that our environmental network be shut down.  Later, encouraged by labor’s other “heart” in the form of unions that supported sulfur reduction, the Mineworkers negotiated an acid rain compromise agreement with Senator George Mitchell of Maine.

When the UN Commission on Global Warming formed, I served as a representative of the IUD.  Before every meeting that I went to I would be lobbied strongly by the Mineworkers and the IBEW on the one side to say kill what would become the Kyoto Treaty and then the Steelworkers who wanted to see the treaty enacted.  In 1997 the AFL-CIO blasted the treaty and sent a high level representative to Kyoto to oppose it.  So I resigned from the commission.

I took on the assignment to organize labor’s role in the 1999 protests against the WTO in Seattle.  As we were organizing, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney came out to address the Washington State AFL-CIO convention.  I had been planning 15,000 people as a goal for labor’s piece.  John made his speech and he said 50,000 people.  As he came off the podium, I said, John, it’s 15,000, 15,000 is our goal.  And he turned to me and he said Joe, it’s 50,000 now.

We had more than sixty thousand people on the streets, perhaps forty thousand of them from labor.  It was “Teamsters and turtles, together at last.”  Stopping the WTO, and building the coalitions we built, was a culmination of all the things I believed in and all the things I had been working for.  To me it represented the power we have when labor’s two hearts beat together – when we recognize that the real self-interest of workers and the labor movement is the same as the rest of the world’s:  to fight for a sustainable future.

Yesterday . . . and today

Looking over the decades since the first Earth Day, what do we see about the relation between environmentalism and labor?

Some things this Earth Day are radically different from the first Earth Day forty years ago.

The devastating threats resulting from climate change affect us not just as “citizens and consumers” but as workers.  The impact of global warming on American workers and workplaces is laid out in a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, “Climate Change in the United States: The Prohibitive Costs of Inaction.”  After reviewing effects on flooding, hurricane intensity, tourism, public health, water scarcity, shipping, agriculture, energy and infrastructure stress, and wildfires, the study concludes,

“If global warming emissions continue unabated, every region in the country will confront large costs from climate change in the form of damages to infrastructure, diminished public health, and threats to vital industries employing millions of Americans.”

A study by the University of Maryland adds that

“The costs of climate change rapidly exceed benefits and place major strains on public sector budgets, personal income and job security.”

We are already seeing such costs in extreme weather events, drought-caused water crises, intensified forest fires, floods, and other costly catastrophes.  Today American workers have a direct, personal, job-based reason to fight for climate protection.

At the same time, the necessity for transforming our entire economy to a low-carbon basis provides the opportunity to create tens of millions of new “green jobs.”  Such a reconstruction effort could rival World War II as a means for creating full employment and conditions favorable to worker power and organization.

Both of labor’s “two hearts within a single breast” can be seen in its response to the danger and opportunity of the climate crisis.  On the one hand, organized labor has been enthusiastic about the prospect for “green jobs” and has supported climate legislation that might help expand them.  On the other hand, much of organized labor, including the AFL-CIO, has opposed implementing the binding targets for greenhouse gas reduction that climate scientists say are necessary to reduce the effects of global warming.

Such targets are crucial not only for climate protection, but because the millions of potential green jobs are unlikely to be created unless all decision-makers know that a major transformation of our economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is in fact going to happen.

Meanwhile, “environmentalism” is broadening into a movement that calls for social and economic as well as environmental sustainability.  The Earth Day Network, which coordinates Earth Day worldwide, includes among its goals to “broaden the meaning of ‘environment.’”  It is committed to “expanding the definition of “environment” to include all issues that affect our health, our communities and our environment, such as air and water pollution, climate change, green schools and environmental curriculum, access to green jobs, renewable energy, and a new green economy.”  Such a sustainability movement is a natural ally for organized labor in its efforts to challenge an economy currently driven by corporate greed.

Some thing this Earth Day are the same as they were forty years ago.

Workers are still human beings who face the same consequences of environmental destruction as everyone else.  As Olga Madar, the first head of the UAW Conservation and Resource Development Department, put it back then, union members were “first and foremost American citizens and consumers” who “breathe the same air and drink and bathe in the same water” as their neighbors in other occupations.

UAW president Walter Reuther, who wrote that first check supporting the first Earth Day, spelled out what that should mean for organized labor:

“The labor movement is about that problem we face tomorrow morning. Damn right! But to make that the sole purpose of the labor movement is to miss the main target. I mean, what good is a dollar an hour more in wages if your neighborhood is burning down? What good is another week’s vacation if the lake you used to go to is polluted and you can’t swim in it and the kids can’t play in it? What good is another $100 in pension if the world goes up in atomic smoke?”

