NY Times, Apr. 23, 2014

By Charles M. Blow

The time for complaining is at an end. Action must be taken. Accountability must be demanded. Muscle must be flexed. Power must be exercised.

Ballots must be cast.

It’s important to vote in presidential election years, to make sure that the leader of the free world is truly representative of the country. But presidential politics is only part of the political apparatus — the part furthest from most individuals. Much of the rest of the political power has a much lower center of gravity, playing itself out on the state and local level. In fact, the more local an election or ballot measure, the more powerful the individual votes, because the universe of all voters shrinks.

Charles M. Blow

This is what more voters must be made to understand: It’s negligent at best, and derelict at worst, to elect a president but stay home when the legislatures with which a president must work are being elected. Apathy insures enmity, as the president and the legislative branch both rightly proclaim that they have been sent to Washington at the behest of diametrically opposed voting populaces — the president by a broader, more diverse (in terms of race, age, income and ideology) demographic group, and many members of Congress by a more narrowly drawn one.

In far too many cases, our representatives simply aren’t representative. Midterm elections draw a much older and whiter group of voters than do presidential-year elections. And that is only counting the people who bother to show up.

As Pew put it in the lead up to the 2010 midterms:

“Turnout in midterm elections typically is less than 40 percent of the voting age population (in 2006 it was 37 percent), and there is no reason to expect that it will be dramatically higher in 2010.”

In fact, nearly 42 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in 2010.

Still, that means that most Americans who are eligible to vote don’t vote in midterm elections. And Democrats constituted 54 percent of the nonvoters. Thirty percent were Republican. That’s why “nonvoters generally express more liberal views than do likely voters,” according to Pew.

This is where the rubber meets the road. We know the kind of government we want. We know that we want to address economic inequality and tax-code reform. We know that we want to address gun violence. We know that we want to stop and reverse the raft of laws enacted in states across this country aimed at restricting women’s reproductive choices. We know that we want to expand the right to marry to all people in all states. We know that we want to pass comprehensive immigration reform. We know that we want to halt and reverse the corrosive effects of big money on our politics.

It’s all doable, but only when voters realize that if there is a surreptitious us-versus-them fight between the cloistered money classes and the Everyman and Everywoman, then there are more of us than there are of them.

And yet as Pew found, the nonvoters are those who most need to have their voices heard. Forty-three percent of all nonvoters make under $30,000. Another 30 percent of nonvoters made $30,000 to $74,999. Those who made more than that represented only 13 percent of nonvoters.

Single people made up nearly 6 out of every 10 nonvoters.

People 18 to 29 were a third of nonvoters, while people 20 to 49 were another third.

As the report explained:

“Reflecting their low incomes, many more nonvoters (31 percent) than likely voters (14 percent) describe their personal financial situation as poor, and fully 51 percent of nonvoters say that they or someone in their household was out of work and looking for a job at some point in the past 12 months. Among voters, 36 percent had this personal experience with unemployment.”

And Hispanics made up 21 percent of nonvoters but only 6 percent of voters. Part of this, of course, is related to citizenship status, but part is lack of participation. In fact, a Pew report issued this month found that both Hispanic and Asian voter turnout in midterm elections has fallen, somewhat consistently, since 1986.

This is particularly disheartening since the proportion of Hispanics in the population is expected to nearly double in the next 50 years and the portion of Asians is projected to increase by more than half.

The growing majority must decide that it will no longer be silent, that it will no longer acquiesce, that it will no longer settle. We are the majority, not interested in social Darwinism and a social paternalism, but rather in a fair shake in a truly free society, where government works for the people and not for the plutocrats.

That is a simple and noble yearning, but it requires more than dreaming: It requires action.

Those struggling, unconquerable in their dignity and holding fast to the idea of equality, will one day roar, but only when they shake loose the lie that these lions are weak and sickly and divested of their power.

© 2014 The New York Times

The Nation, Apr. 22, 2014

By Steven Hsieh

Midwest Generation’s Fisk Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

Sixty-eight percent of African-Americans live within thirty miles of a coal-fired power plant, the zone of maximum exposure to pollutants that cause an array of ailments, from heart disease to birth defects. Communities of color breathe in nearly 40 percent more polluted air than whites. African-American children are three times as likely to suffer an asthma attack.

The NAACP launched its Climate Justice Initiative address the stark numbers head on. Working in conjunction with Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and Indigenous Environmental Network, the Initiative published “Coal-Blooded: Putting Profits Before People” in 2012, which evaluated the impact of 378 coal-fired power plants on communities along racial and economic lines. “Just Energy Policies: Reducing Pollution and Creating Jobs,” released in December, looked at the energy policies of all fifty states through a civil rights lens.

