climate change

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 5, 2023

Food sovereignty is the grassroots demand for a rights-based re-organization of the food system, grounded in gender equality, agroecology, and solidarity. La Via Campesina first proposed the concept of food sovereignty in 1996, and over the last several decades, this transnational movement has been working tirelessly to deepen critical analyses of the obstacles and opportunities towards building food sovereignty.

On Monday, December 4th, the second day of the 8th International Conference of La Vía Campesina, two sessions were devoted to expanding conceptions of food sovereignty. Drawing upon the perspectives of grassroots activists from across the globe, movement leaders drew attention to the impact of transnational financial mechanisms, international institutions, and multinational corporations in creating and perpetuating a structurally inequitable food system. With clarity about the struggles of the global food system, activists shared experiences and strategies of grassroots activism, providing context for one of LVC’s slogans, which is being strongly emphasized throughout the Conference: “Globalize the struggle, globalize hope.”

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 5, 2023

La Via Campesina’s 8th International Conference, held in Bogotá, Colombia, after a six-year break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was filled with excitement even before it opened. The conference opened on the 3rd of December, but before that, the Youth Assembly was held on the 1st of December, and the Women’s Assembly, Men Against Patriarchy meeting, and Gender Diversities meeting were held on the 2nd of December. The Men Against Patriarchy meeting and Gender Diversity meeting were held for the first time at La Via Campesina at an international conference and were a great example of how important diversity, equality, and solidarity are to the global peasant movement.

The 5th Youth Assembly, which took place on the first day, was organized under the slogans “Unity in Diversity, Young Peasants Change the World”.

First of all, Pramesh Pokharel from Nepal said, “There are a lot of social movements around the world, but I don’t think there’s one that’s as diversity-oriented as La Via Campesina. We’re here today to talk about the challenges that young people in agriculture and young peasants face in rural communities, and how young people are not able to own land. In particular, at the 5th Assembly, we will be electing youth delegates from each region to strengthen youth leadership. We will also collectively address how to design the agenda.”

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 4, 2023

On the afternoon of Sunday, December 3^rd, La Via Campesina representatives from every continent and Palestine offered critical analyses of their regional contexts, drawing connections between the climate crisis, migration, and political instability. This is a critical component of building and advancing a global movement for food sovereignty to foster critical consciousness of disparate geographic realities, struggles and victories.

César Villanova, a LVC representative from El Salvador, shared that Latin America is one of the final critical battlegrounds in the struggle against neoimperialism. A war is being fought over the blood—that is the resources—of Latin America, and that war is not simply symbolic but very real, and felt in territories from Mexico and El Salvador, through Colombia, and to the south in Chile.

Building upon Villanova’s discussion of territorial conflict, Albert Bahana Manzambi (COPACO, Democratic Republic of Congo), next offered insights into the African experience, emphasizing that a number of multinational corporations are pushing to destabilize Africa. “We see the lack of security increasing,” Bahana Manzambi suggested, “taking the form of increasing coup d’états and contestation governments.” Importantly, this lack of security is deeply rooted in questions of food sovereignty, and its interconnections with the political context. Bahana Manzambi drove home the point that “there is no security, and no one is protecting peasants”. The question of political instability is driving an increasingly grave migration crisis. “People are fleeing to Europe, and are trying desperately to get there in whatever way possible, and are dying on the way, and when they die, whole families are lost, children, partners; everyone is losing.”

By Joshua Basofin - Climate Solutions, December 1, 2023

Offshore Wind Could Help Oregon and Our Region Meet Clean Energy Targets - If We Do it Right.

The Oregon Coast is known for its dramatic cliffs, rock formations, and scenic views. But did you know the south coast of Oregon has another unique distinction? It has some of the strongest offshore winds in the country. There is a possibility of harnessing those winds by building floating wind turbines in the ocean (some of them as tall as the Empire State Building to maximize energy generation per turbine). Offshore wind from the Oregon Coast could provide up to 3 gigawatts of renewable electricity to the grid. That’s enough to power at least one million homes (we currently have 1.5 million households in Oregon)! While Climate Solutions believes offshore wind power is an exciting prospect on the horizon for Oregon, we want to make sure it’s developed in a way that values and respects Oregon’s communities and marine environment. If we are thoughtful about offshore wind, everyone in the state will benefit. Oregon will have a more reliable and cleaner electricity grid and significant economic development on the coast.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, December 2023

In October this year, California Labor for Climate Jobs (CLCJ) launched as a new, state-wide coalition of fourteen California labor unions with express intent to promote a worker-led transition to a just and climate-safe economy. As a coalition of unions, CLCJ is uniquely pro-worker and pro-climate, and represents teachers, oil workers, utility workers, domestic workers, healthcare workers, city, county and state employees, farmworkers, janitors, autoworkers and more. CLCJ unions include a broad array of workers who are experiencing the impact of climate change. 

“As a home childcare provider in Fairfield, I have worked through power outages, extreme heat, and hazardous smoke that endangered me and the kids I care for,” said Allison Davis, a member of United Domestic Workers. “We are calling for strong smoke and heat standards, disaster insurance and rights for workers in disaster zones so that these conditions don’t become the new normal for workers.”

