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Meanwhile, floods have wreaked havoc in Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and elsewhere.

And that’s not the worst of it. In Pakistan floods have submerged more than a third of the country and killed at least 1,300 people. In China a heat wave and drought dried up rivers, shut down hydroelectric dams, and blocked passage of cargo ships. In Europe a heat wave sent temperatures in Britain to a record 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Droughts across the continent dried up rivers. Wildfires have burned nearly three times as much land so far this year as the 2006-2021 average.  In South Africa floods and mudslides killed at least 45 people. 

The staff of the Labor Network for Sustainability is experiencing the impacts of climate change directly. LNS’ Youth Organizer Joshua Dedmond, who is also operations director for Cooperation Jackson, an organization that works to democratize the economy and empower the Black community, describes conditions in his home town of Jackson, Mississippi. Disastrous flooding combined with chronic underfunding of the 80% black city’s water system has led to a catastrophic drinking water shortage: "To live in Jackson constantly is to be under the threat of a boil-water alert." His family still has some water pressure; they have had to buy more cases of water and take fewer showers as a result of the shortage. "We have friends personally whose family have not had water for the past week." Joshua and the people of Jackson are suffering the consequences of both a racist political system and of climate change. He says that while the people of Jackson are receiving thousands of plastic water bottles, what they really need is a powerful campaign to rebuild the city’s water system and the rest of its infrastructure.

A dozen years ago, the Labor Network for Sustainability published a report called “Coming Now to a Job Near You – Why Climate Change Matters for California Workers.” It examined the effects climate change was having and would have on various groups of California workers. It showed, for example, that construction workers were likely to lose work as coastal flooding made large parts of the state unbuildable. Healthcare workers would be affected by very substantial increases in climate-related health conditions. Farm workers would be hit by extreme heat and by climate-caused shrinkage in California agriculture. Port and airline workers would lose work from flooding of low-lying ports and airports. And it showed similar harms for tourism and recreation workers, public sector workers, and others. The report was poo-pooed by some people who said climate change was something that would only affect us hundreds of years in the future. Today the effects on workers in California – and throughout the US – are far greater than even we imagined only a decade ago.

In this issue of Making a Living on a Living Planet you will learn about how young workers are assembling in a Young Workers Convergence on Climate. You will see how teachers, parents and community members in Los Angeles are bringing the impact of climate change on schools to the union bargaining table. You will find out how working people in localities around the country can help force the new Inflation Reduction Act to be a vehicle for climate protection, good jobs, and justice. You will learn how states and local communities are already transforming their transportation systems to make them more climate-safe and worker-friendly.

Climate change is here -- but so is the struggle to create jobs and justice by fighting climate change.

The Labor Network for Sustainability is proud to announce the appointment of Larry Williams as its new Executive Director. Larry’s task will be to help LNS realize its mission “to be a relentless force for urgent, science-based climate action by building a powerful labor-climate movement to secure an ecologically sustainable and economically just future where everyone can make a living on a living planet.”

Larry has background working for labor rights and economic justice, environmental justice, climate justice, social justice and more. His life history defines sustainability. He joined the LNS network nearly a decade ago and played a major role in formulating our Labor Convergence on Climate gatherings, and helped us become a more diverse, justice oriented organization.

Commenting on his appointment, LNS’ new Executive Larry Williams said:

It is a deep honor to join the leadership of LNS, the preeminent labor-climate organization, and their Board, Staff and leadership at a time when our mission is at its most critical. I’m ready to get to the work of building a powerful and progressive labor-climate movement ready to define and build a Just Transition from the bottom up.

Dear Friends, Family, & Comrades ~

It is with great pride, and excitement, that I announce the selection of Larry Williams Jr. as the new Executive Director of the Labor Network for Sustainability.

I want to acknowledge and honor the incredible work of the board search committee in managing a highly competitive and deliberative process that led to a deep pool of high-quality candidates. Ultimately, it was an all-in decision by the search committee, full board, and entire staff to unanimously choose Larry Williams Jr. to serve as our next executive director.

That consensus emerged from Larry's history of deep engagement with the climate/environmental justice and labor movements, including LNS. Of course this decision was informed by his very real challenge to us at our last Convergence to work harder and better at building a racially inclusive and culturally competent movement and organization in order to "be the change" we are working to achieve. We know firsthand that Larry is courageous in speaking truth to power, and leading from the heart with authentic respect for everyone in the room. He has demonstrated that courage and leadership again and again.

Larry has worked in the labor movement, first with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, then later with an organization he founded, UnionBase. Larry has also worked in the environmental and climate movements with the Sierra Club. Larry set deep roots in the labor-climate movement while working in the Sierra Club’s Labor Program, continuing his work with unions, and with the Blue Green Alliance.

In choosing Larry, we are choosing courage and bold leadership to push the envelope of action for a Just Transition. In choosing Larry, we are choosing someone who walks the walk of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In choosing Larry, we are choosing experience in representing workers, organizers, and activists on the front lines of working for climate justice.

As you know so well, there is no time or effort to waste now. We are asking a lot from Larry and the entire LNS team -- to build bridges across a diverse and geographically disconnected bottom up movement to build the relationships, momentum and power necessary to take on the fossil fuels industries and "the powers that be" to create a carbon-free, sustainable future with jobs and justice for all.

Please join us in welcoming Larry as a new leader in the movement to create a world where everyone can make a living on a living planet.