Connecticut Group Argues Climate, Jobs Are Not Issues in Opposition
By Kathryn Boughton, CTBulletin.com

There is often the supposition that job creation and environmental responsibility are mutually exclusive, but a growing effort in Connecticut may expose the problems with that prejudicial thought.

The Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs is drawing together disparate groups who agree on two things: Connecticut needs more jobs and it needs to address climate change.

“The roundtable is focused on strengthening collaboration among Connecticut’s labor leaders, business, community organizations, environmentalists and religious communities to advocate for public policies that address urgent concerns about climate change while creating good-paying jobs right here in our state,” said Jeremy Brecher of Cornwall, a historian and the author of 10 books on labor and social movements.

Mr. Brecher said the roundtable had its origin when opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline called on John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, to talk about the issue. “We had an interesting conversation during the course of which he said, ‘The AFL-CIO nationally doesn’t have a position on the pipeline, therefore I don’t have a position. But it seems to me we have other things to talk about—things that would make that pipeline unnecessary.’”

Mr. Olsen suggested gathering groups with different backgrounds and perspectives that are concerned about the climate and jobs. “Sometimes those groups conflict with each other because we haven’t talked about things before conflicts arise,” Mr. Brecher said. “We wanted to know what we could do to get ahead of those kinds of problems.”

Energized by Mr. Olsen’s suggestions, they asked Joseph Uehlein, an officer in the AFL-CIO and executive director of the Labor Network for Sustainability, and Voices for a Sustainable Future, to give a presentation on labor and climate for selected people from organized labor, environmental and religious groups and community groups. “There is tension and difficulty between organized labor and environmental groups,” said Mr. Brecher. “It seemed like a really good way to start off on another foot and to look for common ground.”

More than 40 people gathered last June for a workshop on climate and jobs in Connecticut, co-sponsored by the Connecticut AFL-CIO, Interreligious Eco-Justice Network and Connecticut Center for a New Economy.

“The reality is that the climate protection movement goes way, way beyond the conventional environment movement,” said Mr. Brecher. “After going through [Hurricane] Sandy, etc., there is a huge swath of people who are taking it as a wake-up call and looking at it as a question of human survival. This is the kind of threat we all need to start thinking about. When people say we should take our time and think carefully, Joe Olsen says that was a great position 25 years ago.”

Mr. Brecher said his own interest in environmental issues goes back to 1988. “This is way overdue,” he observed, adding that he is a member of the Labor Network for Sustainability, a national agency that bears the motto “No Jobs on a Dead Planet.”

The first meeting revealed areas of agreement that gave hope that common goals may lead to real change. He said the movement is a “very significant straw in the wind,” and described that first meeting as “very powerful for people.”

In October, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) released a draft Comprehensive Energy Strategy (CES) for public comment, and the steering committee seized the opportunity for the roundtable to voice concerns about the interrelated climate and economic crises. In November, a diverse group of nearly 60 people came together to learn more about the draft CES and to discuss opportunities for collaboration in shaping state policies. Most of the participants signed a joint statement submitted as written testimony to DEEP.

“The drafted statement was amazing because just about everyone there was able to support it,” said Mr. Brecher. “There will be major energy policy coming from the governor and DEEP and this pertains to both of these things. It addresses quite a broad range of what we should do this year but is also crucial for the next decade and in some cases would lock in energy policy for decades.”

The roundtable is slated to meet again Tuesday in Hartford, in a session designed to engage policy-makers in discussions about its concerns during the current legislative session. “There will be a lot of negotiations around the statement,” Mr. Brecher said, “but there is amazingly broad agreement about what needs to be done.”

In a statement released last week, the roundtable concluded that it rejects the “false choice of ‘jobs or the environment.’ We know that environmental change is coming and will require changes in how we produce and consume both energy and goods and services. … .”

Members believe the transition to a climate-safe Connecticut can provide the basis for an economy with good jobs. “We know that in most cases renewable fuels and energy use reduction provide the greatest employment per dollar. We urge that all energy-related policy proposals include job-impact statements based on a uniform method of evaluation,” the statement said.

It urges that Connecticut’s Global Warming Solutions Act, which established a goal of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, be translated into a concrete plan of action and be moved forward rapidly.

It strongly supports the emphasis on energy efficiency in the DEEP’s Comprehensive Energy Strategy as the least-cost means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Energy efficiency programs also create large numbers of local jobs that cannot be outsourced, it asserts.

