(crossposted from www.climaterealitytour.org)
It’s been an inspiring time here in DC thanks to the Appalachia Rising and the Voices from the Mountains conference. After sharing skills, strategizing, and training all weekend, Monday’s mass action was unbelievably powerful. Readers already know that over 100 were arrested sitting in at the White House to abolish MTR coal.
The whole weekend was extremely powerful. Tears flowed freely from my eyes as a man screamed at the EPA just behind me in the march. “Do your job! Shame on you, EPA! Our people are dying! Do your JOB!” he shouted, his young daughter tethering him back. Moving beyond words.
Coal poisons people and kills the planet. No doubt. Problem is that tens of thousands of us depend on it for work, and ALL of us in the U.S. enjoy products made possible by its contaminating combustion. What’s more, if we’re ever going to get suitable climate legislation, we’re gonna need just these working folks on board demanding sustainability in our economy.
What’s most important is creating the political will. Where will it come from? Last weekend got me re-examining: how will we break our coal addiction and eventually transition off fossil fuels? We’re so far down the rabbit hole, its hard to imagine how the engineers will pull it off. If it’s hard to imagine a technological transition off coal, it’s even harder to imagine that we’ll ever even really try – at the government level. We’ve got to force the government to act if there’s any hope to avert the climate catastrophe. But how? The politics seem so stacked against us.
That’s why one of the main focuses of the Climate Reality Tour is Just Transition for workers in climate-changing industries. As long as working people are afraid that their jobs and ways of life are dependent on fossil fuels like coal, we’re never going to create the sort of coalition we need to pass serious global warming legislation and move towards a climate justice agenda.
The best discussions I had over the weekend were with labor activists who also oppose MTR. These are folks who’ve felt the direct impact of greedy corporations like Massey Energy, subjecting them to treacherous working conditions, in addition to poisoning their water and blasting off their mountains. They’ll be the first to tell you, we have to find a way to win over their colleagues. If we don’t, change will come too late.
That’s why the Climate Reality Tour is so excited to attempt our small part to bridge the gap and help build a working people’s movement for sustainability.
We need a just transition for working people the whole globe over. You can take action by signing our petition and demanding it!
(Thanks to RAN for their flickr photos!)