We spoke with Jacqueline Patterson, executive director of the NAACP’s Climate Justice Initiative, about her organization’s work. (This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

Why did the NAACP launch the Climate Justice Initiative?

The NAACP launched the CJI because of a recognition of the impact both of climate change itself and how it disproportionately impacts marginalized communities, low-income communities and communities of color. We looked at how climate change violates the civil rights of those communities, whether it’s because of pre-existing vulnerabilities in the impact of disasters or whether its the redevelopment process and how lots of time and resource allocation is cut along political lines and folks are already disenfranchised. The actual drivers of climate change, whether its roadway pollution or traffic vehicles or if its polluted facilities like coal plants, are disproportionately affecting communities of color and low-income communities.

As your organization reports, 68 percent of African-Americans live within thirty miles of a coal-fired power plant. That’s pretty stark. How did we get here?

There’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation here. In some cases, the facilities were already there before the communities. The communities are-low income or low-wealth, and they moved into an area where property values are on average 15 percent lower because that’s what they can afford. That’s one dynamic. You also have companies choosing to build facilities where property values are lower and property values are lower in low-income communities, so we’ll see disproportionate placement in those communities. They’ll also choose communities where they won’t get political push back. You’ll see that kind of pattern everywhere. It’s tied to voter disenfranchisement and the lack of political power that communities of color have.

Civil rights isn’t usually one of the first things that come up in discussions about climate change. Why is that?

Clearly, traditional environmental analysis and messaging around climate change has dominated the airwaves. There are more resources for the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation, not to mention folks like Al Gore. With those groups, their focus is on glaciers, flora, fauna and wildlife. That has been the focus of climate change, historically.

When you’re marginalized in one way, you’re marginalized in many ways. The voices of frontline communities, the ones that are most impacted, usually don’t make it to the airwaves. That’s starting to change. Showtime is doing that series, Years of Living Dangerously. When I watch the news, all these different folks were talking about climate change and they were talking about it from a human impact angle. Whether it’s the polar vortex or these storms or wildfires or droughts or flooding or the landslide, all these events are impacting real people, so we’re seeing real dialogue around it.

What has been the significance of environmental disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, in elevating the climate justice angle?

What’s significant about disasters like Hurricane Katrina or even the flooding and tornadoes in Alabama and Mississippi a couple years ago is you start to see the differential impact and the differential response on communities of color. With Hurricane Katrina, it was more a story about the differential response, not as much of a story about climate change. It was before the wave of recognizing where we are in terms of the increase in extreme weather events. As these disasters become more frequent, we’ll see start to see more of an analysis around the differential impact through the lens of climate change.

Your research deals a lot with how climate policy impacts the health of communities of color. Want to talk a little about that?

I will say that the lack of climate policy is affecting health in communities of color. We are making some progress with the rules that are going to be introduced in June for existing coal-fired power plants and the carbon rules that were introduced last year for proposed coal-fired power plants. Just lessening the carbon in the atmosphere will save lives and prevent people from being harmed or sickened by the various impacts of climate change. There’s also the mercury and air toxics rule, which came out years ago, but is just now coming into enforcement. It’s a rule that addresses co-pollutants that come from these facilities, not just carbon dioxide. The same facilities that are driving climate change are also sickening communities with mercury, arsenic, lead and other things being emitted. So, policies that are comprehensive that look at all the ways these facilities are harming communities are important as well.

What we need to be looking at now is being much more aggressive around our emissions targets. We need to face the fact that climate change is here now and we need to pour public money into strengthening community resilience to the impact of climate change. There needs to be more funding for FEMA to do advanced forecasting and planning. Resources need to go to frontline communities so they’re in control of designing and implementing their own resilience plans. We need to think seriously, not just about disasters, which tend to get the most visibility, but also sea level rise and how we’re going to make sure communities are prepared for the waters that are going to overtaking land in parts of Louisiana, Alaska and places in between. But also, before that water overtakes the land and forces people to move, we need to deal with the fact that even right now, as we saw with Superstorm Sandy, storm surges resulting from sea-level rise is making any regular storm seem more intense. We need to be taking all of this into account in our local planning and our resources need to follow that.

We need to make sure that we are building a political system that is more inclusive. Currently, whether its Congress or the courts or the zoning board or the rural electric co-ops or the public utilities commissions, there is underrepresentation for communities that are most impacted by the decisions all of these decision-making bodies make. From litigation to adaptation, we need to make sure we have inclusive bodies that represent the voices of the people as these decisions are being made.

