The Injustice of Carbon Offsets Offset Schemes Require the Poorest to be Twice Burdened

The science of climate change is now clear, but the politics is very muddy. Historically, the major polluters were the rich, industrialised countries, so it made sense that they should pay the highest price. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in December 1997, set binding targets for these countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions by 5 per cent on average against 1990 levels by 2012. But by 2007, America’s greenhouse-gas levels were 16 per cent higher than 1990 levels. The American Clean Energy and Security Act, which was passed in June, commits the US to reduce emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020, yet this is just 4 per cent below 1990 levels. Continue reading

Eight Hours for What We Will!

Unions: The Folks Who Brought You the Weekend

That phrase by far, remains one of the most popular modern slogans created by the union movement:

No surprise. We all love weekends. But getting the weekend meant winning the right to an eight-hour day—and that took decades to win, with much blood lost and many deaths along the way. Continue reading