Street roots., October 27, 2017, Page 5, Image 5

Street Roots • Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2017
Commentary
Page 5
JU ST TR A N SITIO N , from page 4
network of cities would “create a new
national policy by the accumulation of our
efforts.”
PJET appears to be the only effort in the
country to draft a detailed plan that would
fund and implement that transition while
bypassing formal legislative proceedings.
Given the complexities involved, Portland’s
initiative could become an important model
for the other 40 cities that have made the
same climate commitment.
An approach that prioritizes access for
low-income communities and communities
of color is a significant departure from
recent proposals to address climate change
and could nudge future proposals in a
similar direction.
Last November, Washington voters
rejected what would have been the first
state carbon tax in the U.S., Initiative 732.
The measure went down after conspicuously
failing to win support from labor,
environmental and social justice
organizations, which complained about their
exclusion from the drafting process.
Speaking to Think Progress a month
ahead of the vote, Becky Kelley of the
Washington Environmental Council summed
up her position on what was wrong with the
proposal: “Climate policy is not
environmental policy. It is everything
policy,” she told Think Progress. “It is
transformational, societal policy that
touches economics and social justice and
how we move and what we buy and where
we live and all of the things.”
One especially controversial element of
the initiative would have required the state
to cut taxes to offset what was gained in
carbon tax revenue - an open effort to make
the overall effect revenue neutral, rather
than redistributive.
Initiative 732’s primary backer, economist
Yoram Bauman, publicly criticized the idea
that taxing large corporations to raise public
money could be part of the solution to
climate change. Instead, Bauman replaced
public investments with tax refunds whose
value would increase over time with the
price of carbon. After heavy criticism, his
measure was defeated 40.7 percent to 59.3
percent.
Chris Lowe, of Oregon Physicians for
P H O T O B Y O R E G O N D E P A R T M E N T O F T R A N S P O R T A T IO N
Workers install a panel in the Baldock Solar Highway project in 2011. The 6,994-panel project,
o ff o f Interstate 5 in Clackamas County, produces green energy fo r operation and maintenance
o f the state highway system.
Social Responsibility, said that working with
the PJET coalition is helping to solve some
of the questions over social power that
underlay the climate crisis.
“The big ecological crisis question is how
do we get the social will to move this? Part
of it, I think, has to be getting the more
marginalized people engaged,” Lowe said.
“The coalition of radicals and liberals who
see the ecological crisis isn’t doing it. What
are the forces that can be added to that?”
According to one 2014 report from the
NAACP, African-Americans in 2010 held just
1.1 percent of energy jobs in the U.S. and
gained only 0.01 percent of revenue from
energy sector profits. Meanwhile, 68
percent of African-Americans lived within 30
miles of a coal plant, contributing to higher
rates of asthma and lung disease in their
communities.
By taxing large corporations, funding
racial and economic justice and demanding a
rapid shift to a safe environment, the PJET
coalition satisfies what have become key
demands in an increasingly sophisticated
environmental justice movement - one that’s
far more ethnically diverse and more
inclusive of the communities most affected
by fossil fuel pollution.
“This idea that we just distribute checks
doesn’t really get to the crux of the issue,”
said Mateo Nube, a board member of the
Oakland, Calif.-based Movement Generation
Justice and Ecology Project.
“An economy that is based on extracting
from a finite system faster than the capacity
of the system to regenerate will eventually
come to an end, either through a collapse or
an intentional reorganization. What folks are
trying to communicate is that transition is
inevitable at this point but justice is not. So
it’s upon us to make it a just transition,”
Nube said.
According to the Labor Network for
Sustainability, the concept of a just
transition was put forward as a way to
protect workers from losing employment as
fossil fuels are replaced by renewable
energy. Labor historian Jeremy Brecher
suggested the creation of a “superfund for
workers” that could adapt government safety
nets to specific sectors like coal mining. In
2015, that understanding became the basis
for legislation cosponsored by U.S. Sens.
Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.) called the Clean Energy Worker Just
Transition Act.
But the concept of a just transition has
become broader. As it’s been adopted by
environmental justice organizations, it has
also become a rallying cry for the vast social
and political changes that will be necessary
to decommission fossil fuel energy and the
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C E N T R A L C IT Y
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systems supporting it. Such a transition will
have to be “anchored around a redistribution
of resources and power,” Nube said.
“I’d say what defines just-transition work
by front-line communities is folks who are
combining both visionary and oppositional
efforts towards fully transforming economies
where they live, towards rooting it in
democratic governance, and a governance
that is truly living in right relationship with
the place where folks live,” he said.
Nube said the kind of just-transition law
being proposed in Portland - one focused on
the social dynamics of empowerment and
not only safety nets - has probably never
been proposed as a law before.
If implemented, he said, it could help
communities across the U.S. catalyze a shift
toward climate policies that address both
power and inequality.
In Washington state, another new
coalition called the Alliance for Jobs and
Clean Energy is working on a similar
statewide initiative that it says will tax major
polluters and raise about $1 billion a year
for reinvestment in community projects. A
separate Oregon bill introduced in this
year’s legislative session called for the
creation of a statewide Just Transition Fund
created through a carbon cap-and-trade
system. State legislators who are supportive
of the bill say they hope to pass it next year
- but those prospects are uncertain.
“I’ve been around long enough that I
know waiting for the Legislature is never a
good reason to not do a good thing,”
Hardesty said.
“T he NAACP believes th a t climate change
is one of the biggest racial justice issues of
our time, and we can’t wait for the next four
years or eight years for new leadership to
come in. We’ve got to start putting these
pieces in place now,” she said.
“I’m absolutely giddy to be able to say:
You know what, people of color are going to
raise somewhere between $31 (million) and
$51 million annually, and we’re going to
invest it in the people that have not been
invested in, in our community,” she said.
“And that means houseless people. That
means ex-felons. That means people of
color. Here’s a great opportunity for
Portland to lead again.”
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