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Title: Carbon Markets After Paris: Trading in Trouble
Description: Since the early 1990s, "putting a price on carbon" has been, perhaps, the primary policy proposal for fighting climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Whether through carbon taxes or cap-and-trade emissions trading schemes (ETS), proponents of carbon pricing see it as a way to guide investment toward green solutions without the need for governments to intervene directly in the economy. ETSs, in particular, have been favored by businesses and neoliberal policy makers seeking to limit emissions without disrupting business-as-usual. For these reasons, great expectations are being placed on ETSs. The climate agreement, signed by the nations of the world in Paris in December, enshrines ETSs as a key mechanism for limiting emissions. But are ETSs effective instruments for reducing emissions? And how should trade unions approach debates around cap-and-trade policies? It has been a decade since the European Union established the world's largest ETS, so there is plenty of evidence available for a reevaluation of trade union positions on cap-and-trade. In the long aftermath of the 2008-9 financial crisis, the price on greenhouse gas emissions in the EU cap-and-trade emissions trading schemes has been too low to incentivize investors to move away from fossil fuels. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)—a supporter of the EU ETS—has called for policies that would raise the cost of emissions while also expressing concern about "carbon leakage," where companies move polluting activities (and associated jobs) to jurisdictions without price constraints on pollution. Such a position threads the needle of trade union debates around the EU ETS without resolving the underlying tensions—nor, it should be noted, shifting EU policy in any appreciable way. With the Paris Agreement giving an even more prominent role to cap-and-trade, unions around the world are likely to face similar debates. In this TUED Working Paper, Sean Sweeney, the director of the International Program for Labor, Climate and the Environment at CUNY's Murphy Institute, argues that it is time for unions to reevaluate their stance on cap-and-trade policy. Market-based solutions may be appealing to business interests and their political allies, but it's going to take direct governmental action to guide a transition to a just, democratic, and sustainable energy system. The now battered neoliberal consensus finds public and democratic ownership and control of a key economic sector to be anathema, but it is precisely what is needed if we are serious about combating climate change.
Identifier: TUED-Working-Paper-6.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156041

Title: Nurses' Unions, Climate Change and Health: A Global Agenda for Action
Description: The planet is warming and the climate is changing. With increasing regularity, headlines report record- breaking heat waves, catastrophic storms, floods and fires, and rising numbers of people displaced due to famines, droughts and violence. The world seems to be rapidly becoming a more dangerous and more frightening place. These changes have profound significance for human health. Indeed, the health impacts of global warming and climate change are already being felt by vast numbers of people around the world. At the same time, although certain health risks may actually diminish with increased warming for some people—for instance, risk from exposure to cold in some regions—health risks overall are set to increase significantly. In the medium term, this is especially true for risks related to exposure to floods, droughts and extreme heat; food security issues; and infectious diseases. Longer-term, health risks associated with displacement and conflict are likely to become much more serious. This paper aims to provide information to nurses and their unions regarding climate-related health risks. It summarizes what is happening now, and what health-related climate science suggests could happen if current trends continue. Nurses and their unions have been at the forefront of many key struggles to minimize the negative health impacts of current and rising fossil fuel use, and for strong policy responses to the unfolding climate crisis. But it is today clear that addressing climate change will require a radical change at the level of politics and policy. The current policies—which are directed towards ensuring investment opportuniAes for big business—have been a massive failure. Emissions continue to rise, and health outcomes and indicators continue to worsen.
Identifier: Climate-Change-and-Health-GNU-2019.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156045

Title: Towards a Progressive Labor Vision for Climate Justice and Energy Transition in the Time of Trump
Description: This memorandum proposes an analysis and provisional framework around which to construct an ambitious and effective agenda for progressive labor to respond to the converging environmental crises, and to pursue a rapid, inclusive approach to energy transition and social justice. Such an agenda could serve to bring a much-needed independent union voice to policy and programmatic debates on climate change and energy within Our Revolution spaces and processes. Labor's voice in these debates frequently echoes the large energy companies on one side, or the large mainstream environmental NGOs on the other.
Identifier: Towards-a-Progressive-Vision-TUED.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156039

Title: Energy Transition: Are we winning?
Description: Is the World Really Moving Away from Fossil Fuels? Examining the Evidence. During 2015 and 2016, a number of significant public and political figures have made statements suggesting that the world is "moving away from fossil fuels," and that the battle against greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and climate change is therefore being won. Such statements are frequently accompanied by assurances that the transition to renewable energy and a low-carbon economy is both "inevitable" and already well underway, and that economic growth will soon be "decoupled" from dangerously high annual emissions levels. This optimism has also been accepted by a section of the environmental movement, and even by some unions.
Identifier: TUED-Working-Paper-9_Web-1.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156030

Title: Trade Unions and Just Transition: The Search for a Transformative Politics
Description: For more than a decade, trade union responses to the unfolding climate and ecological crisis have mainly focused on the idea of "just transition." This idea has brought much-needed attention to the serious disruptions facing many workers, and the need to minimize those disruptions where possible, or provide alternatives where necessary. Unions have generally affirmed the findings of climate science and recognized the urgent need for dramatic transformation of our societies, but this affirmation has mostly found expression in echoing broader social calls for "more ambition" from governments. At the international level, and especially in Europe, union discourse and engagement around the need for a "just transition" has been shaped profoundly by the fate of social democracy, and the related ideas of "social partnership" and "social dialogue." However despite their origins in what could be seen as a true "social contract" between roughly equal partners, the erosion of political power for unions in recent decades has largely hollowed out these terms, leaving unions and workers increasingly dependent on appeals to governments and private companies to "do the right thing" for workers and the planet. This state of affairs calls for critical reflection. It is vital that unions ask not only whether existing approaches to the crisis are sufficiently ambitious, but whether they are even aimed correctly at the target.
Identifier: TUED-WP11-Trade-Unions-and-Just-Transition.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156023

Title: When Green doesn't grow: Facing Up to the Failure of Profit-Driven Climate Policy
Description: After more than a decade of speeches and assurances from global elites, the "green growth" approach to climate protection has failed to make any meaningful progress in addressing the climate crisis. Renewable energy is on an upward course, but overall energy consumption has continued to rise even faster; as a result, fossil fuel use continues to expand, emissions continue to rise, and nearly every major country is off-track to meet their Paris commitments. It is time for us to collectively confront these stark realities and formulate a radical, independent, and internationalist trade union alternative based on a "public goods" approach. One way or another, rising emissions hurt everyone, and reducing emissions would benefit everyone. Considerations of private profit must be taken out of the equation. Emissions reductions must therefore be regarded as an absolute necessity and a collective human right. And since most emissions come from how we generate and use energy, energy systems must be radically reshaped by needs-based and pro-public policies. This means reclaiming energy to public and social ownership, and democratic control.
Identifier: TUED-When-Green-Doesnt-Grow-COP24.pdf
Identifier (PID): yul:1156016