LABOR & CLIMATE NEWS
A New Wave of Global Youth Climate Action
Six hundred fifty thousand young climate activists have said they will continue “protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossil fuels.
Who We Are
Jessica Garraway has worked as an educator in Minneapolis Public Schools for roughly six years. She has been organizing and writing on matters such as wealth disparity, racism, colonialism, women’s liberation, labor, and environmental issues for over 10 years. Jessica was also active in the fight to stop the building of what would have been the first Tar Sands mine in the US as well as the Keystone, Dakota Access, and Line 3 pipelines.
Commentary: The Green New Deal in the States – Part 1
Just since the start of 2021 there has been a wave of state legislation and executive action that sets and implements new standards for greenhouse gas emissions. States have greatly expanded their plans for wind and solar energy and energy efficiency. In most cases these are combined with policies specifically designed to create good quality jobs and to counter inequality. This Commentary describes job-creating, justice-promoting climate protection in Hawaii and Illinois. The following Commentary will describe such initiatives in California and evaluate the origins and effects of state-level Green New Deal-style initiatives overall.
Transit Equity Day
LNS is enlarging the scope of “climate workers,’ such as railroaders and transit workers, to lift-up the importance of investing in the transit workforce to create good jobs for operators and maintenance workers as we transition to clean energy transit systems.
Young Worker Organizing
LNS is empowering a rising generation of young workers to lead the labor-climate movement into the future. This fall, LNS convened an inaugural Young Workers Convergence that brought together nearly 100 young workers from 23 states (as well as DC and Canada) and more than 50 different worker and environmental organizations to participate in workshops…
Reorienting the Green New Deal
In 2022, LNS advised the Green New Deal Network (GNDN) on how to strengthen the pro-labor, climate justice provisions in federal policy proposals. Although Build Back Better (BBB) and the Protect the Right to Organize Act could not get past the Big Coal/Big Oil members in Congress, the coalition and Biden Administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provides unprecedented federal funding for new investments in green energy infrastructure.
