Time is running out. The climate crisis is at our doorstep. Communities around the world are already being battered by the earliest effects of the changing climate–superstorms, floods, wildfires and droughts. And still not moving any closer to actualizing the dramatic transformation of our energy systems and economy that we all know are needed to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.
We’re also hearing from a lot of groups who are making big plans to throw down hard for climate justice this fall. Starting on September 20, the students who have been organizing the weekly climate strikes are launching a major strike and week of actions. Then starting on September 27th, Earth Strike is calling for a general strike demanding immediate climate action from governments and corporations worldwide. WeRise2020, a widespread network of climate action groups across Europe is planning on mobilizing alongside EarthStrike starting on September 27th for four to six weeks of escalated actions before pausing to regroup for another wave of action. We’re also hearing that the folks at Extinction Rebellion are working on plans for something big this fall and the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City starting on September 23 offers an obvious venue for confronting political leaders for their failure to take meaningful action to address the climate crisis.
It’s still too early to tell how this is all going to play out but we’re excited to see the energy and activity and we’re ready to throw down. Nobody can afford to sit on the sidelines–the stakes are too high.
We know that the scope and the urgency of the climate crisis demands bold action and we’re inspired to see so many people–and so many new voices–thinking big. We are excited to see people thinking about mobilizing to create serious disruption to the systems that are perpetuating our reliance on fossil fuels and to see people talking about organizing protracted surges of resistance, not just self-contained actions. We’re hopeful that our movements will use this wave of energy to directly confront the root causes of the climate crisis–capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy–and to reject market-driven false solutions.
In the coming weeks and months we’ll be keeping our ears to the ground to find ways that we can plug in. We’ll be checking in with old friends and hopefully hearing from new friends about what folks are planning and where we can show up in the best ways. We’ll be sharing some of our ideas about how we think our movements can make fall 2019 a turning point in the movement for climate justice and we’ll be listening carefully to learn from the other new ideas that are emerging.
Time is running out and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Let’s keep this conversation going, let’s work together to build momentum, and let’s get ready to throw down hard this fall.
Rising Tide is an international, all-volunteer, grassroots network of groups and individuals who organize locally, promote community-based solutions to the climate crisis and take direct action to confront the root causes of climate change. Want to get involved or continue the conversation? Email us at networking@RisingTideNorthAmerica.org.
Eight Arrested in a Violent Show of Force by Police Department in Nonviolent Protest of Proposed Utah Inland Port at Salt Lake City and County Building
Impacted Community Members, Indigenous Leaders, & Environmental Activists Call Out Devastating Impacts of the Inland Port on Public Health, Wildlife Habitats, and Future of Our Planet
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Eight people were arrested and several received a citation at the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce in nonviolent resistance to the proposed Utah Inland Port this afternoon. The protest was a collaboration between the national Earth First! movement and local Utah organizations ICE Free SLC, Civil Riot, the Rose Park Brown Berets, Canyon Country Rising Tide, Utah Against Police Brutality, and Wasatch Rising Tide. A group of five people locked themselves together in the offices of the Chamber of Commerce while people gathered inside and outside of the building chanting and singing in support. Police were called to the scene and responded to the crowd of mostly youth with a violent show of force, shoving people out of the building, grabbing and jostling people, and even punching some people in the face.
The activist groups organized the action and adjacent rally to raise awareness of the devastating public health impacts of the proposed inland port, and its inherent environmental racism and classism, particularly to the communities surrounding the 16,000 acres set aside for the project. These neighborhoods include Rose Park, West Valley City, and Poplar Grove–communities of predominantly poor and low-income Latinx, white, and other people of color who already experience disproportionate pollution, policing, and other forms of disenfranchisement.
“Nonviolent direct action can shine a light on the grave injustice being done by the powerful elite with this destructive development, through the harm it will cause to the surrounding communities, wildlife habitats, and the planet,” said Adair Kovac, one of the protesters and a member of civil resistance group Civil Riot. “The violent response from the police yet again proves that law enforcement serves and protects the wealthy and their property and interests, not the majority of people.”
Grounded in a tradition of Indigenous resistance and Civil Rights movements, the action was an escalation of attempts made by impacted community members to reach Derek Miller, chairman of the Utah Inland Port Authority board, and other wealthy, politically connected stakeholders who support the port. Participants in the action have also testified at public hearings, submitted written comments, and supported the civil suit filed against the port by Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski.
