Published February 28, 2019 by DSA Humankind has reached a moment of existential crisis. Human activity is causing disastrous climate disruption and Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, triggering critical losses of biodiversity. We are already locked in for global warming that will have catastrophic effects, and we are on a slippery path to our own extinction. The 2018 Special Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on …
8 cities share how racial justice is embedded into their climate plans
By Jesse Klein, Green Biz, July 20, 2020 As COVID-19 rampages through vulnerable minority populations with tragic consequences, and protests for racial justice surge among a similar demographic, city climate planners see a renewed focus on climate justice. The pandemic, in some ways, has been a trial run for the anticipated coming impacts of climate change — a not-so-distant future in …
How Can We Help The Unemployed Get Good-Paying Work, Advance Toward A Green World, And Get More Workers Into Unions? We need a new WPA
By Max Page, Labor Notes.July 13, 2020 | CREATE! And at the same time rebuild what has been shattered by two generations of neoliberal attacks—a belief that government’s role is to build a more just society? A 21st century WPA. In the Great Depression of the 1930s the Works Progress Administration was one of the main New Deal agencies that put millions of unemployed …
The racial gap in pollution exposure is high. And the same communities are suffering from much higher COVID death risk.
Jul 1, 2020 – Energy & Environment on Axios, by Ben Geman, author of Generate Counties that score in the top 20% nationally on 8 or more of EPA’s 11 environmental risk measures have had an average COVID-19 death rate (through June 23, 2020) of 60 per 100,000 (Figure 4). In contrast, those counties that scored in the top 20% on 2 …
Worldwide and EU Green New Deal Stimulus Policies
First Wave of Announcements Germany has unveiled a EUR 130 billion (USD 145.8 billion) stimulus package, with at least EUR 40 billion in climate-related investments for the restructuring of its automotive and energy industries. Notably, the package does not include a “buyer’s premium” for combustion engine vehicles, with increased subsidies for electric vehicle (EV) purchases instead. The package includes further investments …
Public works and jobs are a way forward, on a city level if not federally
Some cities and states are looking toward a simple solution to mass unemployment: Hire workers directly. NYTimes, June 22, 2020 By David McCabe, June 22, 2020 WASHINGTON — The governor of Pennsylvania wants to hire unemployed workers to help the state track the spread of the coronavirus in the fall. City Council members in Austin, Texas, voted to pay people to …
Customers with rooftop solar lower the system peak demand, thus reducing the need for costly generation and transmission capacity: Rooftop solar is worth 24¢/kWh in Michigan study. Incentives for daytime use (time of renewables or real-time TOU) are needed
Articles by Will Driscoll in PV Magazine https://pv-magazine-usa.com/author/william-l-driscoll/ Rooftop solar is worth 24¢/kWh in the Michigan territory served by Consumers Energy, well above the 14¢ to 17¢/kWh that the utility’s net metering customers currently receive for the electricity they send to the grid. The Solar Energy Industries Association’s Director of Rate Design Kevin Lucas presented that finding in testimony in a Consumers …
“We’re running out of time and options, unless we immediately and fundamentally transform our relationship with Nature” to relationship and respect instead of monetization and extraction. Indigenous Principles of Just Transition
From Cultural Survival – May/June 2020 Proven stewards of global biological and cultural heritage, the Indigenous Peoples have sustained respectful and reciprocal relationships with the natural world without undermining its life-sustaining functions for millennia. Despite the unrelenting assault of the “developed” world on the living planet, more than a quarter of the global land area continues to be traditionally owned, managed, or used …
A European Green Deal
Striving to be the first climate-neutral continent green_deal_proposal Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. To overcome these challenges, Europe needs a new growth strategy that transforms the Union into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 economic growth is decoupled from resource …
Predictable and Possible
By Shailly Gupta Barnes, Policy Director, Kairos Center and Policy Lead with the Poor People’s Campaign Kairos Center monthly Policy Briefings highlight analysis informed by the 140 million people who are poor and dispossessed in this country, and their struggles against systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy. They will also challenge the false narratives that uphold unjust economic …