The statement urges that funding to implement programs be found immediately. But Mr. Brecher says this is not the problem for the cash-strapped state that it appears to be. “The first thing is that we are all paying for energy every time we pay an electric bill,” he explained. “The question is how to do that in a way that represents our real long-term interests. Let’s use our money for what we want and need—and overwhelmingly, the thriftiest energy is the energy we save—energy we don’t pay for because we haven’t wasted it.”

A second piece also focuses on what is being spent already. Connecticut has a mandate to spend 20 percent of its electric payments toward the development of renewable resources such as wind, solar, energy efficiency and other forms of non-fossil fuel energy. “We believe the Renewable Portfolio Standards should be expanded and used to expand jobs in Connecticut,” he reported. “In the long run, renewable energy and conservation will be the cheapest forms of energy for individuals and Connecticut. We know the cost of fossil fuels will go crazy because global demand will soar and soar.”

While energy dollars are already being spent on conventional fuels, Mr. Brecher said the biggest problem is recovering money spent on sustainable systems such as wind or solar. “If you put solar panels on your house, over 20 years you will be richer,” he said. “But the first year you will pay many times what your electric bill would have been. One thing we are calling for is exploring on-bill financing where, basically, the energy company, state or bank puts up the money for the work and whoever pays the electric bill pays back the money being saved.”

There are other possibilities for funding the upfront costs that would allow homeowners to become more ecologically sound while saving on energy costs. “Financing should make possible a job-creating transition to climate-safe energy for people of all economic levels,” the statement says. “We urge the legislative and administrative steps necessary to ensure use of the Conservation Adjustment Mechanism to provide additional funding for energy efficiency. If increased fees cause any hardships for low-income consumers, they should be offset by rate or tax relief.”

The roundtable opposes reclassifying large-scale Canadian hydropower and waste-to-energy projects as Class I renewables, saying this would produce no new jobs and would reduce incentives to expand wind energy production, solar and fuel cell development, as well as local recycling programs. (See the story on one Connecticut wind power venture’s problems)

It further urges Gov. Dannel Malloy and the Connecticut General Assembly to join other states in approving and implementing the proposed reduction in CO2 emissions.

The roundtable wants investment in energy to create a market for Connecticut manufacturing, thereby creating jobs and encourages state economic development agencies to expand incentives and other forms of support for a growing renewable energy manufacturing.

“We need to get universities and corporations to cooperate in developing technologies and markets for industries that will create jobs and enhance our economic base,” Mr. Brecher said. “Funding for that comes from business and investors. The state is already deeply involved in economic development, but we want to see that it is used toward building skills for environmental protection.”

Mr. Brecher said one area where there is disagreement among roundtable participants is natural gas. “When we originally discussed the roundtable, one idea was let’s create a space where can talk about issues before we find ourselves coming to fisticuffs. One area I was concerned would be major area of disagreement was natural gas. Environmentalists have lot of questions about it because of fracking, pipeline problems and because there is increasing evidence natural gas has severe negative impacts on the climate. That it is a clean fuel is becoming very questionable.”

It appeared there might be a collision course between environmentalists and labor groups over the issue. “But in discussions, we found quite a bit of common ground. First of all, we agreed to disagree, but we also agreed to structure a discussion where we could learn from each other and from experts. We responded to the fact we didn’t start out on the same page,” he said.

Later discussion disclosed that the two sides agreed with the DEEP proposal that aging pipelines be upgraded. “We found very wide agreement that replacement would be appropriate and that is where lion’s share of jobs would be,” he said.

There was also agreement that investing in a new natural gas infrastructure would lock in the state’s energy future. “Natural gas is now cheap compared to fossil fuels, but it is very questionable whether that will be true in the long run,” Mr. Brecher said. “For reasons that have to do with short-term issues, it’s cheap now, but if you invest in a pipeline you might find it doubles in a few years.”

Fracking is an unknown in terms of its environmental impact, but also promises to increase in expense as drillers have to go deeper and deeper. “The price of fracked oil could go up dramatically. There was wide agreement that caution is called for before locking ourselves in,” Mr. Brecher concluded.

During our many decades of work in the labor and environmental movements, there have been many battles that led to tensions between our communities. The Keystone Pipeline is only the most recent example. To help overcome these challenges, we recently convened two dozen leaders of labor, environmental, and other organizations for a frank conversation about the difficult times faced by ordinary workers and the dire environmental prospects we all face. We were motivated by a deep conviction that our communities could unite behind a common vision of a new economy that is good for working families and for the planet. We know that a top priority of most people is decent, dignified jobs that advance a truly sustainable economy.

