The Key to Success for the Environmental Movement Is Through the Labor Movement
By Conor Klerekoper
Published March 3, 2023
Though there is intersectionality between progressive movements within the United States, and across the globe, it is not often that the potential tying of the labor and environmental movements is appreciated. On the contrary, the conversation within progressive circles often addresses two distinct movements, which retain independent goals and rarely move in tandem. The traditional perception is that the labor movement, largely led by unions, has a stated goal of concentrating on climate after people’s material circumstances are addressed, while the environmental movement, on the other hand, declares that the climate crisis is so pressing that an individual’s material circumstances, especially with regards to their work, can take a backseat until global warming is addressed. In actuality, these movements should drive each other, and in fact, desperately need each other.
Throughout the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century, scientists across the globe sounded the alarm of the current climate crisis trajectory and called on the world’s leaders to hold global temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.[1] They warned that, even if countries reached that goal, disastrous global outcomes would still ensue, such as a sea level rise of 50 cm, a 1.65 million-ton decline in marine fisheries, and a 14 percent increase in populations exposed to severe heat at least once every 5 years.[2] A panel of experts has recently stated, however, that there is only a 34 percent chance we can achieve the new global goal of holding the temperature rise to 2 °C.[3] The prospects of keeping the earth a habitable place dwindle by the day, which the environmental movement has been adept at warning the public about. The environmental movement faces many issues in achieving the change they desire on a policy level, three of which are: (1) strong policy to rectify the climate catastrophe fall on deaf ears in an economic and political system driven by profits made by corporations (especially as those profits are often made in ways antithetical to addressing climate change), (2) the “militant enough to sacrifice comfort in the name of addressing climate change” wing of the environmental movement is not large enough to command the internal change needed, and (3) the tactics of the environmental movement have been too passive to truly bring about the change necessary to realign society, corporations, and the government to stop the current trajectory towards an inhabitable planet.
Large sectors of the United States economy, which often have a foothold on electing politicians and the policies they produce, make their exorbitant fortunes through means that greatly exacerbate the climate crisis. The oil and natural gas sector is roughly 8%, or about $2 trillion out of the $25.46 trillion that is the United States’ annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP).[4] The inordinate profit made from this revenue is transferred into national and state policy through vast campaign spending. In 2022, $129 million was contributed by the oil and gas sector to politicians through individual contributions, Political Action Committee contributions, and outside spending.[5] In the same year, oil and gas lobbying reached $124.4 million.[6] There is an established record of oil and gas companies and their think tanks giving proposed legislation to politicians, without the politician and their team changing a single word.[7] This is just one sector of the United States economy whose goals are quite obviously antithetical to the corrective course needed to address climate change. The oil & gas industry illustrates the much larger phenomenon of dirty dollars keeping the earth from becoming clean in the name of constantly growing profits. In reality, industries such as apparel and footwear, which emits 8% of the global carbon emissions, transportation, which emits nearly a quarter of global combustion-based carbon emissions, as well as the food, technology, and agriculture sectors, retain the similar goals and strategies as the oil and gas industry, which ensure meaningful climate policy is not passed.[8]
Corporate spending isn’t the only issue stonewalling the environmental movement. So much of American culture is centered around comfort and consumption. A device controlling humidity in printing press factories transformed into a device providing the perfect comfortable temperature in 87% of American households; rugged and durable clothing used by miners evolved into the staple piece of modern fast fashion centered around comfort. [9] For years, Americans have been “universally preoccupied with meeting the body’s every need and attending to life’s little comforts.”[10] This need for constant comfort is inextricably tied to the transition in the U.S. economy from a country that entered the world stage on military production during the first and second World War[11] to a country in which private consumption accounts for 68.5 of its nominal GDP.[12]
Consumption drives this country’s economy and it determines the social norms that underpin its national identity. This makes it so that even the most well-meaning, socially conscious environmentalists have trouble removing themselves from the consumption habits that aggravate the climate crisis. For example, in 2021, it was reported that there are 163.5 million Amazon Prime users in the United States.[13] On average, a Prime member spends $1400 a year on Amazon products.[14] These products often arrive at your door within two days, with reckless abandon for the harms that expedited transportation imparts on the earth’s lungs.[15] Meanwhile, in stark contrast to the 163 million Amazon prime users, the environmental movement motivates only a fraction of that population to non-violent protest in the name of progressive climate change policy. Even some of the environmental movement’s most successful protests have only brought 20 million people in 1970[16] and an estimated 400,000 people in 2014[17] to the streets for a single day non-violent protest. Even as these events seize the global headlines, many Americans return to consumption as usual after the event has passed and the protest signs have been recycled.
