Greener Jobs Alliance

Towards a transformative response to the fossil fuel energy crisis

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:War_is_a_racket_u_know_-_it%27s_time_for_peace!.jpg

The US/Israeli war on Iran looks like it will be lengthy. Trump’s announcement of an indefinite ceasefire while maintaining an equally indefinite blockade indicates that

1. the US/Israel are not able to impose their terms because a ground invasion aimed at regime change would not be viable. The apocalyptic threat of bombing Iran back into the Stone Age would call forth counterstrokes from Iran and a political fallout too devastating to risk.
2. Nevertheless, the consequences of backing off now, even while declaring victory, would be a visible defeat that would be too damaging to their capacity to project power elsewhere.
3. Therefore there is likely to be a prolonged stalemate based on overlapping blockades of the Gulf. This will cause enormous environmental and economic damage globally, on top of what is already done; and it will manifest more strongly in the coming months, growing stronger the longer it goes on.

The only question is how severe this will be. This poses a series of overlapping crises and challenges that the climate, peace and labour movements have to face up to, have answers for and mobilise together to achieve.

Fossil Fuel supply/price crisis–

1. Increased prices for fossil fuels and their derivative products which will lead to increased prices across the board
2. Increased profits for fossil fuel companies
3. Increased short term viability for investment in fossil fuel extraction
4. Increased costs for everyone else for everything else that has to be transported
5. Shortages of some energy products (jet fuel, CO2) and food supply
6. Increased imperative to transition away from fossil fuel dependence to reduce costs and political leverage
7. Increased attractiveness of EVs and domestic solar panels for those that can afford them.

Responses

The response from the Right has been fast and hard and dressed grifting for fossil fuel companies and US global energy dominance up in the language of the common good.

1. Reduce taxes on fossil fuels (which in past experience benefits retailers not people having to fill up with them)
2. Reduce windfall taxes on FF companies, even as they are making gigantic windfall profits
3. Invest in new North Sea oil and gas, even though they know this will make no difference to costs, a tiny difference to supply, and will not halt the decline in jobs as the basin dries up; and/or put fracking back on the energy agenda, even though they know that the UK is geologically unsuitable for doing this viably
4. Relax mandates on car companies to transition to EVs and developers to build homes that aren’t expensive to heat or don’t use gas to do it
5. Push hard for more investment in nuclear power, which is the least flexible “back up” available, produces electricity at a cost greater than that of fossil fuels and renewables; and would take too long to build to have any impact at all.

This is all nonsense, but it is loudly and perpetually repeated by the Right and their associated media outlets in an attempt to drown out reality and paint anyone who recognises the reality of climate change and/or wants to put forward solutions that

1. Accelerate the transition and
2. Do it in a way that creates millions of jobs, is socially equitable – and therefore transformative

as “swivel eyed eco fanatics” from an “elite” determined to impose “eye watering costs” on ordinary people to deliver their “net zero obsession” (which, if you do the maths, would be £80 billion cheaper than the new investment in FFs that they have in mind). 

To combat this tsunami of misinformation and misdirection, the climate, social justice and labour movements need the most honest, clear and coordinated set of responses that we can put together, and all be proclaiming it with relentless positivity.

From the Greener Jobs Alliance, we’d like to propose four basic principles that we can all sign up to, within which we can collectively develop appropriate specific demands.

1. To stop the crisis we need to stop the war – so the government should give no support for it in any form and press for peace instead on the same lines as the Spanish government.
2. War profiteering is unacceptable and all windfall profits should be taxed at 100% to fund short term targeted measures like energy price caps to support people through the immediate crisis, and accelerate investment in the transition. Similarly, faced with a crisis on this scale, putting any additional investment into war preparation is, as well as wrong in its own right, a luxury we can’t afford. Freezing military expenditure at its current level and using the funds earmarked for increases to accelerate the energy transition, including restoring climate funding in overseas development, will be better for national security in all respects too.
3. The transition is the solution All possible measures should be taken to get off fossil fuel dependence and this can only effectively be done through collective measures, e.g. an accelerated effective insulation campaign requires properly funded local authority direct labour organisations with workers properly educated on the climate crisis as well as technical skills, targeting areas in fuel poverty as a social measure and not cutting corners as private sector micro companies all too often do. Similarly, even if the ban on new investment in North Sea FFs is lifted, it will have a marginal effect and won’t stop the erosion of jobs; so the solution has to be a planned retraining and redeployment alongside increased investment in accelerated deployment of renewable energy. This could most effectively be done through public ownership.
4. Crisis measures must be social justice measures. Rationing by price is inherently inequitable. ATM people who drive are managing by putting less fuel in their tanks when they “fill up”. This can only go so far. So, for example reduce FF demand (and therefore prices) by banning private jets, slashing public transport fares (even the Lib Dems have proposed a 10% cut and states from Tasmania to the Punjab have made it free) to encourage a shift. Pre-emptive limits on purchases of key food items in limited supply, to ensure equitable distribution of what there is.