And, at the end of our conversation, we were heartened by the unity we found in this diverse group of leaders behind a common vision. And we hoped that by developing the following joint statement, we could help build broader consensus around this vision and steps towards achieving it.

Labor-Environment Solidarity

for a More Just and Sustainable Economy

This statement grows out of a discussion at Georgetown University on February 15, 2013 among leaders and organizers from the labor, environmental, and democracy movements sponsored by the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS) and Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor (KI).

For decades, there have been initiatives by labor and environmental leaders at local, state, and national levels to forge closer ties between these two communities, from Environmentalists for Full Employment in the 1970s to the Blue-Green Alliance and the Labor Network for Sustainability today.

Despite these efforts, there have been times of tension and conflict. The debate over the Keystone XL pipeline today is only the most recent of such moments. Many in the environmental movement have made stopping the pipeline a top priority for 2013, and many but not all in organized labor are backing the pipeline as a source of good jobs. There have been a number of instances in recent years where leaders in each of these communities have failed to acknowledge the concerns of the other.

Nonetheless, many leaders and organizers within these movements recognize that they share many values and are prepared to help define a common vision and lead a struggle for a more just and sustainable economy. In the short-term, we feel that there are many things that each community can do to advance mutual interests and concerns. Longer term, we feel that articulating a common vision for a new economy is necessary to allow these movements to serve their individual interests, but also to contribute to building a better society.

In a recent dialogue among the signers of this statement, we were struck by a common commitment to build on shared values to strengthen our solidarity by developing a shared vision, identifying obstacles and building a common agenda to move forward together.

We agree on the urgent need to build a more just and sustainable economy. We recognize the need to strengthen the solidarity between our movements to be successful. And, we are confident that an honest dialogue among leaders and activists in our movements is key to developing the shared vision necessary to strengthen our solidarity.

We recognize that the American economy is neither sustainable, nor just. We are on a climate change path that unless radically altered will lead to global warming of seven degrees Fahrenheit or greater. We are also in the most serious employment crisis since the Great Depression, wages have stagnated for over three decades and economic inequality is worse than any time since the 1920s.

We recognize that our shared goals cannot be realized without challenging the undue influence that corporations exercise over our economic system and our political process.

We also recognize the many factors that make it difficult for our movements to act in concert. Some of these affect cooperation in the short term; others are deeper and longer-term differences of perspective. Too often the cultures and organizations of the labor movement are indifferent to the challenges of sustainability. Too often, the environmental movement is inattentive to the injustice of the American economy.

Finally, despite the challenge to unity represented by the KXL pipeline, we recognize there is a larger common purpose to be served through dialogue among leaders and organizers of these movements to define and fight for an economy that works for all, but that also respects the limits of the environment we share.

Among the many labor and environmental organizations engaged in serving these shared values and realizing a common vision, the Labor Network for Sustainability is hosting a dialogue among leaders and organizers to help define an economy that realizes their shared values and to advocate for the policies necessary to serve them.

It is easy to identify important national goals where our alliance must be strong and our collaboration active:

• supporting actions at the national, state, and local levels to reduce America’s climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions;

• creating healthy and safe green jobs in such areas as clean energy, transportation, and modern infrastructure;

• revitalizing America’s cities and towns through a focus on environmental quality, locally committed enterprise, community solidarity, and strong democracy;

• reforming America’s politics to reverse the growing ascendancy of money power over people power; and

• providing ample opportunities for decent work, living wages, and continuing self-improvement.

Looking ahead, we will begin in earnest a dialogue on how to realize an America where the true and actual priorities of economic and political life are sustaining people, place, and planet; where social justice and solidarity are prized; and where peace, communities, democracy, and nature all flourish. We believe it is possible to build a new economy and a new politics. Many of the needed answers are already at hand, and others can be found. Our nation can realize a future that is equitable and ecologically balanced, but to do so we must build a movement supported by a broad base of citizens committed to transformative change. We will work together towards these ends.

Harriet Barlow, Director
Blue Mountain Center

Ron Blackwell, Former Chief Economist
AFL-CIO

Organizations listed for identifications purposes only

Joe Uehlein is Founding President and Executive Director of the Labor Network for Sustainability and Voices for a Sustainable Future. He is the former secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department and former director of the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Campaigns. Joe spent over 30 years doing organizing, bargaining, and strategic campaign work in the labor movement.