“As Chair of the Port Authority Board, and President of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, Derek Miller has been an enthusiastic supporter of the proposed polluting port. Among the more troubling aspects of his cheerleading is his refusal to acknowledge the harm it will cause, and his habit of dismissing community concerns,” said representatives from Canyon Country Rising Tide.
photo credit: Laura Borealis
Research shows that sea ports and inland ports are enormous emitters of pollution. Ports run on diesel, and diesel emits tons of pollution. Salt Lake City already fails to meet federal air quality standards, and air pollution has led to an increase in health problems and even death of vulnerable community members.
“Historically, communities of color and immigrants on the West Side of Salt Lake have experienced much of the violence committed by the financial and political elite of Utah. Through processes of racist policing, gentrification, deportation, red-lining, and labor abuse, the west side has been continuously exploited for the benefit of those who do not live in our communities,” said Ella Mendoza. “The Inland Port represents a strategic assault on this community, as it is dependent on their displacement and suffering in order to function. Our communities continue to fight back against the racist, exploitative, and oligarchic systems that drive this terror, from the border to the Inland Port.”
The proposal also includes 10,000 acres of undeveloped wetlands adjacent to the Great Salt Lake – and landing place for over 10 million migratory birds each year whose habitat would be disrupted by the air, noise, and light pollution. And based on statements made by the Port Authority Board members who are legislators, the legislation just passed to expand the port authority’s jurisdiction is intended to create fossil fuel transloading hubs in rural communities, which would negatively impact air and water quality in these communities and further incentives to continue chipping away at Utah’s public lands, leading to an increase in fossil fuel-based greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are demanding that the Utah Inland Port project be canceled immediately and that anti-racist, sustainable rewilding alternatives be developed and managed by local communities,” said Eliza Van Dyk, an organizer with Wasatch Rising Tide. “If the polluting port is constructed, Derek Miller will be contributing to climate chaos, sacrificing the future of young people across Utah, and worsening structural and environmental racism in the Salt Lake Valley.
The protesters also drew connections between the development proposal–which is being messaged as an economic opportunity by the state of Utah, Salt Lake City and County councils, CBRE, Rio Tinto, Envision Utah, Savage, the Chamber of Commerce, and others–and the history of colonial violence by white settlers who dispossessed the Ute, Shoshone, and Goshute tribes of their ancestral lands and wreaked havoc on the web of life.
There is little time left for a just transition to a society that respects the planet’s limits and acknowledges the dignity of all beings. People are reclaiming their power and challenging the state and private actors driving our species toward extinction. We will defend our communities. “Our community is rising. Derek Miller and this illegitimate board have the option to stop contributing to climate catastrophe or to confront popular power,” said Maura Sanchez, an organizer with Civil Riot.
They Saved Tens of Thousands of Lives, Then They Lost Their Jobs
This isn’t what a just transition looks like
by Patrick Young
At around 4 am on Friday, June 21, a massive fire and explosion rocked Alkylation unit at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in South Philadelphia. The explosion was so powerful that it shook houses and apartment buildings around West Philadelphia. The ball of fire could be seen for miles, turning the predawn sky orange. As the fire raged, while every human instinct must have screamed to run away from the fire, members of the PES Emergency Response Team (ERT) dropped everything to run toward the fire. They battled the blaze for hours and by 10 am the fire was contained but still burning.
Like anyone who is familiar with refinery operations, Jim Savage, an operator at PES and a union activist immediately turned his thoughts to the ERT writing, “Huge props to our refinery Emergency Response Team. I’ve always questioned their sanity, but their courage and professionalism has never been in doubt. Those explosions were terrifying and I have no idea how we didn’t have injuries or even worse. It’s going to be a long and dangerous day for them, so keep them in your thoughts.”
It took a full day to fully extinguish the fire. The explosion was bad, but it could have been much, much worse. Unit 433, the Alkylation unit where the explosion occurred used hydrofluoric acid (HF) as part of the refining process. HF is by far the most dangerous chemical in the facility and PES’s most recent emergency response plan reported that there were as many as 71 tons of the chemical at the facility. Just after the explosion, the operator on the board at the refinery’s central control room transferred the HF that was in process to another container, preventing a mass release of the chemical.
