Dateline: Copenhagen

Nearly every day at COP15 I have found myself surrounded by various government officials, clean tech CEOs, and energetic environmental youth.  Last night was a pleasant change of pace and conversation when I attended a discussion among leaders from US labor unions and environmental groups. Rather than dwell on emissions targets or parts per million CO2, this discussion dug into the values of American workers and their implications for climate action support in the US.

These values turn out to be very simple: People want jobs they can be proud of, that support their communities, and that provide security into the future. Members of the Blue-Green Alliance gathered in Copenhagen to remind people that the impact of climate legislation on these factors is just as important as the environmental impact – and both must be considered in concert if we are to build broad-based support for an environmentally sustainable economy.   The group also spoke to the positive global implications for an alliance between labor and environment groups.  As Jerry Hudson, Vice President of SEIU (Service Employees International Union), put it, “jobs will be affected by the way we think about the planet [so] we all have skin in this game. Labor and environmental standards are important the world over.” 

The Blue-Green Alliance stands as an important achievement in the US where regional, state, and non-governmental climate action fills the void left by an uncooperative federal government. The group hosts dialogues between its’ labor and environment member groups that include the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), SEIU, and Utility Workers Union of America (AFL-CIO) and sets joint positions on environmental issues.  The group has proposed Copenhagen outcomes that it claims would benefit workers and the environment.  The obvious points include support for clean energy and energy-efficiency technologies and support for job-transition training. Other demands are for financial support to adaptation and deforestation measures, as well as calls for  “transparency, verification and accountability” for every country’s climate mitigating actions.  The final request is extremely important for American businesses, the alliance said, so that U.S. and Canadian industries can adequately compare environmental responsibility against competitor businesses in foreign countries. These other countries have also caught on to the value of a blue-green alliance.  A European leader at last night’s discussion declared, “this is one of the American experiences we would like to import to Europe.”

The greatest value I see in joining labor and environment groups is the way in which both movements inform the other so that they are more effective in communicating their messages.  “Green jobs” are often communicated in vague terms by environmental groups.  We imagine hard-hatted workers at solar plants and wind turbine factories.  In fact, a massive variety of jobs can be turned Green.  Worldwatch writer Michael Renner has proposed a more robust definition of Green jobs:

We define green jobs as positions in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, installation, and maintenance, as well as scientific and technical, administrative, and service-related activities, that contribute substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality. Specifically, but not exclusively, this includes jobs that help to protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity; reduce energy, materials, and water consumption through high-efficiency and avoidance strategies; de-carbonize the economy; and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution. But green jobs also need to be good jobs that meet longstanding demands and goals of the labor movement, i.e., adequate wages, safe working conditions, and worker rights, including the right to organize labor unions. (You can read the Worldwatch report here)

Labor groups have also helped define concrete and practical ways in which currently non-green jobs can be easily transitioned to green.  According to BGA Director Dave Foster, every job sector has reciprocal green opportunities. “Steel plants will make more wind turbine parts than car parts, the automotive industry will turn to smaller, more efficient, and fully electric vehicles, the nuclear industry will continue to play its role in generating carbon-free energy, and coal plants could potentially be converted for use with other fuel sources, although we all agree that carbon capture and sequestration technology needs additional research and funding.”

A representative from the American Federation of Teachers focused on green jobs outside of the service sector. “Training and retraining the workforce from early education to adulthood is a critical part of what our members do.”

Near-term action on climate change will surely require awareness of these opportunities and long-term action will require stronger and stronger links between labor and the environment.

US Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke, spoke on Friday to a packed room at COP15 about the Obama administration’s perspective on creating green jobs.  Locke’s position is that the upcoming changes to our energy infrastructure “could spur one of the greatest economic opportunities of the 21^st century.”  The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included $80 billion of support for green investments and Locke believes that the private sector has the best tools to maximize the returns on governmental investment.

Perhaps the original idea for these innovations will come from a government research lab. But if history is any guide, the commercialization and real-world application of these technologies will be pioneered by private sector innovators and entrepreneurs.

That is why a preeminent goal of government energy policies needs to be making it as easy as possible for private sector people to develop new energy solutions and bring them to market.

Reduction of fossil fuel subsidies will also be an important incentive to development of renewable alternatives.  At the September G20 summit in Pittsburgh, world leaders agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies over the ‘medium term’.  Locke reiterated the Obama administration’s commitment to this objective and even praised Denmark for having a gasoline tax of over $5 a gallon.  He did not, however, go so far as to propose a similar levy on US motorists.

Worldwatch recently published an extensive study titled Green Jobs: Working for People and the Environment.

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

As a former Minister of the Environment turned Chancellor, Angela Merkel had already proven those wrong who surmised that environment positions are a dead end to high-rising political aspirations; now she became only the second German politician (after Konrad Adenauer, the first head of a German government after the Second World War, in 1957) who received the honor to address the U.S. Congress; and as a widely respected leader on environmental issues who is, at the same time, the leader of a conservative party, she would be well positioned to appeal to cautious Republicans when talking about climate change and energy reformation—at least I had hoped so in a recent interview with Reuters.

Angela Merkel in her speech on Capitol Hill yesterday, just weeks after her reelection for a second term (this time as a leader of a center-right coalition) was moved by the honor and the standing ovations she received from U.S. lawmakers even before she had started her speech. Following up on her promises, she spent a good portion of her talk on climate change, urging Congress and the Obama administration to take bold steps to address the issue, in her view one of the “great tests” of the 21st century. “We all know we have no time to lose,” she said.

But her remarks did not resonate with most Republicans. While Merkel’s remarks were met with passionate applause from Democrats, almost the entire Republican side—including key swing voters, such as Independent Senator Dick Lugar from Indiana and Republican Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine—remained silent. When the Chancellor pointed out that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would spur economic and jobs growth worldwide, the same partisan gulf occurred.

Already earlier in the day, Republicans had refused to attend the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s markup of Senators John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) important climate bill (Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act). The only one out of seven Republican Senators on the committee who showed up for the meeting was Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio) who briefly expressed the Republican opposition to the committee’s proceedings. In their view, the Environmental Protection Agency has not done enough economic analysis of the Kerry-Boxer bill. Democrats, however, accuse their opponents of pure gamesmanship pointing out that the Kerry-Boxer bill is modeled after the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, which passed the House side of Congress earlier this year and underwent intense economic scrutiny, including from the EPA.

Angela Merkel can tell a great success story about green jobs creation in Germany. The country—home to Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Opel, and Volkswagen—is on track to have more people employed in the environmental technology sector than in the automobile industry as early as 2015. It has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20% since the beginning of the 1990s. But it seemed yesterday as if only half of the U.S. representatives were ready for Merkel’s optimism—one that has often been echoed by President Obama in the past.  Regarding the Copenhagen UN climate summit, Merkel said: “I’m convinced, once we in Europe and America show ourselves ready to adopt binding agreements, we will also be able to persuade China and India to join in ….No doubt about it, in December, the world will look to us, to the Europeans and to the Americans. ” Thus far, only half of America looks back.