This is not set in stone. It’s a catalyst to get a debate going that starts us all moving in the right direction and comes up with things that none of us have thought of yet.

So, in the next two weeks we’d like feedback on these principles and suggestions for specific proposals so we can pull them together into a public statement that could provide the basis for a campaign that can build up through the deepening of the crisis.

Online Thursday April 23 – 5.50 – 7.00 We’ll see you there! Join Us

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The post Towards a transformative response to the fossil fuel energy crisis first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

Rail Union calls for Free Fares to cut cost of living in response to war on Iran

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Transport and travel union TSSA has called on the government to take immediate action to help the public with the cost of living in the face of ongoing economic volatility related to the US/Israel conflict with Iran.

This includes making public transport free at the point of use for the next year.

Read the full statement on the TSSA site here.

TSSA’s Earth Day Blog Rails of change: why public transport is our climate lifeline assesses the rising impact of the Transport sector on carbon emissions, the opportunities presented by rail nationalisation to join up transport policy, boost electrification, shift freight and for City Mayors to run with this agenda.

 On this Earth Day, as the sun sets through a haze of Saharan dust, let us look not to the sky for salvation, but to the railway tracks. The solution to the climate crisis is not a sci-fi technology; it is a reliable, frequent, electric train. Let’s fight for it.

Read the whole blog here. Online Thursday April 23 – 5.50 – 7.00 We’ll see you there! Join Us

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The post Rail Union calls for Free Fares to cut cost of living in response to war on Iran first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

Upcoming event from Hope for the Future – Oil Wars: Winning a Just Transition in an Era of Energy Crises

It’s time to stop feeling powerless in the face of global insecurity and recurring energy crises, and instead reclaim our democratic system so that it works for the many.

Since the US-Israel war on Iran began, we have witnessed a huge, coordinated lobbying push, cynically using this crisis to advocate for more, expanded domestic extraction of oil and gas. And as the crisis threatens to send the cost of living ever higher, these arguments are increasingly gaining ground.

This is a dangerous time for the fragile transition to a greener, fairer, and safer society.

We are constantly being told that:

• Energy sovereignty requires ‘maxing out the North Sea’ – even though our reliance on fossil fuels has made the UK more exposed to energy crises than other nations, and despite the fact that future oil will be sold on the global market at high prices.
• Reliance on fossil fuels is the price of geopolitical safety, even though the pursuit of energy dominance on behalf of Trump’s USA is threatening peace everywhere – from Palestine, Lebanon and Iran to Venezuela and Cuba.
• The economic burden of a crisis like this must fall on the most precarious in society, even while the oil and gas lobby stands to make super-profits through price gauging.

But we don’t have to stand for this.

The question before us is: Do we double down on the fossil fuels that are making our societies and economies increasingly fragile and unjust? Or do we seize this opportunity to accelerate the shift to a fairer, greener world?

That’s why Hope for the Future is organising this crucial event.

In the first half, we’ll be hearing from campaigners working at the heart of these questions. They’ll be providing us with a range of different campaigning and policy responses to the crisis, helping us to understand and respond to the new context.

So far, we’re excited to confirm that we will be joined by speakers from the Stop Rosebank campaign and the Transition Security Project, with more to be announced.

In the second half, we’ll be exploring a ‘counter-lobbying’ approach to taking campaign asks directly to those in power, showing them that the oil and gas industries don’t speak for us. This is a key way we can hold our politicians to account and fight for a just transition to a greener, safer world.

You can sign up for free at https://hftf.org.uk/event/oil-wars-workshop.

Online Thursday April 23 – 5.50 – 7.00 We’ll see you there! Join Us

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The post Upcoming event from Hope for the Future – Oil Wars: Winning a Just Transition in an Era of Energy Crises first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.