Hydrofluoric acid is an incredibly dangerous chemical used as a catalyst in some oil refineries (there are inherently safer technologies in use in many refineries but owners of many older refineries, including the PES facility in South Philadelphia have refused to invest in safer systems). HF quickly penetrates human tissue, but it interferes with nerve function so burns may initially not feel painful, giving people a false sense of safety. Once it is absorbed into the blood through the skin it reacts with calcium and can cause cardiac arrest. It volatilizes at a relatively low temperature and travels as a dense vapor cloud — PES reports that the supply of HF stored at the South Philadelphia refinery could travel as far as 7 miles putting as many as a million people at risk.
Seven mile potential vulnerable zone around PES refinery. Source: Google Maps
On June 21, the members of United Steelworkers Local 10–1 on the PES Emergency Response Team and in the refinery’s control room prevented the dozens of tons of HF at the refinery from being released saving tens of thousands of lives.
Then on June 26th, those workers learned that they were losing their jobs. Philadelphia Energy Solutions announced that it was shutting down refinery operations and laying off nearly all of the workers at the refinery within weeks.
Declaring Victory
Philly Thrive, a local environmental group that had been organizing against the refinery for years immediately declared victory, changing the cover photo on its Facebook page to an image with the words “Victory: The largest polluter in Philly is closing” and, in much smaller letters, the words “time for a just transition! #GreenNewDeal.”
To their credit, Philly Thrive did issue a longer written statement on the closure laying out a more detailed set of demands for remediating the site and ensuring that workers’ pensions and healthcare were paid for. But that statement seemed to fall flat with the 1,000 workers — many of whom had just risked their lives to prevent a catastrophe and save tens of thousands of lives — who saw Philly Thrive proudly declaring victory right after they learned that they were losing their jobs.
Tonight, there are a thousand families that are wondering what their futures will look like after the refinery closes. At PES, because of years of union struggle in the oil refining sector, those workers pulled in good, family-sustaining wages. They could own homes, send their kids to college, and plan for a comfortable retirement. But many of their skills are not immediately transferrable to other jobs, and the jobs that are available are largely non-union and pay half of what workers at PES were earning.
This isn’t what a just transition looks like
While the shutdown of the South Philadelphia refinery is unlikely to have any impact on fossil fuel consumption in the eastern United States in the short term — imports of refined gasoline and home heating oil will make up for the lost production — there is a scientific consensus that if we are to have any chance at averting the catastrophic changes in our climate that we are experiencing, we need to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases.
Any sort of transition away from the fossil fuel economy will almost certainly be painful for the hundreds of thousands of workers currently employed in the sector. And there probably is no scenario where the majority of workers would in the fossil fuel industry would enthusiastically embrace such a dramatic change. But abruptly laying off the workers who just ran towards — not away from — danger and saved tens of thousands of lives is probably one of the most unjust transitions those workers could expect to face. Philadelphia Energy Solutions management apparently went as far as violating the federal WARN act by failing to give many of the workers 60-days-notice before unceremoniously escorting them out of the refinery carrying cardboard boxes containing their personal belongings.
Steelworker kids rally to save the South Philly and Marcus Hook refineries in 2012. Source: United Steelworkers Local 10–1
When talking about plant closures and job loss, the climate movement often talks about a just transition. Interestingly, the idea of a ‘just transition’ isn’t an idea to come out of the environmental or climate movement. The term was coined by Tony Mazzocchi, a leader in the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (a predecessor of USW Local 10–1). In the early 1990s as the evidence that carbon in the atmosphere was contributing to climate change, Mazzocchi recognized that although it would be painful for workers, we would soon need to transition our economy away from fossil fuels. He said, “there is a Superfund for dirt. There ought to be one for workers,” proposing significant public investment to support fossil fuel workers who were transitioning out of the fossil fuel industry. When environmental partners suggested that the Superfund for Workers had too many negative connotations, Mazzocchi changed the name of his proposal to a Just Transition.
Since 1993 the term “just transition” has gained traction in much of the climate movement and in parts of the labor movement. While many are comfortable with using it as a vague catch-phrase, workers who are facing job loss have found some urgency in becoming much more specific about exactly what a just transition will look like. In the lead up to the 2015 UNFCCC talks in Paris, the International Trade Union Confederation published a five-point framework for what a just transition means:
1. Sound investments in low?emission and job-rich sectors and technologies. These investments must be undertaken through due consultation with all those affected, respecting human and labour rights, and Decent Work principles.