Climate also impacts airport workers, for example, who clean airplane cabins between flights, toiling in tight spaces with no air conditioning, which increases their vulnerability to illness and death in extreme heat. And at the same time, oil workers face job loss as climate policies move to phase out the fossil fuel sector and shift to renewable energy. With 2023 as the hottest summer on record, the region’s first-ever National Weather Service tropical storm watch, and billions of dollars lost annually to floods and wildfires, more action is needed in Sacramento to reach the state’s climate goals and protect workers.

 This fall, CLCJ released the California Worker Climate Bill of Rights, calling on legislators to enact policy solutions that will protect workers from climate hazards such as extreme heat, fires, smoke and floods that have endangered the livelihood and health of a broad cross section of California workers. Members in the coalition have pledged to stand in solidarity with each other as they fight for a worker-led transition to be able to make a living on a healthy, living planet. 

LA Times Coverage by Sammy Roth: https://calaborforclimatejobs.org/boiling-point-can-climate-activists-and-labor-unions-find-common-ground/ 

For more on California Labor for Climate Jobs: https://calaborforclimatejobs.org/

For the California Worker Climate Bill of Rights: California Worker Climate Bill of Rights

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, November 30, 2023

At a November Department of Energy panel on “Community Voices from the Ground” grassroots environmental justice advocates asked the Department to stop promoting large-scale polluting project in marginalized communities of color. John Beard, founder and director of the Port Arthur Community Action Network, said,

“DOE says it is committed to promoting environmental justice in all its activities. And yet, the agency continues to grant export authorizations to methane gas export terminals and explosive carbon bombs in low-income communities and communities of color.” 

 The environmental justice advocates asked DOE to stop investing in hydrogen hubs, carbon capture and sequestration technologies at refineries and utilities, and direct air carbon capture technology aimed at sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere, calling them all “dangerous distractions.” Beard said producing hydrogen requires large amounts of energy that will “worsen the effects of climate change while allowing big oil and gas to reap more profits while our children get sick, our air is polluted, and our safety is compromised.” 

 Simultaneously, at the White House Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said on a conference call with community groups and reporters that nearly 470 federal programs with billions of dollars in annual investment were being “reimagined and transformed to meet the Justice40 goal and maximize benefits to disadvantaged communities.”

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, November 30, 2023

By Union Jake, Steve Early, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, November 30, 2023

By Alan Thornett - Ecosocialist Discussion, November 29, 2023

COP28 (along with planet Earth itself) is faced with “an absolutely gobsmackingly bananas increase in the global temperature”

COP28 – the annual UN global summit on global warming – is taking place from November 30^th until December 12 – under the auspices of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that was launched in 1992 to protect the planet against “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”, which now takes place annually. It is the 28^th UN climate change summit since 1992, and will take place in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

COP28, along with other recent such summits faces a deadly, and indeed existential, contradiction between the relentless acceleration of global warming ­ i.e. of the average global surface temperature of the planet – and the inability of the COP process to bring it under control, or even hold it to a maximum increase of 1.5°C in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.

It became clear in August that 2023 would be of a different order of magnitude in terms of temperature when July turned out to be the world’s hottest month ever recorded.

The UN Secretary General António Guterres – the most radicle the UN has had on climate change – responded rightly by declaring that this meant that “the era of global warming had ended, and the era of global boiling has arrived”. It meant, he said, that: “Climate change is here, it is terrifying, and it is just the beginning. It is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C (above pre-industrial levels), and avoid the very worst of climate change, he said, but only with dramatic, immediate climate action.”

The September figure, however, was a whole lot worse. It was a staggering 0.5°C above the previous such record. The Guardian’s environmental editor Damian Carrington quoted climate scientist Zeke Hausfather who had tweeted that: “This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. It beat the prior monthly temperature record by over 0.5°C, and was around 1.8°C warmer than preindustrial levels.” He noted that datasets from European and Japanese scientists confirmed the leap.

It’s worth noting that the difference in the average global temperature between now and the depths of the last ice age when these islands were under a kilometre of ice is around 5.0°C.

In mid-November Guterres went further warning that. “Present trends are racing our planet down a dead-end 3C temperature rise. This is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the vulnerable, and a massive missed opportunity. Renewables have never been cheaper or more accessible. We know it is still possible to make the 1.5 degree limit a reality. It requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.”

He added: “Leaders must drastically up their game, now, with record ambition, record action, and record emissions reductions. No more greenwashing. No more foot-dragging.”

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation, November 27, 2023

Beginning 30 November until 12 December, the COP28 will take place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The key ITUC priority for working people at the conference, available here, is the adoption of a Just Transition Work Programme that ensures labour issues are central to climate policy discussions by:

• Upholding human and labour rights while fostering inclusive participation in climate policy formulation.
• Enhancing mitigation ambitions to create quality jobs, backed by just transition measures.
• Delivering on adaptation needs through robust social protection plans and funding mechanisms.
• Providing the finance for the Loss and Damage facility and for investment in just transition.

ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle emphasised the urgency of the situation: “This year’s extreme weather events have caused widespread disruption, impacting workers globally. It is imperative that COP28 delivers on its promises. We need climate policies that put people and labour rights at the forefront to ensure a transition that is both equitable and effective.

“It is global economic failures that have amplified the disproportionate effects of climate change on working people, including extreme working conditions, threats to livelihoods and forced migration due to environmental disruption.

“That is why we demand a New Social Contract to create a fairer global economy, that focuses on the interests of working people to begin to tackle fundamental inequalities.”