The relative size of environmental movements as compared with those who are willing to break from the mold of consumption culture isn’t the only issue, as the tactics of contemporary climate activists are simply not militant enough to bring about the change needed to counter the climate crisis. A multitude of organizations have brought hundreds of thousands to millions of people to the streets annually to protest in the name of new climate policy.18 Organizations, such as Extinction Rebellion, have engaged in demonstrations blocking traffic[18] and throwing soup on pieces of art, [19] which both have largely gone unanswered on a policy level. Casual correlation would be difficult to tie to these actions, but the analysis is simpler when the Trump Administration not only did not pass progressive environmental policy, but rather retracted many EPA policies, and removed the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement.21 Across the aisle, with regards to the Biden Administration’s tenure, the 117th Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which makes a sizable $270 billion investment in climate action, but the bill falls well short of America’s Paris Climate Agreement commitment, and even shorter of the baseline of what is adequate to preserve climate stability.[20] The bill prevents the Department of the Interior from leasing land for wind and solar energy products without offering 2 million acres of onshore land for oil and gas leases,[21] makes offshore wind leases contingent on holding 60 million acres in offshore lease sales to oil and gas,[22] relies on questionable carbon limiting programs, such as carbon tax credits,[23] and does not address the largest U.S. polluter—the U.S. military.[24] Part of this is because the nature at which the environmental movement has decided the way forward is to cozy up to power, to have a seat in the room where the decisions are made, rather than the adversarial and fervent agitation that is necessary.
In contrast to the current tact, the environmental movement of the 1970s relied on agitation against political power to win policy ground for Mother Earth. After 20 million marched for Earth Day,[25] the Nixon Administration and Congress were largely silent on the environmental movement’s demands, but later that year, Environmental Action named and shamed the 12 most anti-environmental congressman in their “Dirty Dozen” campaign.[26] The public shaming lead to seven of the twelve congressmen being defeated in the midterms.[27] Though Nixon and Congress did not take head of passive protests, they understood the political power of an agitated electorate, and two months later, passed massive and sweeping amendments to the Clean Air Act.[28] In the next five years the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, National Forest Management Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act were passed.[29] These acts fundamentally changed how the United States addressed the climate, and it was won not by passive marches and having a seat next to the government at the table, but wielding environmentally-conscience voting blocks to back the government down into truly addressing the climate crisis.
On the other hand, the labor movement has large numbers of well-disciplined members that can and have acted as voting blocks on a union to union basis.[30] People represented by a union make up 16 million of the United States population, and that number is beginning to increase, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[31] Importantly, unionization and the collective demand of higher wages are growing at such rates that the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, stated that the unprecedented raises in federal interest rates were due to “[t]he labor market [being] extraordinarily strong.”[32]
Not only is union support growing, with U.S. approval of unions at its highest point since 1965, [33] but importantly unions are growing more militant. For example, the Teamsters voted on a new slate of leadership in 2022. The Hoffa-backed leadership, made up of management who favored ratifying contracts that benefited employers against the majority no vote of the rank-and-file, lost out to the militant and ready to agitate reformer, Sean O’Brien.[34] Reformer wins such as O’Brien’s speak to unions’ desire to break from the out-of-touch leadership whose close relationship with employers has compromised labor goals, to one ready to fight. This growth in population size and militancy in the halls of political power is increasingly important in a world in which 24 House races were decided by less than 10,000 votes in the 2022 midterms.[35] The environmental movement should create a tighter relationship with the labor movement, which has demonstrated that it can wield powerful political influence through large voting blocks.