Solidarity,

Joe Uehlein
President

Voices for a Sustainable Future
Labor Network for Sustainability

For LNS’s inaugural Young Worker Convergence, we brought together nearly 100 young workers from 23 states (as well as DC and Canada) and more than 50 different worker and environmental organizations to participate in workshops, to hear from our union comrades who have successfully built labor power in service of climate justice, to share strategies across states and sectors, and to build a collective vision for a climate justice movement led by and for workers. 

We know that there are thousands of other young workers who could not make it to the convergence who are ready to join us in building a stronger labor-climate movement, which is why we’re planning a multimedia zine project to commemorate the conference as well as provide a resource for other workers who want to fight for climate justice! Stay tuned for photos, facilitation materials, and other reflections from the Young Worker Convergence on Climate! 

For more information: www.labor4sustainability.org/ywlp/ywlp-in-depth/young-worker-convergence/

Image Source: vision.utla.net

As Los Angeles temperatures soared this September, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and its allies demanded that the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) bargain over their comprehensive climate justice proposals and take immediate action to address the extreme heat searing LA schools. The announcement for a September 6 press conference stated,

In the midst of LA’s worst heatwave of the year – and a climate crisis that hits Black and brown communities the hardest - LAUSD is completely unprepared to deal with extreme heat. Despite broken AC units and hot asphalt schoolyards, the District has rejected parents’ pleas for even temporary shade from the sun.

The UTLA, together with parents, students, and community representatives, made a series of climate justice bargaining proposals to address the climate crisis in LA schools as part of its common good “Beyond Recovery” platform. But the LAUSD has refused even to bargain over them.

The UTLA’s bargaining proposals for “Healthy Green Public Schools” include:

•  Create strategic plan for a Green, Clean, Free, and Healthy LAUSD, including but not limited to: conversion of buses, installation of solar panels, use of school land for collection of clean water, creation of schools as cooling zones, creation of schools as climate change/grid shut-down resiliency centers, and increased healthier food options
• Provide support for school/community gardens to feed students and families
• Shaded and appropriate play areas for all students
• Support of local struggles for environmental justice and equity
• Increase healthy food options for students and families that address food insecurity, nutrition, culture, and support of environmentally sustainable and worker-friendly food sources
• Expand green spaces and tree planting at schools
• An LAUSD audit on green practices, including energy use, carbon emissions, air quality, and water use

A new Strike! Commentary by LNS’s Jeremy Brecher evaluates the Inflation Reduction Act, its strengths and flaws, and how the labor climate movement can take advantage of the Act and help fix it, including:

• Use the funding from the IRA to build a “Green New Deal from Below”
• Protect the frontline communities that are threatened by parts of the IRA
• Spend on real, not false, solutions
• Recruit and train the new climate workforce
• Enforce labor rights and standards
• Provide a just transition for workers and communities
• Use the power of Executive Action

For the full commentary: www.labor4sustainability.org/strike/the-inflation-reduction-act-and-the-labor-climate-movement/  

For an interview with Jeremy Brecher on the Inflation Reduction Act: https://btlonline.org/assessing-inflation-reduction-act-its-strengths-weaknesses-of-climate-policy/

Image Source: Oleksandr- stock.adobe.com

“Transforming Transportation – From Below” is a new commentary by newsletter editor Jeremy Brecher. It describes how around the country, “People are acting at the local and state level to create jobs, reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and equalize transportation by expanding and electrifying public transit, electrifying cars and trucks, and making it safe to walk and bike.” It characterizes this work as “a crucial part of building the Green New Deal from Below.”

In one of many examples, the piece describes how in 2022, Chicago tore up a parking lot 400 feet from a transit station and put up an affordable housing complex. The $40 million, seven-story “transit-oriented development” project, built by a non-profit developer, will help low-income and working-class residents stay in the gentrifying Logan Square neighborhood. The units are all affordable, with half available for Section 8 voucher holders. “This is exciting news for our community,” local Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa wrote. “35th Ward, Logan Square, and Northwest Side neighbors marched, organized, and won this needed affordable housing to address displacement of working class families from our neighborhoods.”

Image Source: CSIRO. Science image 507 Cars, Cars, Cars. Wikimedia Commons. 

The US Department of Transportation recently proposed a Greenhouse Gas Rule requiring state departments of transportation to measure greenhouse gas emissions and establish targets to lower those emissions. The Labor Network for Sustainability, as part of its transit justice work, signed on to a letter urging adoption of the rule. It read in part:

The transportation sector is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. There is no time to waste as record amounts of federal taxpayer funds are already flowing to states thanks to the infrastructure law.

The Georgetown Climate Center summed up the stakes in a recent issue brief: “The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act [IIJA] could be an important part of the U.S. response to climate change. Or it could lead to more greenhouse gas pollution than the trajectory we are currently on. Where the actual outcome falls within that range will depend on the decisions made by state, federal, regional, and local governments about how to spend the money made available by IIJA.”

IIJA is a historic investment in our nation’s infrastructure, and the public has a right to know how those funds affect our climate future.

The climate crisis is not coming; it is here now. And given that urgency, we ask for your support in quickly finalizing this rule to meet the moment of crisis we are in.

 You can review the proposed rule here and the full letter and signers here.

Our Mission

To be a relentless force for urgent, science-based climate action by building a powerful labor-climate movement to secure an ecologically sustainable and economically just future where everyone can make a living on a living planet.

Making a Living on a Living Planet is published by the Labor Network for Sustainability: