USW president calls for emissions regulation to slow global warming

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Manufacturing News, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : 10 May 2007 17:10

Asserting that “global warming has transformed the issue of pollution into the ultimate health and safety issue,” United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard told the North American Labor Conference on Climate Crisis that regulating both carbon emissions and trade more stringently is essential for addressing the global climate crisis.

“Labor, environmental, and human rights standards are at the core of our vision for making the global economy work for workers,” Gerard told more than 300 delegates. “They should become the new gold standard for how nations trade with each other.”

Gerard characterized the labor movement’s vision of addressing global warming as fundamentally at odds with the approach of giving away the right to emit carbon pollution to the world’s giant corporations and letting them make immense profits by trading and acquiring those rights without ever addressing the basic inequalities in our global economy.

“We need to use regulation of global warming and trade to lift 2 billion people out of poverty around the world. To do that,” he said, “we’ll need to regulate a lot of economic activity—from power plants to fuel efficiency to energy efficiency—and we’ll need to use this regulation as a powerful tool to improve workers’ lives, both here in North America and across the globe.

“Because the struggle for sustainability is not just about cleaning up the planet. It’s about engaging in raising standards of living over the long term—creating a world that has the capacity to solve the divisions of wealth and poverty that are the drivers of international conflict.”

Recently, the USW made major strides in globalizing its activism by signing an agreement with Amicus and T&GU, Britain’s recently merged and largest union, to pursue a possible merger in the course of the next year, a step that would create the world’s first truly global union.

The USW has also led several efforts to strengthen the clout of both the labor and environmental movements. The union is a charter member of the Apollo Alliance, a broad-based labor, community, and business coalition committed to the development of sustainable jobs through investments in renewable energy.

In addition, the USW has joined with the Sierra Club to form the Blue Green Alliance, a partnership committed to mobilizing public support for policies that create good jobs, a cleaner environment, and a safer world.

For example, the Blue Green Alliance is currently urging reforms to US trade rules that would bring an end to illegal trade in the forest products industry, where environmental degradation is rampant, especially in Asia.

The USW president cited the recently documented illegal logging in Indonesia as a prime example of the inherent link between the degradation of the environment and its impact in degrading the living standards of North American workers—illegal trading that has wiped out nearly 3,000 jobs in the US paper industry.

“Clear-cutting in Indonesia, where it is outlawed but routinely practiced,” Gerard explained, “seriously aggravates global warming, since deforestation is causing as much as 20 percent of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.” Indonesia is home to 10 percent of the world’s rainforest.

Global corporations devastating the environment in countries such as Indonesia and China are turning illegally logged timber into pulp, paper, and furniture products for the international market and using their exported goods to undercut prices and drive down workers’ wages throughout the industrialized world.

“By fixing the misuse of resources like those in the Indonesian rainforests,” Gerard said, “we can create an economy that lifts all people out of poverty while stabilizing the downward pressure on workers in the industrialized economies.

“Don’t think this won’t come about without a fight,” Gerard cautioned. “It will be the defining struggle about the future direction of the global economy.”

Gerard added, “Whether or not we meet the challenge of combating global warming depends, in many ways, on those of us in the labor and environmental movements uniting and mobilizing to make sure our elected officials do not continue to speak urgently and act indifferently to this threat.

“If we mobilize the citizens of North America to meet this challenge, we will not only secure our world for our children and grandchildren, we will launch a new generation of good domestic jobs that will revitalize our economies.”

Comments on this story

posted by Fred C on Thu 10 May 07 20:16

Current incompetent stories regarding CO2 Causing Climate Change are a fraud.

Junk science is infesting the media, the Internet and public schools, affecting public health, squandering your tax dollars, poisoning sick people and miseducating our children.

Pseudoscientific claptrap abounds. Quackery is now found everywhere.

Consensus is NOT science. Educate, inform yourself, take a 9th grade science class.

Additional information http://www.InteliOrg.com/co2_climate_change.html

Stop listening to folks that have a financial interest in the subject. Unfortunately, many have learned to spin information, thusly have become intellectually and academically dishonest.

Unfortunately, we can no longer trust most of the media for information, as they no longer assign "Reporters" that investigate then report on a subject, most just parrot or reinterpret the information to fit their bias, thusly we have a world of disinformation and junk science.

Information Vetting: I have no financial interest in this subject.

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