Trumka: Young Activists Moving Nation to ‘Jobs, Clean Green Future’
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Because of the activism by young people like the 10,000 environmental Power Shift activists who traveled to Washington, D.C., to the tell Congress it’s time to force the corporate polluters to pay up and clean up, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:
We’re moving past the same-old tired debates and toward jobs and a clean, green future.
The activists were in the nation’s capital for a four–day clean energy conference and mobilization training, organized by the Energy Action Coalition. They capped off their conference this morning with rally in Lafayette Park with the White House on one side and the national headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the voice for some the nation’s biggest corporate polluters—on the other. Said Sherri Masterson from Miami (Ohio) University:
We want President Obama to do more to hold these big corporations, like BP, accountable for screwing up the environment and make them pay to clean up their pollution.
Report: China’s Lax Environmental Laws Cost Jobs and Lives
The long list of China’s unfair trade advantages and human rights violations already includes currency manipulation, failure to enforce workers’ rights and a general disrespect for human rights. Now, add global pollution to the list. A new report reveals that China is among the world’s leading polluters and putting the brakes on global warming can not be achieved unless the administration and Congress hold China accountable for its reckless environmental practices.
The report, An Assessment of Environmental Regulation of the Steel Industry in China, was released today by the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), a nonpartisan, nonprofit partnership of several leading U.S. manufacturers and the United Steelworkers (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.