Your work explores the importance of making sure benefits from clean energy are equitable and reach communities of color. Could you talk a little bit about that?

We talked earlier about how 68 percent of African-Americans live within thirty miles of a coal-fired power plant and other frontline communities, such as indigenous Native American communities and Latino communities, are also right in the smog zones of these facilities. Just transitioning to a more energy-efficient economy and clean energy economy would benefit those communities in terms of having clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and clean land to live on. In addition to that, we also want to make sure that those communities are in decision-making spaces as we develop this economy, as well as revenue-generating positions. African-Americans spent $41 million on energy in 2009, but only 1 percent of African-Americans were in energy jobs and less than 1 percent of revenue in the energy sector was earned by African-Americans. Whatever room there is for estimation on either side of those statistics, they’re still fairly stark in saying not only are we being negatively impacted by the current fossil-fuel dominated portfolio, we’re also not even benefiting from the revenue or jobs in that sector, nor are we in positions of being able to have input in how those sectors advance and roll out.

As we transition to a new-energy economy, we need frontline communities, not just communities of color but also low-income communities, to be working in decision-making and revenue-generating positions within the industry.

Obviously your organization is part of this, but how do we get people of color excited and engaged in discussions about climate change?

Communities across the country are already organizing themselves to talk about this — whether its the Eastern Michigan Environmental Action Council in Detroit or the Asia Pacific Environmental Network in the Bay Area — they’re really coming together to talk about, not just the direct impact of climate change but how we need a holistic approach to how we organize our communities and political and economic systems. So we are having, at a local level, conversations about what we want for our communities and how this connects to a bigger picture. We’re talking about how we can be agents of change for our communities and how to connect to the greater landscape.

For example, when we talk about climate change, solutions to climate change, we are talking about green schools, which are more energy efficient, but also make people feel valued through education, retrofitting their school and making it the type of environment they want to work and learn in. We talk about local food movements, which both mitigate climate change, because we’re growing our own food and aren’t relying on trucks for transport, and provide education about climate change. We’re looking at comprehensive, holistic ways of both mitigating climate change and adapting to climate change that helps provide economic, social and cultural benefits to our communities.

Copyright © 2012 The Nation

The Nation, Apr. 22, 2014

By Michelle Chen

Volunteers construct an environmentally friendly home for Central Valley Habitat for Humanity (AP Photo/The Daily News-Record, Nikki Fox)

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is in, reminding us once again that time is running out for governments and industry to decarbonize the economy: within a generation, policymakers must tighten emissions regulations, shift to clean energy sources, promote greener manufacturing and adapt technologies to reverse climate trends and mitigate the ecological impacts. Yet, while the assessment focuses on policy solutions, it leaves open questions about the labor element of climate policy: At the end of the day, the work of transforming how we produce and consume takes human hands. Where are the workers?

Five years ago, “green jobs” were all the rage in Washington. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was rolled out with a win-win agenda aimed at fixing the economy and healing the environment at once. Candidate Obama touted a “blueprint” for a green economy, with plans to create 5 million green jobs.

Then the stimulus sparked hopes of a Green New Deal — direct job creation to transition the workforce to a low-carbon economy, plus industrial policy to drive investment in green infrastructure and solar and wind sectors.

Today, the green has begun to wilt. Although the green technology and energy sectors are still expanding, the administration has offered little beyond the short-lived stimulus package and short-term tax breaks for renewable-energy development and corporate-friendly “public-private partnerships.” The drop in political enthusiasm for green jobs is in part the result of sustained conservative attacks coupled with continuing economic stagnation. Yet the fading of the green agenda’s populist buzz also reflects more profound social challenges in the transition to a cleaner, more sustainable economy.

Though federal green initiatives have provided vital seed money for wind farms and solar-generation projects nationwide, the blue-collar workers who have the most to gain from the projected clean-tech boom are still struggling to find any job, much less a green one.

Of course, green jobs are not the boondoggle portrayed by right-wingers. Solar panel companies and green building firms are hiring people, just not fast enough to dent the unemployment figures. In 2012 and 2013, several hundred projects related to renewables and green infrastructure were announced, potentially generating more than 180,000 green job openings, according to the green-tech advocacy group Environmental Entrepreneurs. But new investments have waned recently, in part due to lags in government supports. For example, many freshly announced new wind projects were halted abruptly in late 2012 when Congress delayed the renewal of a critical wind-production tax credit (goaded by aggressive lobbying from the dirty fuels industry). And the investment climate remains unstable, as another batch of credits remains in limbo for 2014.

