USA

‘We’re not animals, we’re human beings’: US farm workers labor in deadly heat with few protections

22/07/21

Author:

Michael Sainato

Link:

The Guardian

A farmworker in St Paul, Oregon, where a worker died of heat exposure last month Photograph: Nathan Howard/AP

16 Jul 2021

Advocates want Osha to issue federal heat standards, requiring water, shade and rest breaks

The climate crisis is endangering farm workers around the US who work outside in excessive heat throughout the year without any federal protections from heat exposure in the workplace.

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Category:

The biggest win for the working class in generations is within reach

22/07/21

Author:

Bernie Sanders

Link:

The Guardian

‘This legislation will create millions of good paying jobs as we address the long-neglected needs of working families and the planet.’ Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

July 21, 2021

If our budget passes, it would be one of the most important pieces of legislation since the New Deal. But we must fight for it

Now is the time.

At a time when the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider, when two people now own more wealth than the bottom 40% and when some of the wealthiest people and biggest businesses in the world pay nothing in federal income taxes, the billionaire class and large profitable corporations must finally start paying their fair share of taxes.

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Category:

The Organizing Challenge and American Capitalism

21/07/21

Author:

Sam Gindin

Link:

The Bullet

Turning the Tables: Participation and Power in Negotiations - book cover

July 20, 2021

The state of the American labour movement has, since the mid-1970s, been dispiriting. There have, of course, been moments of creative and inspiring resistance, but the predominant story has been a chronicle of decline: private-sector unionization rates below where they were a century ago, the abject failure to make breakthroughs in key emerging sectors, defensive stagnation in bargaining achievements, and – election-year rhetoric aside – the political marginalization of working-class concerns.

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California Crude Getting Dirtier Than Tarsands Bitumen

17/07/21

Author:

Kevin Stark

Link:

KQED

An oil rig extracts crude on July 21, 2008 near Taft, California, in Kern County. (David McNew/Getty Images))

June 28, 2021

A new analysis from an environmental advocacy group highlights a dirty secret about California-produced oil: It is responsible for higher carbon emissions than the oil the state imports.

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Category:

Oil - Pipelines

Tar Sands

USA

Climate Change Is Already Killing Workers

17/07/21

Author:

Adam D.K. King

Link:

Passage

Safety helmet - Photo from Ümit Yıldırım via Unsplash.

Remember during the 2016 Democratic Primary when Hillary Clinton ineptly said she was “going to put a lot of coal miners […] out of business”? The Bernie crowd — myself included — had a good time with this gaffe, finding in it a microcosm of a certain centrist Democratic politics that touts supposedly progressive policy (in this case, clean energy) while treating the needs of working people as an afterthought, at best.

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Thawing Permafrost has Damaged the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and Poses an Ongoing Threat

17/07/21

Author:

David Hasemyer

Link:

Inside Climate News

Trans-Alaska Pipeline (Alyeska pipleline) running through landscape with Mountain range in the distance in Alaska. Credit: Edwin Remsburg/VW Pics via Getty Images

July 11, 2021

The pipeline operator is repairing damage to its supports caused by a sliding slope of permafrost, and installing chillers to keep the ground around it frozen.

Thawing permafrost threatens to undermine the supports holding up an elevated section of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, jeopardizing the structural integrity of one of the world’s largest oil pipelines and raising the potential of an oil spill in a delicate and remote landscape where it would be extremely difficult to clean up.

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Category:

Canada’s zero-emission vehicle goals parked for now

16/07/21

Author:

John Woodside

Link:

National Observer

Ottawa and its critics agree there is much more work to be done to achieve the goal of phasing out the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035, but what will it take? Photo by Ivan Radic / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

July 15, 2021

Ottawa and its critics agree there is much more work to be done to achieve Transport Canada’s goal of phasing out the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035, but plans have stalled until the United States sets its course.

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Category:

'Alternative' energy and less energy

Jobs, Environmental Crises Need Climate Corps, Not Privatization

16/07/21

Author:

Jeremy Mohler

Link:

In These Times

July 13, 2021

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Category:

Water Protectors Shut Down Line 3 Worksite

14/07/21

Author:

Resist Line 3

Link:

Popular Resistance

July 12, 2021

Floodwood, MN – On Saturday July 10th, water protectors stopped construction for a full day on an Enbridge worksite laying pipe for the Line 3 pipeline. Two water protectors locked to each other through the treads of a machine, while two others climbed up an excavator’s arm, where they stayed for 7 hours. This action took place on Anishinaabe treaty territories in solidarity with leaders of the growing Indigenous-led resistance to Line 3.

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Verification at Issue in U.S. Funding of Soil Carbon Capture

12/07/21

Author:

The Energy Mix

Link:

The Energy Mix

July 11, 2021

With the United States moving swiftly to fund credits for farmers who store carbon in their soil, there’s growing concern that the program may pay for carbon storage that is already happening—and give fossil companies and other major emitters a free pass to keep polluting.

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Category:

USA

Advocates want Osha to issue federal heat standards, requiring water, shade and rest breaks

If our budget passes, it would be one of the most important pieces of legislation since the New Deal. But we must fight for it

The pipeline operator is repairing damage to its supports caused by a sliding slope of permafrost, and installing chillers to keep the ground around it frozen.

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