Gus Speth helped found the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970 and the World Resources Institute in 1982. He was chair of President Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality and served for a decade as dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.  He now teaches at the Vermont Law School.

This is a call for environmentalists and other critics of coal to come to the aid of America’s miners.

Whenever government protection of workers health and safety or the environment rears its ugly head, America’s coal companies are quick to portray themselves as the coal miners’ best friends.  They are ever ready to come to the aid of what they portray as workers threatened by environmentalists and government regulators dedicated to destroying miners’ jobs at any cost.

Today, the jobs of two thousand miners and the healthcare benefits of twenty thousand retirees and their families are threatened - not by callous environmentalists or government regulators, but by their own employer, Patriot Coal.

Patriot Coal was created in 2007 by Peabody Energy to acquire all of its operations east of the Mississippi River. Under the deal, Peabody shed many of its long-term health care obligations to its retirees. As Peabody’s CEO explained to investors, by creating Patriot “”we’re reducing our legacy liabilities by roughly $1 billion.” Soon after, another coal company, Arch Coal, also shifted its health care obligations onto Patriot, and as a result, Patriot now has $100 million in liabilities related to retiree benefits and three times as many retirees as employees — 90% of whom never worked for the 5-year-old company.

Since these deals were cut, the parent companies Peabody Energy and Arch Coal have made millions.  But in 2012 - surprise, surprise - their offspring Patriot Coal filed for bankruptcy.  Patriot cited,
among other things, “substantial and unsustainable legacy costs,”which include the health care benefits owed to retirees and widows, and “many provisions that restrict the ability of signatory employers to deploy labor and operate their mines in a flexible and cost-effective manner.”

And it turns out that those “legacy costs” include much more than just healthcare benefits. Court papers estimate Patriot Coal has about $100 million in liabilities related to retiree benefits but almost $200 million in liabilities due to legislation that requires payments for retirees suffering from “black lung.” And it has substantial environmental liabilities stemming from a 2010 federal court order requiring Patriot to deal with groundwater pollution caused by the discharge of selenium at mountaintop-removal mines.

The UMWA has initiated a Fight for Fairness at Patriot campaign which it describes as a “multi-faceted worldwide strategic campaign to expose not only the moral issues underlying this struggle, but also the enormous consequences coalfield communities and other working communities will feel if the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars in benefit payments into their local economies is suddenly shut off.” It is “mobilizing workers throughout the national and international labor movement, reaching out to religious, civil rights and other community groups, and preparing a number of tactical remedies in order to send Patriot an unmistakable message of solidarity.”

Over the last few months, the UMWA has been holding protests outside company headquarters.  On January 29, ten Mineworkers union members, including President Cecil Roberts, were arrested in front of Peabody Energy’s corporate headquarters in St. Louis, as more than 750 members and retirees sang Amazing Grace.

A Just Transition

While coal companies purport to represent the interest of miners and their communities by protecting their jobs, the Patriot story - and the Peabody and Arch stories - reveal these companies in a very different light. The real threat to miners’ jobs and communities comes not from environmentalists or government regulators, but from companies that are ready to ditch their most elementary - and legally binding - obligations to those who have risked their lives to make them rich.

Patriot coal is part of a much larger picture.  Like it or not, the US energy industry is in a process of transition.  Some of that is due to efforts to reduce the environmental and climate impacts of coal.  At the moment much more of it is due to technological and economic changes like the development of cheaper natural gas due to fracking. That is inevitably going to affect coal miners and others who produce, transport, and use coal, like workers in coal-fired power plants.

It is a basic principle of fairness that the burden of policies that are necessary for society–like protecting public health and the environment or implementing new technologies –shouldn’t be borne by a small minority who happen to be victimized by their side effects. Protecting workers and communities from the effects of socially and environmentally necessary economic change is often referred to as a just transition.

Such provisions are a matter of elementary justice–it is unfair that workers who through no fault of their own happen to work in jobs that need to be eliminated to achieve a social good should bear the burden of that change by losing their jobs.

As part of the looming transition beyond coal, we need a national policy to protect those whom that transition may harm.  It could be modeled on the highly successful process that helped local communities adjust to the disruption and job shifting that resulted from the closing of military bases under the Base Realignment and Closing Commission (BRAC). Those communities were provided a wide range of federal assistance, including, planning and economic adjustment assistance, environmental cleanup, Community Development Block Grants and Community Service Grants.