The coalition between the labor and environmental movement could and should demand environmental justice through three key manners: (1) a dismantling of harmful corporate structures that pollute the environment in the form of a power redistribution to the workers, (2) including strong environmental provisions to unions’ collective bargaining agreements, and (3) forcing the hand of politicians running for elected office by withholding the vote.
Unions provide a much-needed avenue for an economic transfer of wealth between the funds that go to a company’s board, shareholders, and beneficiaries of another’s labor towards the workers. Additionally, a union provides a needed voice on how a company functions. By utilizing the force of collective influence, rather than an accumulation of individuals vying for their own interest, a union creates leverage to exert their interests in negotiations with an employer. As such, a strong labor movement moves power in to the hands of workers–and therefore, to people who don’t want pollution in their backyard, and consequently moves power away from profit-driven, greedy corporate interests that retain goals antithetical to fighting climate change. The labor movement, through unions, holds employers accountable and can restrict what they can and cannot do, and as advocated here, that should extend to environmental practices as well.
One of the most important tools of a union, the collective bargaining agreement, is the contract that holds the employer and the union accountable as a result of a successful unionization campaign. As of now, these contracts aren’t used to hold employers truly answerable to their environmentally calamitous practices, but if environmental justice is to be won, this is a crucial piece of the puzzle. This could come in the form of provisions requiring cutting carbon emissions by a select date, utilizing only sustainable environmental practices, operating solely with recycled material, energy consumption and water usage caps, offering remote work options, mandating recycling processes for consumable products, and more. Though shifting culture away from consumption is a daunting task—a vast understatement to say the least—these environmentally-centered policies would work to offset the destruction that is done under current production, manufacturing, and shipping practices that the current consumer culture thrives upon.
Finally, for the climate crisis to sincerely be addressed, the militancy of the labor movement needs to continue to move away from business unionism and towards big voting blocs willing to withhold votes until environmental policy concessions are made on local, state, and federal level. This would look exactly as it sounds—having rank and file members move in collective force to refuse to pledge their vote for candidates until public assurances are made to introduce, support and implement environmental legislation. In withholding their vote, the labor and environmental movement can together leverage close election races to demand environmental policy that fundamentally reorder the direction of the world’s historically largest polluter to one that puts the stability of the global climate as its much-needed number one priority.
ENDNOTES
[1] Emily Chung, There’s a Good Chance We’ll Miss Our Climate Goals. So What’s the Point in Setting Them?, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (last updated Nov. 5, 2021), https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/climate-change-targets-faq-1.6237074.
[2] Id.
[3] Yang Ou, et al., Can Updated Climate Pledges Limit Warming Well Below 2°C?, Am. Ass’n for the Advancement of Science (Nov. 4, 2021), https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl8976.
[4] Am. Petroleum Inst., Oil & Natural Gas Contributions to U.S. Economy Fact Sheet, https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/taxes/oil-and-natural-gas-contribution-to-us-economy-fact-sheet#:~:text=America's%20oil%20and%20natural%20gas,here%20at%20home%20every%20year (last visited: Feb. 5, 2023);U.S. Bureau of Econ. Analysis, Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter and Year 2022 (Advance Estimate), https://www.bea.gov/news/2023/gross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2022-advance-estimate (Jan. 26, 2023).
[5] Open Secrets, Oil & Gas Totals, https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/totals.php?cycle=2022&ind=e01 (last visited Feb. 27, 2023).
