http://socialistaction.org/climate-activists-call-for-end-to-fossil-fuels/
Climate activists call for end to fossil fuels
Published October 30, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Oct. 2014 Climate 1
By CHRISTINE FRANK
The New York Times recently reported that even if all nations were to
achieve their current greenhouse gas reduction pledges (it is doubtful
they actually have the will to do so), a disastrous level of planetary
warming of 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit would still take place by the
century’s end—which is to say that the goals are completely inadequate.
This is according to Climate Interactive, a group whose calculations are
used by U.S. negotiators and others.
World leaders are reaching way too low, with only a 30% reduction at
most, when 80% or more is needed immediately. They are content to just
scrape by and hope that the world can burn hydrocarbons indefinitely and
still avoid catastrophic consequences—when they know better. None of
them have the guts to break with their capitalist masters, and reduce
all greenhouse gas emissions to zero as soon as possible.
They know it would take a crash program that leaves all fossil fuels in
the ground while converting to clean energy and transport. But they are
not prepared to take such drastic measures to protect Earth’s climate
system because they are more interested in protecting the capitalist system.
In response to this sorry state of affairs, the activist group 350.org
has laid out an ambitious campaign to lead the climate crisis movement
down “the road to power through Paris” preceding and following the UN
summit to take place there at the end of the year. Their executive
director, May Boeve, recently outlined a series of events and actions
that began with 350’s “Off & On” event on Sept. 10, at which
author/activists Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein called for turning off
the fossil-fuel industry and turning on 100% renewables.
McKibben and Klein spoke of defusing the world’s biggest carbon bombs in
the form of extreme energy such as filthy tar sands, fracked oil and
gas, deepwater drilling, and their delivery systems—explosive oil
trains, tankers, and leaking pipelines.
To build up to Paris and beyond, other actions have been held, such as
an “Under One Sky” multi-faith rally and prayer service on UN Plaza to
force the Vatican to divest from fossil fuels and get Pope Francis,
however progressive he is on climate change and social and economic
inequalty, to put his money where his mouth is.
Also, a series of planning and strategizing workshops in New York City
took place on Sept. 26 at Goddard Riverside Community Center. In
addition, the Hip Hop Caucus just completed a 16-city, nationwide Act On
Climate Tour that began at the 10-Year Katrina Anniversary in New Orleans.
To put pressure on negotiators in Paris and make them accountable to the
principles of justice and science, a massive march is planned there, in
which organizers hope to get hundreds of thousands into the streets in a
global day of action. But 350.org and others do not intend to stop
there. They are projecting an escalating wave of activity involving
national and continental mobilizations targeting dirty fossil fuel
projects around the world in April 2016.
Speakers at the Sept. 10 program also envisioned a world that takes
seriously justice for the poor and oppressed, who suffer the most from
industrial pollution and the natural disasters caused by climate
change—unlike the rich, who profit handsomely from a system that equally
brutalizes workers and the planet. Consequently, the program had a
strong environmental justice focus with speakers such as Eddie Bautista
of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance; Cynthia Ong of the Land,
Empowerment, Animals, People project in Borneo; and Rev. Lennox Yearwood
of the Hip Hop Caucus.
The speakers also drew upon the legacy of past movements for social
change such as the struggles to abolish slavery, Jim Crow segregation,
and apartheid with the understanding that we must absorb those lessons
in order to build a powerful and successful movement to avert climate chaos.
Many environmental groups are now recognizing the intersection between
social oppression, ecological devastation, and economic injustice and
the need to confront all three simultaneously, which is an important
step forward for the movement. This new understanding will enable us to
confront not only the power of the industry but the state as well and
the role it plays in the extraction, refining, and distribution of
fossil fuels and the exploitation of the workers required to bring them
to market.
The issues of class and climate justice must be linked by raising the
demand for a just transition for all workers in order to make the shift
from dirty jobs to green ones without being left languishing on the
unemployment line. A just transition must include free training with
union wages, full benefits, and safe conditions guaranteed so that
workers can continue to sustain themselves and their families through
the training process and afterward.