Such setbacks demonstrate not only the crucial role of government investment but also the endemic unreliability of capital as the driver of an eco-conscious economic transition.

Capital has failed even more dramatically to match the hype around “green-collar jobs” as an employment program. Overall, even with the expansion of green-oriented businesses in the manufacturing, construction and technology sectors, workers involved in “green goods and services” made up under 3 percent of total employment in 2011. So while green sectors are growing through both public and private investment, green jobs are just one piece of a long-term fight against climate change, and they won’t solve the current unemployment crisis.

Indeed, some environmentalists say that green jobs might have been a more sustainable political venture if they had been more realistically billed as part of a broader climate change policy, not a big jobs booster in a slumped economy.

Jeremy Brecher, co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability, an alliance of environmental and labor organizations, tells The Nation that the stimulus did significantly boost new green energy projects and opened some opportunities for decently paying jobs in sectors like home weatherization.

But after the stimulus ended, those initiatives waned, and the evaporation of the administration’s political and fiscal support, he says, has “left a very bitter taste in the mouth of organized labor, who thought that by cooperating with Obama and environmental movements they would be able to really create substantial jobs for American workers. I think that they feel hung out to dry.”

Still, Brecher attributes the waning of the green jobs push to the same austerity mentality that has hampered other social programs: “It’s not that government can’t do anything, but that certain sectors of our political world have spent thirty years hamstringing and destroying the capacity of government to do anything.”

One political roadblock for green economic development is that the Obama administration oversold green jobs as a social project. Amid the Great Recession, the initiatives were originally framed as a labor-market intervention for communities hard hit by unemployment, with grassroots backing from environmental justice groups like Green For All. These good intentions did not translate into economic revitalization.

Five years on, the workforce programs aimed at low-income and disadvantaged communities have not yet been scaled up to a level that would have an impact on racial disparities in joblessness. As for generating skilled labor, a recent study by the Government Accountability Office found that of the 60 percent of Recovery Act training programs that had run their course by the end of 2012 — supported by some $500 million in stimulus funds — only about half of those trainees had been placed in jobs; many had received only limited skills training and had trouble breaking into recession-battered labor markets in construction and manufacturing.

More broadly, lawmakers have neglected the kinds of infrastructure investments the country needs to really ameliorate unemployment, including green development along with basic public works projects.

According to a 2012 industry analysis by Jobs for the Future, green jobs progress has also been impeded due to mismatching of labor capacity and employer needs. Training programs, researchers found, were sometimes ill-suited for skilled technical positions, and many job openings were concentrated in higher-level production and administrative positions, which were harder for entry-level workers to break into.

The disillusionment with the green jobs hype may have stoked political backlash from labor. The AFL-CIO building-trades department is now pressing for the government to move forward with plans to build the KeystoneXL oil and gas pipeline — directly antagonizing the climate change movement’s central campaign. And resentment has emerged from traditional mining communities against newly proposed environmental regulations on the coal industry, forging awkward common ground with pro-business conservatives.

But if you strip away the ideological polarization, you can start to see where social and environmental principles converge. People are profoundly worried about their futures, and across class and cultural lines, no one wants to see the health and safety of their communities pitted against their economic security. What if we started there: By changing social priorities, rather than twisting the concept of green transition around conventional frameworks of market-driven growth and profit?

The basic idea that the earlier green jobs rhetoric got right was environmental justice. This concept braids social and ecological values into a whole. As Brecher says, “We have a crisis of jobs and inequality… And we have a crisis of the climate, and fortunately, they can both be solved through the same policies.”

Some of those policies are already underway on the community level: Some cities and states have launched long-term municipal bond funding for clean energy, or developed funding programs for energy-efficient building and transit. But a holistic development agenda would incorporate all interests within the social ecosystem for long-term resilience: Curbing air and water pollution, promoting healthier forms of industrial and food production, and using democratic advocacy to advance economic and environmental values in tandem. Instead of letting corporations relentlessly exploit workers and natural resources, expanding public control over land-use, energy sources and industrial policy can help ensure that the sanctity of the commons is prioritized over the predation of capital.

Rather than bean-counting with job statistics and return-on-investment figures, activists can start rethinking green within the context of social protection, and focus on building policies around social equity — from subsidizing green power for low-income households, to shifting jobs from coal plants to the solar panels. Environmentalism can be a populist movement — if the political framing of climate policy centers not on just cutting carbon but cultivating justice.

Copyright © 2012 The Nation