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Blue Green Alliance Reaches Historic Agreement on Climate Legislation |
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The Blue Green Alliance, a partnership of four unions and two environmental organizations, today announced support for comprehensive climate change legislation. The legislation is an effective way to rapidly put millions of Americans back to work building a clean energy economy and to reduce global warming emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
The alliance called for a reduction of U.S. carbon emissions by at least 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 and is supporting a renewed U.S. effort to forge a global treaty to reduce worldwide emissions by 50 percent by that same date. To meet these goals, domestic climate change legislation should reduce U.S. emissions significantly below 2005 levels by 2020, with individual partners advocating targets ranging from 14 percent to 25 percent.
The significance of this agreement cannot be overstated, David Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance, said in a telephone press conference, saying this is the first time that a coalition of labor and environmental movements have endorsed a common legislative vision for the future. You can read the policy statement here.
During the press call, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard called the agreement historic and said:
We believe that climate change legislation is a critical step to jump-starting the U.S. economy. And we agree that the U.S. must significantly reduce our emissions, something we can accomplish by retaining and creating millions of family-sustaining green jobs in the clean energy economy.
The agreement is one more sign of the growing consensus around the urgency of action on climate change, said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
For years, people have tried to put a wedge between the labor and environmental movements. [This agreement shows] environmentalists and labor groups are working together, standing side-by-side, and presenting a path forward for strong action on global warming that will repower our economy and protect our planet’s future.
Leaders of the labor-environmental partnership also said climate change legislation must address several critical issues, including job loss from international competition. Gerard made it clear global warming is a worldwide problem and that major polluters like China must be reigned in.
The issue is global warming, not San Francisco warming or New York warming….All countries must be on the same page or we’re going to have companies moving to places like China with weak or no environmental laws.
Just this week, a new report reinforced the impact of China’s pollution on jobs and the environment. “An Assessment of Environmental Regulation of the Steel Industry in China” reveals that China is among the world’s leading polluters and putting the brakes on global warming cannot be achieved unless the Obama administration and Congress hold China accountable for its reckless environmental practices.
The report was released March 23 by the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a nonpartisan, nonprofit partnership of several leading U.S. manufacturers and the USW. The report focuses on China’s rapidly growing steel industry and documents China’s ineffective enforcement of weak pollution-control standards, its failure to use adequate pollution-prevention measures, and the resulting high levels of pollution.
In fact, China’s lax environmental enforcement gives its steel producers an unfair trade advantage that must be addressed in U.S. trade law, the report says. Read the full report here.
In a statement, IUE-CWA President Jim Clark says taming global warming will create new jobs and provide a clean environment.
Meeting the challenge to tackle climate change will allow us to build a clean energy economy right here in the United States—making the parts for wind and solar power and fuel efficient vehicles are just some examples.
The economic and climate crises afford us an opportunity to create good, middle-class green jobs.
To ensure green jobs are quality jobs, the AFL-CIO announced it is creating the Center for Green Jobs. Starting with $1 million from the Working for America Institute, the AFL-CIO’s workforce and economic development arm, the center will partner with affiliated unions to help pave the way for good union jobs in a variety of the country’s unionized and greening industries. The center also will spread the lessons of AFL-CIO affiliates that have successfully joined the green economy, especially in manufacturing.
The Blue Green Alliance plan also calls for legislation that helps fund a clean energy economic development model for developing and emerging economies and fund measures that provide solutions to those immediately impacted by global warming both domestically and internationally.
Here’s Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club:
We share the common goal that climate change legislation is necessary to confront our greatest economic and environmental challenges. Standing together to advocate legislation that aggressively reduces U.S. emissions while creating good jobs is essential to building a broad consensus in this country around a clean energy economy.
The Blue Green Alliance is a national partnership of unions and environmental organizations dedicated to expanding the number and quality of jobs created in a new, green economy. Launched by the USW and the Sierra Club in 2006, it has since grown to include the Communications Workers of America (CWA), NRDC, LIUNA and SEIU.
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