Green Pathways Out of Poverty
From The Nation magazine: “Labor’s War on Global Warming” by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello & Brendan Smith:
“Figuring out how to respond to global warming has been difficult for organized labor. The issue can pit union against union and unions against environmentalists. Now, however, a new alliance is developing around the idea of “green jobs”–the jobs that will be needed to rebuild our economy and drastically reduced greenhouse gasses.
Seemingly from nowhere, “green jobs” have emerged as a key issue in the presidential election. Barack Obama calls for a $150 billion investment in green-collar jobs. Hillary Clinton refers to renewable energy employment as “jobs of the future” that can create five million jobs. Even John McCain calls for research and development of green technology, calling it the “path to restore the strength of America’s economy.”
The stealth “green jobs” issue did not emerge from nowhere. Its prominence in the presidential debates results in good measure from the commitment of some, though by no means all, environmental and labor leaders to building an alliance for jobs that fight global warming.”
Green Jobs. Green Pathways Out of Poverty. Green Collar Jobs. A movement for a Green Economy. A Green Revolution. These terms are all starting to enter the corporate media - a very good sign. I can’t thing of anything more important or inspiring than what amounts to the growing foundations of a national anti-poverty movement.
How can this be pushed even further? Well, simple. What would a Clean, Green, and Democratically-Planned Economy look like? That’s the next series of questions progressives should bring to the movement debate. Americans will always love democracy and the democratic tradition. Using democratic language, and language of equality, liberty, human dignity, control of your own life, and justice will allow us to bring fundamentally transformational politics to the national scene. The sooner we begin the better.
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Progressive activists generally should note that the general goals stated by the mainstream not only of liberals but of many radicals as well on the GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emission issue is grossly insufficient. Everybody is arguing over the small number of highly visible folk denying global warming, but the notion that 80% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050 is a formula for DISASTER, as it is MUCH TOO WEAK. Only authentic progressive activists are likely in sufficient numbers to point out in any visible way at this point that we not only already have Norway (net Carbon neutrality goal set for 2030) but three other nations who have signed on to a qualitatively more aggressive goal than that.
More essential is that LEADING CLIMATOLOGIST Jim Hansen has recently called for the need for NET NEGATIVE GHG emissions, and ASAP, as the world has ALREADY reached the tipping point for the melting of the arctic ice cap in summer:
SEE:
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/20133/42
Thus the top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen says that the “tipping point” for the melting of Arctic ice has already been reached at 385 ppm atmospheric CO2 and it is apparent that the present atmospheric CO2 is sufficient to completely remove summer-time Arctic sea ice (some scientists say this may be completely gone by 2013). However most alarming is the potential instability of large ice sheets, especially those of West Antarctica and Greenland.
… as demanded by Dr James Hansen, we need not “CO2 emissions reduction targets” or “zero CO2 emissions” but NEGATIVE CO2 EMISSIONS to return the Planet to a safe, sustainable 300-350 ppm CO2.
At this Melbourne Climate Convergence meeting various activist groups decided to form a Climate Emergency Coalition to urgently spread the message and to lobby for a Declaration of a State of Emergency in Australia and the World to meet the Sustainability Emergency. As Dr Hansen has said (see above), we urgently need a lowering of atmospheric CO2 to about 300-350 ppm and a major step nowmust be an immediate moratorium on coal power - we must keep fossil fuels in the ground to save Humanity and the Biosphere.
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