Climate Point: Bringing labor into green movement

Welcome to a special Labor Day edition of Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and environment news from around the Golden State and the country. In Palm Springs, Calif., I’m Mark Olalde.

August is officially in the books — the record books, that is — and much of the West just had its hottest August since we began tracking such things. That includes large swathes of Southern California, where The Desert Sun's Colin Atagi reports the Coachella Valley, as of Tuesday, already experienced 55 days of 110 degrees or hotter this year, blasting past the previous record. To the east, Phoenix recently hit number 50 such days, The Arizona Republic reports.

At this point, consequences of climate change are already present and understood, but the push to take aggressive action to mitigate emissions still faces vehement opposition, especially from conservative. Could a green-labor partnership be the key to getting everyone on the same team?

In honor of Labor Day, let's dig in....

LABOR RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

Addressing climate change requires the buy-in of a seemingly unrelated segment: labor. It's a convenient argument for those opposed to environmental action to say conservation kills jobs. That puts the onus on the green movement to expose that talking point as a straw man, something they've historically failed to do.

But there are two words that are now at the heart of environmentalism: Just Transition. It's an idea that advocates say holds the potential to radically expand the movement's coalition by pairing workers' rights with the right to a clean environment.

To learn more, I spoke with coalfield organizers familiar with the economic and environmental devastation left by this dying industry. From Wise County in Virginia, I called up Adam Wells, regional director of community and economic development for Appalachian Voices. In northeast Wyoming, I spoke with Shannon Anderson, staff attorney with the Powder River Basin Resource Council. These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Climate Point: Can you define this idea of a Just Transition?

Wells: The people and the communities that gave the most in the last economy — in the fossil fuel based economy in the 20th century — should be among the first to benefit from the new economy that's emerging the 21st century, the low-carbon economy...That won't happen on its own. If we just leave capitalism to itself, by and large most of those communities and people will be left behind.

CP: We've heard stories of, say, retraining coal miners to become computer programmers, which has only worked in small numbers. What are some of the problems with these ideas?

Wells: If you try to say — "Well, that worked for a handful of people in one community, clearly this is the answer. We're going to train all the miners to become coders and solar installers." — that's just tone deaf entirely because that ignores the culture of coal mining, which is very proud... . A lot of miners are old and sick, and so if I had to say one thing that miners were going to do, it's retire... . Providing for those workers that gave the most matters, but I think the biggest challenge is still about how do we keep our young people in Appalachia and give them meaningful employment that lets them build wealth and sustain a family.

CP: In the Powder River Basin, what does the future look like for coal?

Anderson: Wyoming still produces by far the most coal in the country, even today we produce about 40% of the nation's coal... . There was a downturn prior to the coronavirus, and that has just escalated and really pushed things over an edge... . The layoffs will continue, coal production will continue to decline and it will happen very rapidly, I fear, in the coming years.

CP: Is it possible to build a new economy in Wyoming while there is still a coal industry?

Anderson: It's a question of when, not if, the coal industry will evaporate. There will be a day when the mines stop running... . Now is really the time — while we're still producing some coal, while we still have an economy and jobs and revenue based on that industry — that we need to start planning for the transition. But the missing piece is really political will.

CP: If we talk labor in Central Appalachia, we talk about a strong union movement that made gains for workers. Does that play into the transition?

Wells: One of the essential things is health benefits for impacted workers. In this case, it's black lung, so that's got to be a part of any transition bill. The nation made a promise to coal miners in the '40s that their expenses would be covered, and that's a promise that needs to be kept forever.

CP: What's the importance of having labor in the fold in terms of the green movement?

Wells: We have to stop climate change. It is the most urgent and important thing that our generation can do... . What having labor in the conversation, having impacted communities in the conversation, gives the movement is the human element to reach a broader section of the country... . Let's say we do succeed at getting to a completely decarbonized energy system, what's going to be left? Having workers and having impacted communities at the table — and often those are very similar perspective — it makes sure the work that we're doing is going to be sustainable in a human sense so that we actually want to live in the places that we saved.

CP: Has there always been a hesitancy around change, or how have these ideas of community development evolved in the history of the green movement?

