Foreword: For the second consecutive year, SEIU is participating in the Labor Delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, taking place this week in Posnan, Poland. Marrianne McMullen, SEIU's representative to U.S. Labor Delegation, blogs about their work and her experiences (below).
Thursday, December 11, 2008
By now, the labor delegates staying together at the remote hotel had settled into a routine. It was 8 a.m. so we were gathering for the odd but ample complimentary breakfast buffet. We were fewer today, moving into the last two days of the negotiations. By 8:25 we were hustling out the door to catch the 8:30 U.N. bus to the conference site - an enormous complex of buildings connected by tent-like, heated hallways.
If today is like all other days, we will be in meetings, observing negotiations, and attending panel discussions until about 8 p.m. We'll then go into the downtown for a late dinner, and get back to our hotels between 11 pm and midnight. It's a schedule that is as unsustainable as fossil fuels.
Green Recovery
The Blue Green Alliance press conference is the highest priority for a few of us this morning. This unique group formed initially by the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club has recently grown to include the National Resources Defense Council, the Communications Workers of America and SEIU.
Together, the Alliance represents more than 6 million people, and its goal is nothing less than to transform the U.S. economy through global warming solutions.
This expansion of the Blue Green Alliance was announced at the press conference, and details of this unique grouping of unlikely U.S. allies were discussed with the international press. Joining the member groups was Kit Batten of the Center for American Progress, one of the authors of "Green Recovery: A program to create good jobs and start building a low-carbon economy."
"If we invest $100 billion into six green strategies, we project it will create 2 million jobs," said Batten. The six strategies she described were retrofitting buildings, building a "smart" power grid, expanding mass transit, and investment in the renewable energy sources of wind, solar and advanced biofuels.
She and others on the panel described a growing level of political support for a "green recovery." Stimulating demand for wind turbines, other renewable energy equipment, and materials for retrofitting could be the fastest way to revitalize U.S. steel, manufacturing and construction industries. [Full PDF of report here].
A national strategy
Bob Baugh of the AFL-CIO said at several meetings that the United States has been "a country without a clue; a country without a strategy. And we are in need of one."
Similar observations echoed through other discussions. At one side event on jobs in alternative energy, Kaveh Zahedi, of the United Nations Environment Program, said some existing government strategy is bad for both the environment and jobs.
"Governments throughout the world currently give $300 billion per year in government subsidies toward carbon-based fuels," he said. (And that number doesn't include what they spend to protect and defend those fossil fuels.) "If those subsidies were switched to renewable resources, there would be an explosion of jobs," said Zahedi.
"Five hundred million people will join the workforce in the next 10 years," he added. "They shouldn't be doing work that threatens their future and the planet's future."
Future is now
For some working people, the climate-compromised future is now. Angela Lomosi of Nigeria was one of the labor delegates from Africa. She said that climate change is already affecting what land farmers can cultivate on her continent.
"We already have displacement due to climate change," she told the labor delegates at their daily meeting. "With the rains and flooding, farmers can't farm and they are moving their families. And the price of food is soaring. Corn--a staple of our diet-- is now $2 a package, and that's for people who make $1 a day."
It has become clear to those attending the conference that the urgency for effective action on climate change is not reflected in progress at these U.N. negotiations. Before these talks, Poznan was seen as a crucial stepping stone to next year's negotiations in Copenhagen, where the Kyoto protocols will be replaced. Now it's seen as having been more of a rest stop.
But at the very least, we have made progress on our goal as a labor delegation: to make sure the concerns of working people are addressed as part of the final negotiations.
Phillip Pearson of the ITUC referred to the comprehensive "Assembly Document #2008-16" and said, "when you get home, download this document and do a word search for ITUC and labor, and you'll find that we've made major progress in the state of play of this segment of civil society in these negotiations."
U.S. union commitment
And the U.S. delegation has clarified its collective commitment: From the Steelworkers' commitment to clean energy-related manufacturing; to the transportation workers' advocacy for major expansion in public transit; to the farmworkers attention to agriculture and migration impacts; to public employee unions' commitment to public monitoring and accountability for emissions; to SEIU's commitment to green building maintenance and protection of public health.
Each union's potential contribution to addressing climate change added up to a collectively powerful role that labor has to play in this movement. If we needed one more reason why working people, and the planet, need a strong labor movement, we saw it in Pozna.
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