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October 6, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
If Labor and Greens join forces
Photos by Alex Garland, courtesy of the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation.
MESSAGE FROM A FRIEND
IBEW Local 76 apprentices in Washington are learning how to install solar panels — like this one on display Sept. 15
at the BlueGreen Alliance’s Clean and Fair Economy Summit in Olympia, Washington. At the summit, IBEW Local 48
was one of several organizations singled out for praise — for its commitment to electric cars and solar power.
By Don McIntosh
From the vantage point of the
year 2017, it’s not hard to imag-
ine two near-distant futures: one
in which humankind rallies to
stabilize global climate by using
renewable energy to meet hu-
man needs, or one where hu-
manity fails to do that, and ends
up in a world of superstorms
and rising seas, of wars and
mass migrations as crop failures
create millions of desperate
refugees. Either way, the history
that will be written in the near-
distant future will be about de-
cisions that are being made now.
What role if any will organ-
ized labor play in those deci-
sions? One possibility: Labor
could ally with environmental-
ists to speed up the needed tran-
sition to a post-fossil-fuel econ-
omy— and make sure that it’s a
“just transition” that improves
economic opportunity for work-
ing people. To discuss that
prospect, 180 environmental, la-
bor, and political leaders from
around the United States met in
Olympia, Washington, Sept. 14
and 15 for a “Clean and Fair
Economy Summit” organized
by the BlueGreen Alliance, a
group that unites labor and en-
vironmental groups around
common issues.
“This is a time for labor in
particular to be bolder, rather
than to hunker down,” declared
Washington State Labor Coun-
cil President Jeff Johnson.
Other countries are getting
busy, converting from fossil fuels
to renewable energy, making
good on commitments they
made at the 2016 Paris Climate
Agreement.
“Unless we fight to win now together,
we’ll be defeated separately.”
— Kim Glas,
BlueGreen Alliance executive director
“This is a time for labor in particular to be
bolder, rather than to hunker down.”
— Jeff Johnson,
Washington State Labor Council president
But similar commitments
made by President Obama are
now stalled under President
Trump. Unless Trump has a pro-
found change of heart, action to
reduce greenhouse gas emis-
sions will be possible only at the
state and local level for the next
three-and-a-half years.
It appears the West Coast is
moving ahead.
In Oregon, one third of state
legislators (all Democrats) have
signed on in support of a pro-
posal to set up a “cap-and-in-
vest” program which would
generate $690 million a year by
auctioning off a gradually de-
clining number of greenhouse
gas emission permits — and use
that money to fund a transition
to alternative energy and effi-
ciency. Advocates are looking to
the Democrat-led Oregon Leg-
islature to pass it when it meets
again in February 2018.
Meanwhile, in the state of
Washington, an unprecedented
coalition of labor, environmen-
tal and community groups has
come together around a carbon
tax initiative that could be on the
ballot in November 2018. The
initiative would raise $1 billion
a year for new investments in re-
newable energy, mass transit
and conservation. The alliance
comes after Washington labor
opposed a 2016 carbon tax bal-
lot measure because it would
have used the revenue to cut
business taxes instead of invest-
ing it in new clean energy infra-
structure. It went down 59-41.
“Unless we fight to win now
together, we’ll be defeated sep-
arately,” said Kim Glas, execu-
tive BlueGreen Alliance.
Authors of the pending Ore-
gon and Washington proposals
are working carefully to exempt
energy-intensive, trade-exposed
industries (EITEs) — because it
doesn’t help climate or the local
economy if added costs shift
production to countries that
have even more carbon-inten-
sive production.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley gave a keynote ad-
dress to labor and environmental leaders
Sept. 15 at the BlueGreen Alliance Clean and
Fair Economy Summit. Below is an excerpt.
The last four decades have not been good
for working people — or the environment.
We have jobs getting shipped overseas.
Wealth has gone up enormously in the last
four decades. It’s just that workers have not gotten to share in
the wealth.
And climate change is upon us. In Oregon the change in cli-
mate is very good for pine beetles and very bad for trees.
Snowpack in the Cascades has been dropping, and that has af-
fected fishing. We’ve had three worst-ever droughts in the last
15 years in the Klamath Basin, and it’s really hurting our farm-
ers and ranchers. On the Oregon coast, we lost a billion oysters
because the acidity of the Pacific Ocean increased. And we see
it nationally and internationally. In 20 years they anticipate
there will be zero glaciers in Glacier National Park. Zika is ex-
panding. Canadian permafrost is melting. Coral reefs are dy-
ing. Arctic ice is disappearing. And our forests in Oregon,
Washington, and California are on fire. Behind all of this is
carbon dioxide from burning fuels.
We are running a race, and we are losing that race.
That means we have to think far more boldly. We must stop
burning fossil fuels. We have to do it in the next three decades
to have a chance to take this on. And we have to do it in part-
nership with the world. We have to completely transform our
energy economy, and that’s a very scary thing, because we
have a lot of jobs invested in our current energy economy.
There is going to be a change either way. It’s going to be
massive. And we have a choice: We can seize it and try to make
it the best possible opportunity for American workers.
We have huge manufacturing potential for making the com-
ponents that go into renewable energy infrastructure. We have
huge opportunity for constructing utility-scale and distributed
scale solar and wind. We have high-voltage electric lines that
need to be constructed, and local grids reinforced. We have
residential reconstruction to do, everything from changing wa-
ter heaters and gas and oil furnaces into heat pumps to in-
stalling energy-saving windows and doors.
So we have all these areas in which jobs can be created. We
are seeing the renewable energy economy grow 12 times faster
than the rest of the economy.
Now, our coal workers and other fossil fuel workers have
been powering our economy for many years. They have been
the foundation for the standard of living we have today. We
have to make sure as we seek to create jobs in a new energy
economy that fossil fuel workers are at the front of the line.
Let’s seize this opportunity. We can be at the forefront of
making these products. We can make sure our fossil fuel work-
ers get the first shot at jobs in the transition. We can make sure
our disadvantaged communities have a chance to have that
clean energy technology and jobs in their communities, be-
cause they’re often the most polluted. We can work to make
sure the workers have the right to organize in this new econ-
omy and get a fair share of the wages they create.
Bobby Kennedy said if we fail to dare, if we do not try, the
next generation will harvest the fruit of our difference— a
world we did not want, a world we did not choose, and a world
we could have made better. Let’s apply ourselves now, not only
taking on climate disruption, but taking on a much better econ-
omy where workers share in the wealth that they create here
in the United States of America.
See Merkley’s full speech transcript, or watch the speech on video, at
http://bit.ly/2fIL87k