While environmentalists are beginning to understand this, union
leaderships are not. For instance, because of the increased conversion
from coal to natural gas for electrical generation, coal mines in
Colorado and elsewhere are closing. This has meant the loss of as many
as 500 jobs in a single community and a lot of hardship; yet, the
leaders of the United Mine Workers are failing to raise the demand for a
just transition for coal miners. They foolishly blame
environmentalists—who rightfully want to shut down coal-fired power
plants—for the job losses instead of blaming the bosses, who are the
owners of a dangerously outmoded energy system and who stubbornly resist
change to satisfy their own greed.
Failing to recognize this, the UMW bureaucracy continues to hitch their
star to the employers’ wagon. That is not where the future lies for any
worker. On the contrary, trade unions that organize dirty industries
need to link up with the climate crisis and broader environmental
movements and demand the conversion to green, sustainable production
powered by clean wind and solar energy.
With the union movement representing only seven percent of workers in
this country, building that sort of powerful alliance is one of the best
ways to strengthen workers’ organizations.
Likewise, grasping the larger picture of how communities of workers and
oppressed are the victims of capitalist industry’s “externalities” of
polluted air, water, soil, ill health, and ecosystem degradation will
give the climate crisis movement a stronger emphasis and draw more
people into the struggle to save Mother Earth for human habitation.
That is why special emphasis must be placed on remedial measures for
communities of the oppressed nationalities, who, as the victims of
racism, have endured decades of breathing foul air, drinking
contaminated water, and suffering from damaged health while living and
working in neighborhoods or on tribal lands besieged by petro-chemical
plants, toxic incinerators, uranium mines, and now, fracking drill pads
and tar sand pits. Environmental clean-up, ecosystem restoration, and
the best health care for those communities must be given top priority
and be a vital part of achieving justice and ending environmental racism.
On the international level, people of the Global South are suffering
even more intensely from the impacts of climate change and environmental
degradation. Pathogens and disease vectors are on the rise from warming
temperatures. Island nations are drowning due to rising sea levels. Poor
infrastructure and health-care systems in developing nations make it
that much harder to cope with natural disasters. Famine is more likely
because of the destruction of subsistence food production and its
replacement with cash luxury crops grown for northern markets.
The imposition of GMOs by transnational biotech companies has further
weakened food production and the ability to survive by contaminating the
drought-resistant heirloom seeds developed by indigenous farmers.
Developing nations must be ensured the aid they need to adapt to climate
change and improve their quality of life while avoiding the destructive
path to development of the advanced industrial North.
This means that the big polluting nations must pay not only for their
transgressions against the climate but also for their super-exploitation
and disproportionate overconsumption of natural resources, many of which
have been stolen from other countries and taken by force at the cost of
millions of lives. Clean technologies such as wind turbines, solar
voltaics, and mass transit systems should be produced for export and
given free to developing countries.
Furthermore, climate change cannot be used as an excuse to further rob
and exploit. There can be no more phony carbon-trading and offset
schemes devised, for example, to replace natural forests with sterile,
monocultural tree plantations of palm oil used to produced biofuels in
Europe. These “green deserts” are leading to even more deforestation.
Instead, every measure must be taken to preserve the tropical
rainforests as essential carbon sinks, sources of oxygen, and drivers of
climate.
The crimes of colonialism and imperialist oppressions are many, and they
began with the wars of conquest and genocide against indigenous peoples
on every continent outside of Europe. Therefore, indigenous peoples must
be ensured the right to live sustainably on their ancestral lands
without any further interference from transnationals, which aim to
ruthlessly exploit the energy and other resources.
As the climate crisis movement places environmental justice at the
center of its program for change, these necessary points will become
more widely adopted.
.
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Posted in Environment, Labor. | Tagged 350.org, climate, global warming.
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