December 18, 2007
(first in a series)
Like an oil tanker hurtling toward a shoal, the world, the U.S., and the labor movement are being forced to make a radical change of course by the emerging threat of global warming. The recent UN conference on climate change, held in Bali last December, showed representatives of the whole world grappling with how to limit the man-made greenhouse gasses that are threatening our biosphere. The conference ended with the U.S. government, under enormous worldwide pressure, reversing its threat to turn its back on the UN process. And it revealed what may become a sea change in the attitude of U.S. labor.
Ninety union delegates, more than 20 from North America, participated in the Bali conference. Blogging from Bali, Abraham Breehey of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers caught the epochal character of the climate change challenge and the centrality of workers to it.
For the past century, our craft has been involved in constructing infrastructure we now know has contributed substantially to the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change. For the next century, our craft will be essential to deploying the new technology now available to reduce the carbon emissions associated with energy generation and industrial processes.
The evolution of labor’s take on global warming was articulated in a series of posts from Bali by Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, chair of the AFL-CIO’s energy task force, and the labor federation’s point person on global warming issues.
Baugh notes that the debate over climate change began in the 1980s. The first international political response came in 1992 with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], signed by 192 countries including the U.S. In the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, 172 countries agreed to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gasses by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Labor unions from Europe, Canada, and elsewhere supported the Kyoto Protocol, but the AFL-CIO opposed it and the U.S. government refused to sign.
Unions from much of the world, represented by the International Trade Union Confederation [ITUC], which represents 168 million working men and women in 153 countries, participated actively in their countries’ efforts to cut greenhouse gasses in accord with the Kyoto Protocol, and to ensure that protection of employment and workers rights were included in that process. A few U.S. unions, for example the Steelworkers, supported the Kyoto Protocol and efforts to cut greenhouses gasses in the U.S. – and argued that doing so could create new jobs. But the AFL-CIO reaffirmed its opposition to Kyoto and rarely if ever acknowledged that global climate change was even a significant threat.
Fortunately, all that has begun to change. At the end of 2006, the AFL-CIO formed a new Energy Task Force and began to engage with the issue in new ways. Its 2007 report, Jobs and Energy for the 21st Century, acknowledged that “Human use of fossil fuels is undisputedly contributing to global warming, causing rising sea levels, changes in climate patterns and threats to coastal regions.” Bali was the first time a U.S. labor delegation attended the UNFCCC meetings. The AFL-CIO serves as a convener of a March 13-14 “National Green Jobs Conference” organized by the Blue-Green Alliance, a collaboration of the Steelworkers and the Sierra Club.
According to Baugh, “Over the past year, the AFL-CIO’s position on climate change has moved much closer to the ongoing efforts of the International Trade Union Confederation.”
This movement, however, has yet to be fully realized at a policy level. As Baugh notes, “The ITUC has called for aggressive targets for cutting carbon emissions . . . the AFL-CIO has concerns about the level and timing of some of the specific ITUC recommendations with respect to emissions targets.”
This disagreement, unfortunately, is not trivial. The ITUC has strongly backed the greenhouse gas reduction targets established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose scientists recently received the Nobel Peace Prize. In a statement prepared for the Bali conference, the ITUC urged governments “to follow the IPCC scenario for keeping the global temperature within 2 degrees C and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85% by 2050.” It further urged developing countries to use as a benchmark the EU’s commitment to a 30% cut below 1990 levels by 2020.
The AFL-CIO, in contrast, has been actively lobbying against such limits on greenhouse gasses. For example, in a letter to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works last November 5, the AFL-CIO condemned the “overly aggressive Phase 1 emissions reduction target” in the proposed Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. That target was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The letter also condemned the legislation’s commitment to a 70 percent national emission reduction below 2005 levels by 2050.