Workers dislocated by base closings also received extensive support. The Department of Defense itself provided advance notification of a reduction in force; pre-separation counseling; a hiring preference system with federal agencies to re-employ qualified displaced DOD employees; financial incentives to encourage early retirement of those eligible. Workers affected by base closings were also eligible for help under National Emergency Grants, “Rapid Response” programs, comprehensive assessments and development of individual employment plans and job training.

Communities and individuals affected by energy transition in general and EPA regulations in particular could be similarly targeted for assistance from such existing programs as the Department of Labor’s Rapid Response Services and the National Emergency Grants of the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration, as well as funding for economic development and industrial efficiency and modernization from the Departments of Energy and Commerce.

Because the needed resources are scattered among many different government agencies, the first step might well be for President Barack Obama to establish an interagency task force composed of U.S. agency officials overseeing issues of employment, energy and the environment. Their first task could be to create a transition package for coal miners, utility workers and other affected workers that would provide robust financial and training support and preferential access to the new jobs created by environmental policies. That could be combined with vigorous support for economic planning and investment in the affected communities, focusing on the development of new clean energy industries. Think of it as a GI Bill for displaced workers and their communities.

Patriot Coal is a particularly egregious instance of unjust transition.  It is making coal miners and their communities pay the price for change, while the coal companies pocket the benefits. But for that very reason, the struggle at Patriot coal has the potential to bring together a new coalition for justice not only for Patriot miners, but for all those who might be innocent victims of the transformation now under way in the energy industry.

While the coal companies have told us over and over that coal miners and environmentalists are unalterably enemies, the Patriot Coal campaign provides an opportunity to move beyond an opposition that has been a loser for both. It could change the terms of the discussion from conflict over trying to “save” jobs that are already doomed to providing a just transition for the human beings who the companies are prepared to throw on the scrapheap.

The campaign for Patriot Coal workers could form an important starting point for broader campaign for a just transition.  It provides an opportunity for environmentalists in particular, and progressives more generally, to prove that they are the allies not the enemies of America’s threatened working people.  And it give them an opportunity to argue more broadly for a transition that protects workers even as it protects the climate and the environment.

In Billy Ed Wheeler’s haunting hit song The Coal Tattoo, an unemployed coal miner traveling the roads looking for work asks, “Who is going to stand by me?”  The Patriot Coal campaign gives us all an opportunity to answer that question.

To evaluate the significance of this statement, it is important to understand the current context. Superstorm Sandy and other extreme weather events, rising sea levels, pervasive devastating drought, and other effects of climate change are hitting America here and now. But attempts to establish climate protection policies continue to be stymied by rightwing ideologues who deny that global warming even exists.

At the start of his second term, President Obama has begun talking about the necessity to address climate change. With legislation blocked by Republicans in the House of Representatives, the Obama administration is turning toward regulation of power plants by the EPA as its most effective means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, groups concerned with climate protection have turned to direct action to oppose new pipelines, shut coal-fired power plants, and encourage divestment from fossil fuel companies. At the same time unions are under devastating attack by the right wing, which is eliminating labor rights that have been established for half a century or more. And workers continue to face devastating unemployment rates - rates that remain at depression levels for construction workers, African-Americans, and other important groups.

The new AFL-CIO statement begins by calling for a “comprehensive energy policy” with the objectives of “creating jobs” and “addressing the threat of climate change.” Linking these objectives can potentially provide a frame for constructively addressing the climate and jobs crises.

The statement mentions global warming and climate change four times. It clearly accepts their reality and the need to reduce the greenhouse gases that are causing them. However, like past AFL-CIO statements it does not endorse the targets for ghg reduction that climate scientists have said are necessary to prevent still more devastating climate change.

The statement strongly endorses at the outset the importance of energy efficiency in climate protection. “Any serious effort to tackle climate change must begin with ensuring we use a range of tools, including policy incentives and technology, to make our economy more energy efficient and by doing so to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from all of these sources.”

However, the statement continues the AFL-CIO’s acceptance of an “all of the above” energy system: “It is clear that for the foreseeable future our nation will continue to use a wide range of energy sources-including both traditional sources like coal, oil and natural gas, and newer sources like wind, solar and nuclear.” Without rapid reductions in the use of some of these energy sources, however, the necessary cuts in climate-destroying ghgs will be impossible and, indeed, their continued growth will be inevitable.