2. Social dialogue and democratic consultation of social partners (trade unions and employers) and other stakeholders (i.e. communities).
3. Research and early assessment of the social and employment impacts of climate policies. Training and skills development, which are key to support the deployment of new technologies and foster industrial change.
4. Social protection, along with active labour markets policies.
5. Local economic diversification plans that support decent work and provide community stability in the transition. Communities should not be left on their own to manage the impacts of the transition as this will not lead to a fair distribution of costs and benefits
The shutdown of the South Philadelphia refinery was not preceded by investment in clean energy jobs (Principle 1) or early warning, training and skills development (Principle 2). Social protections have failed workers in Philadelphia as many were not even given the federally-required 60-day WARN notices and payments (Principle 4) and this shutdown comes at a time when the Philadelphia government is pushing expansion in an east-coast energy hub, not supporting local economic diversification (Principle 5). While environmental activists from organizations like Philly Thrive have issued sweeping demands for comprehensive transition programming there does not appear to be any indication that workers at the refinery were meaningfully involved in the crafting of that platform (Principle 2).
The shutdown of the South Philadelphia refinery failed badly on all five of the ITUC’s Just Transition Principles.
Where to go from here
The situation in South Philadelphia is bad and there isn’t anything that is going to make things okay for the 1,000 workers and their families who are struggling to imagine what their futures might look like. There are, however, some things that could help keep the situation from getting worse.
Everyone in the environmental community who celebrated the closure of the facility should be ready to campaign just as hard to demand that the Carlyle group, Energy Transfer Partners and PES’s other investors aren’t able to make off with the $1.25 billion insurance payments the company is poised to collect in the aftermath of the explosion just to leave workers and the community holding the bag. Workers and the community need to be first in line to collect whatever is left over to provide severance, healthcare, and to clean up the site that has been badly contaminated by over 150 years of oil refining.
Right now there is no superfund for workers, but there is a transition program that can be adopted for these workers. Because the lost production at the South Philadelphia refinery will be replaced with refined gasoline and home heating fuel imports, workers at the facility should be eligible for TAA benefits, which could provide urgently needed funds to support job retraining and extended unemployment. Supporting workers’ TAA petition should be a top priority of anybody who is concerned about a just transition at this facility.
Going forward, bold proposals like the Green New Deal start the ball rolling on an incredibly important discussion about building the clean energy infrastructure that we need to have a just transition away from fossil fuels. But we need to make sure that the workers and communities who are at the front lines of this transition are not left behind and have an opportunity to be a core part of the process. The workers at the South Philadelphia refinery risked their lives and saved thousands of lives on June 21. They didn’t cause that disaster and they deserve a much more just transition.
Water Protectors Lock Down to Stop Line 3 Construction, Powerlines Built for Tar Sands Pipeline Through Army Corps Land as Enbridge Seeks Water Crossing Permits
(Park Rapids, MN) This morning, water protectors supported by Ginew Collective, Northfield Against Line 3 and others halted work at an active construction site on the proposed Line 3 route. Three water protectors locked themselves to logging equipment while over a dozen concerned citizens rallied in support.
Great River Energy, Enbridge’s named utility provider for numerous pump stations it needs to power its tar sands pipeline, is logging through water crossings and wetlands next to the Line 3 route.
Enbridge has significant unmet energy needs to power the Line 3 route, and notes its partnership with Great River Energy in its application to the Army Corps of Engineers to bulldoze through wetlands and water crossings. Great River Energy specifies in its Army Corps application that it is building the electric transmission line to power Enbridge’s pipeline unbuilt pump station.
Minnesota has not issued the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) or DNR permits required for Line 3 construction across wetlands or water crossings. Minnesota announced the 401 water quality certification process will not be complete until fall 2019.
“Enbridge pretends to follow the process while it is busy bulldozing through our forests and wetlands,” said Frances Weatherall while locked to logging equipment.
“This is a years-long plan to send more dirty tar sands through Minnesota, don’t be fooled into thinking they won’t destroy as much as they can while they wait for their final state permits,” said Mollie Weatherall, locked with her sister on the same machine.
Jonas, who was also locked to a machine said, “This is a step towards decolonization, Enbridge is carving up the planet and our government doesn’t care. Today it’s my turn to put my body between the planet I want to protect and the attacks against our water, our climate, and Native sovereignty.”