Beyond the “conventional economic wisdom”
The AFL-CIO’s approach was largely based on the conventional economic wisdom that cheap, abundant energy is essential for national economic well-being. Jobs and Energy for the 21st Century called for an approach to climate change that assures “diverse, abundant, affordable energy supplies, creates good paying jobs for American workers, improves the environment and reduces our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.” Its letter on the Lieberman-Warner bill stated its concern was “preserving robust growth.”
But reflecting on discussions in Bali, Bob Baugh, who chairs the AFL-CIO’s energy task force, wrote,
Another important element of the climate change discussion is one that challenges conventional economic wisdom. For the past 100 years, the traditional economic models suggest that increased energy production and consumption and the resulting increase in greenhouse gas emissions are tied to prosperity. At the ITUC side event, the environmental minister from Spain challenged this concept head on. He said, ‘To change we must decouple greenhouse gas growth from the idea of prosperity and competitiveness.’ Spain has been doing just that. Last year, Spain’s economy grew while greenhouse gas emissions declined by 4 percent.
This questioning of conventional economic wisdom can open the way for a rethink of labor’s policy on energy and global warming. It points toward a U.S. economic strategy that “creates good paying jobs for American workers” not by burning still more fossil fuels, but by a massive investment of resources and labor to convert to a low-carbon economy.
The spirit of the labor movement
If American unions have sometimes provided stumbling blocks to addressing climate change, the labor movement now has a crucial role to play not only in advocating for better policies, but for inspiring Americans in all walks of life to join the fight against global warming. As assistant legislative director of the Steelworkers Roxanne D. Brown blogged from Bali,
It is the spirit of the labor movement to educate, agitate and organize. We have done this in the fight for good jobs, safe workplaces and retirement security. It is now necessary that we apply that spirit to a fight that is already affecting working people and their families around the world. By lending our voices and action in efforts to address deforestation, mitigation, the ‘greening’ of workplaces and minimizing the adverse effect (trade, environmental, social, etc.) of climate change, we can ensure that our world is a better one for generations to come.”
At the close of this conference, all the unions represented here are charged with bringing the information we have learned back to our various countries and unions. For real and effective action to occur on this issue, it is critical that ongoing conversations occur from our local unions to our communities. Step 1 is to educate ourselves, our communities and each other on climate change. Step 2 is to agitate and get each other fully engaged on this issue. Step 3 is to organize ourselves around fighting it.”
Not surprisingly, as a debate on climate change policy has emerged, many groups have approached it from the point of view of their established frameworks and objectives. Business has seen climate policy as a threat of new regulation or an opportunity for new markets. Advocates for the third world have seen it as an additional way for rich countries to further impede the development of poor countries. Labor has seen it as a threat to existing jobs or a potential source of new ones.
But social justice advocates, and labor in particular, cannot limit themselves to criticizing the weaknesses of other groups’ policy proposals or protecting their short-term interests by blocking such proposals. After all, workers, poor people, and residents of the third world are people too. They are already suffering the devastating effects of climate change, and their very survival will be threatened if it is not successfully addressed. Their organizations and representatives need to fight not just for their sectoral interests, but for the conditions that are necessary for their survival.
The ITUC’s statement to the Bali conference struck just such a note, one that is common among trade unionists around the world, and that surely must be echoed in the hearts of many in the U.S. but which has so far rarely been heard in labor’s public discourse on global warming:
“History will judge us by how we exercise the conscious options that we still have within our reach. Will we truly face up to this monumental challenge? Trade unions want everyone to accept this challenge together, in solidarity and common action.”
“As trade unionists, we are confident that Bali will mark the beginning of a new and more ambitious process of social change, where our collective hearts and minds must aspire to save our planet, on the basis of solidarity and mutual respect.”
Perhaps that note will be coming soon to a labor movement near and dear to us. Bob Baugh concluded his “Wrap Up of Bali”:
“All of us return home with the recognition that there is a long and winding road ahead filled with challenges and opportunities. The good news is we are not alone. Bali has given us a road map. Now it’s our job to save the planet.”
Is the American labor movement ready to take on its share of that job?