Anderson: One of the greatest challenges right now is fear of the unknown. It's this idea of the community that's been a certain way for a very long time, and then you see some external force in D.C., some unelected bureaucrat at the EPA or some senator from some coastal state telling us we're going to have to do things differently....We have climate targets that we have to meet, otherwise we're going to have a catastrophe....But there needs to be a recognition that if we do that, things are going to have to change in communities, particularly in communities dependent on the coal industry, and that those policies are going to be viewed with fear and trepidation and opposition unless you engage those communities in a very different way.

Now, here's some other important reporting....

MUST-READ STORIES

Would you like some plastic with that? Environmental Health News reports that hundreds of thousands of tons of microplastics — tiny pieces of plastic that are shed from a myriad of man-made products and can contaminate the environment with toxic chemicals — fall on agricultural land every year. New research is beginning to show just how dangerous this trend is, as it can send carcinogens like cadmium into plants. Such evidence apparently isn't convincing enough for lawmakers to act, though. Rachel Becker of CalMatters writes that the California Legislature, deluged by expensive lobbying efforts from the plastics and packaging industries, rejected what would've been the nation's toughest stance on single-use plastics. 

Blue let green fall flat. But that wasn't the only environment bill to die in California this year. Pre-pandemic — in the Before Times — there were high hopes that the Golden State's legislative body would tackle issues ranging from oil well setbacks to conservation goals. For The Desert Sun, I published a list of winners and losers this legislative session. But here's an intriguing question, could everything passed on the last day of session go up in smoke? It's not just a conspiracy theory. AP has the details.

Safeguarding the Silver State. The Reno Gazette Journal reports that the debate over creating Nevada's fourth national monument is underway. A coalition of Native American tribes and conservation groups are asking that 380,000 acres east of the Mojave Desert be set aside in what they'd call the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

Paradise burned. Mongabay is out with a new story that finds 516 major fires, mostly set illegally, burned 1,450 square miles of the Amazon between late May and late August. "Government agencies and law enforcement that once operated in the Amazon have been largely defunded under the (Bolsonaro) administration," according to the investigation.

Just sue, baby, sue. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced recently that he was filing California's hundredth lawsuit against the Trump administration. The milestone litigation is aimed at taking down a Trump administration rewrite of National Environmental Policy Act rules. I've got the story for The Desert Sun.

The transition. While we search for those all-important post-extraction jobs, cleaning up the mess left behind by heavy industries like mining presents a much-needed landing strip. The Casper Star Tribune reports that Wyoming officials predict the state "will complete 96 (mine cleanup) projects and generate $201 million for local economies by the end of 2020."

CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE

Fanning the flames. An interesting new feature from The Arizona Republic takes us behind the scenes with researchers studying wildfires and analyzing the connection between the blazes and climate change. From lightning strikes to decreased moisture levels, nuanced variables are fueling catastrophic burns.

The great smoke screen. As climate change deniers have been forced to backpedal in the face of overwhelming evidence, they've latched onto an idea: instead of quitting fossil fuels, why not just capture the climate-warming carbon dioxide. The already flawed idea — If the technology worked, why not quit fossil fuels AND capture historical greenhouse gases? — has taken up valuable space in the discussion surrounding solutions. Judith Lewis Mernit appears tired of hearing about it and, for Capital & Main, dug into the sketchy math surrounding carbon capture and sequestration.

Vicious cycle. Reuters reports that as ice melts in the Arctic, more ships can pass through, bringing record levels of pollution. "As those heavy ships burn fuel, they release climate-warming carbon dioxide as well as black soot. That soot blankets nearby ice and snow, absorbing solar radiation rather than reflecting it back out of the atmosphere, which exacerbates warming in the region," researchers have found.

AND ANOTHER THING

Sweet phone, bro. The men President Donald Trump has tapped to lead the U.S Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of the Interior — the country's main environmental regulator and land manager, respectively — have been plagued by scandals and allegations of corruption since Day 1. Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was ridiculed within the Beltway early in the administration when he ordered a $43,000 secure phone booth be constructed at EPA HQ for his use. E&E finally pried free a photo of the infamous cubicle via a public records request, and it quickly became a symbol of the disarray that has set in at the agency.

Scientists agree that to maintain a livable planet, we need to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration back to 350 ppm. We’re above that and rising dangerously. Here are the latest numbers:

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to follow along on Twitter at @MarkOlalde. You can also reach me at molalde@gannett.com. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here. And, if you’d like to receive a daily round-up of California news (also for free!), you can sign up for USA Today’s In California newsletter here. Cheers.