Five of the nine paragraphs in the statement address energy transportation infrastructure, focused primarily on pipelines. They support “the expansion of our pipeline infrastructure and a much more aggressive approach to the repair of our more than 2.5 million miles of existing pipelines.” They call for immediate steps that can be taken by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration around which “business, labor, and the environmental community can unite” to “make business more efficient, create good, skilled jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

The statement is important in part for what it did not say. The currently most prominent environmental issue in the US is the Keystone XL pipeline. Up till now unions have been divided on the issue. A coalition of building trades unions have strongly supported building the KXL and have excoriated its opponents outside and inside the labor movement. A less numerous coalition of unions have opposed the pipeline or urged the AFL-CIO to stay neutral, which until now it has done. This time it was widely rumored that the Executive Council would endorse the KXL pipeline. But the “Statement on Energy and Jobs” as posted on the AFL-CIO website did not even mention the Keystone XL pipeline.

Some will no doubt take the endorsement of expanded pipeline infrastructure as a tacit endorsement of KXL. The Laborers’ union (LIUNA) immediately sent out a message on Twitter stating, “America’s Building Trades Unions are pleased that the AFL-CIO Executive Council today approved a resolution in support of a comprehensive energy policy that includes the expansion of our nation’s pipeline infrastructure, including the Keystone XL pipeline.” However, a careful reading of the statement indicates that the AFL-CIO has not taken a position on the KXL pipeline. It calls for “expansion of our pipeline infrastructure. But the definition of “infrastructure” according the Oxford dictionary is “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise” — hardly an apt description of the KXL pipeline.

While in the past organized labor has sometimes been ambivalent about the idea of a “just transition” to a new energy economy, fearing that it might justify the loss of existing jobs, the new statement embraces the idea of a just transition to protect workers from bearing the cost of a changing mix of energy sources. While it does not oppose regulation restricting greenhouse gas emissions, it argues that “Without a comprehensive, legislative approach to energy and jobs, there is no way to make the necessary investments in new energy technologies that can create new good jobs, to provide a just transition for workers and their communities that will be harmed due to changing energy sources and technologies.”

Those like the Labor Network for Sustainability who support both climate protection and worker rights and employment should take special note of several aspects of this statement:

• Despite pressure from some unions, organized labor as a whole has avoided a head-on battle between labor and environmental movements that seemed to be looming over the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmentalists should recognize that this was not necessarily the easy path for organized labor, and should treat this as an opportunity to respond with strong support around other labor concerns.

• The AFL-CIO statement puts strong emphasis on expanding jobs through energy efficiency. The environmental community should renew and expand its commitment to cooperation around this goal.

• The AFL-CIO has clearly decided to emphasize pipeline infrastructure as an objective. While some pipelines may be environmentally hazardous or lock us in to destructive fossil fuels, environmental groups should consider supporting the statement’s call for “a much more aggressive approach to the repair of our more than 2.5 million miles of existing pipelines” and advocate for other forms of job-creating infrastructure, such as renewal of our water infrastructure and electrical grids and transmission systems for solar, wind, and geothermal energy.

• Environmental and climate protection advocates should develop concrete plans to protect those workers harmed by a changing energy economy through just transition policies. Such measures should be included as basic elements of all proposed climate protection legislation. Until such legislation can be passed, regulation should be combined with aggressive public policies - similar to those for workers affected by the BRAC military base closings - to ensure a just transition for workers and communities adversely affected by the changing energy economy.

• The statement’s clear recognition that energy industry employment patterns will change -due not just to regulation but to economic and technological change - should bring the demand for a just transition to the fore of organized labor’s program. It provides an opportunity for unions to help draw together local, regional, and national alliances around a vision of future economic reconstruction for hard-hit communities - and our hard-hit country.

Labor’s future lies in helping lead a movement to build a new economy that sustains working people’s livelihoods and well being by making our economy sustainable. That vision will only be compelling for the American people if it is clearly presented as the alternative to national and global climate catastrophe.

The American labor movement is once again facing a most controversial issue — the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. While the KXL debate has largely centered around the environmental risks, from labor’s perspective opening up the Canadian Tar Sands is often seen as an economic, not an environmental, issue. And it’s no wonder: Construction unemployment is double the national average and, from a worker’s perspective, Keystone jobs will be good-paying union jobs in an economy that increasingly offers up only minimum-wage service work.

As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka explained last year, “mass unemployment makes everything harder and feeds fear. . . opponents of the pipeline [need to] recognize that construction jobs are real jobs, good jobs.” KXL advocates have worked hard to capitalize on this fear by arguing that labor must choose between creating jobs and protecting the planet.

While labor leaders weigh the pros and cons of building KXL, they should keep in mind that the pipeline is as much a threat to our economy as it is to our planet. After a year of extreme weather — at an extreme cost to the economy — this age old jobs vs. environment debate is emerging as a false choice. Hurricanes, floods, and droughts are already having a devastating effect on American jobs, and that is nothing compared to what will happen if we throw open the spigot to the tar sands from Canada, considered the dirtiest oil in the world.

Here are 5 reasons why building the Keystone pipeline is bad for the economy — and workers.

1. Building the Keystone pipeline and opening up the Tar Sands will negatively impact national and local economies: Burning the recoverable tar sands oil will increase the earth’s temperature by a minimum of 2 degree Celsius, which NYU Law School’s Environmental Law Center estimates could permanently cut the US GDP by 2.5%. At the same time state and local economies are already buckling under the real-time economic effects of our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels. In the past two years, the vast majority of U.S. counties – 67 percent – were affected by at least one of the eleven $1 billion dollar extreme weather events. Superstorm Sandy alone caused an estimated $80 billion in damage. The drought that affected 80% of US farmland last summer destroyed a quarter of the US corn crop and did at least $20 billion damage to the economy.

2. The same fossil fuel interests pushing the Keystone pipeline have been cutting, not creating, jobs: Despite generating $546 billion in profits between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP reduced their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees over that period. In 2010 alone, the top five oil companies slashed their global workforce by 4,400 employees — the same year executives paid themselves nearly $220 million. But at least those working in the industry as a whole get paid high wages, right? Turns out that 40 percent of U.S oil-industry jobs consist of minimum-wage work at gas stations. Instead of bankrolling an industry that is laying off workers and threatening our economic future, isn’t it time to take the billions in subsidies going to oil companies and invest instead in a sector that both creates jobs and protects the planet?

3. Unemployment will rise: According to Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics: “Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the job market in November, slicing an estimated 86,000 jobs from payrolls.” In the wake of Hurricane Irene, the number of workers filing unemployment claims in Vermont went from 731 before Irene to 1,331 two weeks afterwards. Hurricane Katrina wiped out 129,000 jobs in the New Orleans region — nearly 20 percent. For the U.S. economy as a whole, 2011 cost US taxpayers $52 billion.

4. Poor and working people will be disproportionately affected: KXL and projects like it result in disproportionately negative impact on already struggling working families. According to a recent report by the Center for American Progress called “Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle- and Lower-Income Americans, lower-and middle income households are disproportionately affected by the most expensive extreme weather events. Sixteen states were afflicted by five or more extreme weather events in 2011-12. Households in disaster-declared counties in these states earn $48,137, or seven percent below the U.S. median income.

5. Building the sustainable economy, not the Keystone pipeline, will create far more jobs: Our nation is in desperate need of jobs. Approving the Keystone pipeline locks our nation into a trajectory of guaranteed job loss and threatens the stability of the US economy. Why keep the “job-killing” course, when the alternative-energy path is already out-performing other sectors of the economy. For example, the solar industry continues to be an engine of job growth — creating jobs six times faster than the overall job market. Research by the Solar Foundation shows a 13 percent growth in high-skilled solar jobs spanning installations, sales, marketing, manufacturing and software development — bringing total direct jobs to 119,000 in the sector. And according to the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, investment in a green infrastructure program would create nearly four times as many jobs as an equal investment in oil and gas.

A study by Synapse Energy Economics developed a Transition Scenario for the electric power industry based on reducing energy consumption, phasing out high-emission power plants, and building new, lower-emission energy facilities. The study estimated the number of “job years” — one new worker employed for one year — that would be created by the Transition Scenario over a decade:

• 444,000 job-years for construction workers, equivalent to 44,400 construction workers working full time for the entire decade.
• 90,000 job-years for operations and maintenance workers, equivalent to about 9,000 full time workers employed over the decade.
• 3.1 million indirect jobs for people designing, manufacturing, and delivering materials and jobs in local economies around the country induced by spending by workers hired in the Transition Scenario.

Organized labor is right to demand that public policy pay attention to our desperate need for jobs. But the Keystone XL pipeline will only make our jobs crisis worse by making our climate crisis worse. Plus, there are lots of pipelines that need fixing. Construction workers can be put to work rebuilding our crumbling natural gas transmission pipeline system — this will create good union jobs and cut carbon emissions. And these same workers can rebuild our crumbling water infrastructure. If labor is going to fight for jobs, let’s fight for jobs that build the future we want for ourselves and our children, not ones that will destroy that future.