[6] Open Secrets, Oil & Gas Summary, https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?cycle=2022&ind=e01 (last visited Feb. 27, 2023).
[7] Rob O’Dell & Nick Penzenstadler, You Elected Them to Write New Laws. They’re Letting Corporations Do It Instead, The Ctr. for Pub. Integrity (Apr. 4, 2019), https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/copy-paste-legislate/you-elected-them-to-write-new-laws-theyre-letting-corporations-do-it-instead/.
[8] Erica Pandey, Retail’s Climate Change Movement, Axios (Sept. 26, 2019), https://www.axios.com/2019/09/26/retailers-amazon-walmart-climate-change-carbon-emissions; Planete Energies, The Global Transportation Sector: CO2 Emissions on the Rise, https://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/close/global-transportation-sector-co2-emissions-rise (Apr. 20, 2020).
[9] Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, Don’t get too comfortable: America’s relentless pursuit of convenience and relaxation, The Boston Globe (May 19, 2018), https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/05/19/don-get-too-comfortable-america-relentless-pursuit-convenience-and-relaxation/liWGIaQgFNWMXVU7Pvl0rN/story.html.
[10] Id. (quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, democracy in America (1840))
[11] Doris Goodwin, The Way We Won: America’s Economic Breakthrough During World War II, The American Prospect (Dec. 19, 2001), https://prospect.org/health/way-won-america-s-economic-breakthrough-world-war-ii/.
[12] CEIC Data, United States Private Consumption: % of GDP, https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/private-consumption--of-nominal-gdp#:~:text=United%20States%20Private%20Consumption%20accounted,an%20average%20share%20of%2063.3%20%25 (last visited: Feb. 6, 2023).
[13] David Chang, The average Amazon Prime member Spends $1,400 a year on the site. How do you compare?, USA Today (Jul. 13, 2022), https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/shopping/2022/07/13/amazon-prime-member-average-spending/50481169/ .
[14] Id.
[15] See Nicole Nguyen, The Hidden Environmental Cost of Amazon Prime’s Free, Fast Shipping, Buzzfeed News (Jul. 21, 2018), https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/environmental-impact-of-amazon-prime.
[16] Sophie Yeo, How the largest environmental movement in history was born, BBC (Apr. 21, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200420-earth-day-2020-how-an-environmental-movement-was-born.
[17] Nick Visser, Hundreds of Thousands Turn Out For People’s Climate March in New York City, Huffpost (last updated Dec. 6, 2017), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peoples-climate-march_n_5857902.
18 See Yeo, supra note 15; Visser, supra note 16.
[18] Mirna Alsharif &Dakin Andone, Climate change protesters with a boat blocked traffic today in New York’s Times Square, CNN (Oct. 10, 2019), https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/10/us/extinction-rebellion-times-square-trnd/index.html.
[19] Jeff Sparrow, If you don’t like climate activists staging art gallery protests, organise something better, The Guardian (Oct. 18, 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/18/if-you-dont-like-climate-activists-staging-art-gallery-protests-organise-something-better.
21 The White House, Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord/ (June 1, 2017).
Baker, Cayli, The Trump Administration’s Major Environmental Deregulations, Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/15/the-trump-administrations-major-environmental-deregulations/ (Dec. 15, 2020).
[20] Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Pub. L. No. 117-169.
Ben King, Hannah Kolus, & John Larsen, A Congressional Climate Breakthrough, Rhodium Group (Jul. 28, 2022), https://rhg.com/research/inflation-reduction-act/.
[21] Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Pub. L. No. 117-169, § 50265(b)(1).
[22] Id. at § 50265(b)(2).
[23] Heather Cooper, et al., Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration Tax Benefits Under the Proposed Inflation Reduction Act, McDermott Will & Emery (Aug. 4, 2022), https://www.mwe.com/insights/carbon-capture-utilization-and-sequestration-tax-benefits-under-the-proposed-inflation-reduction-act/;
Thornton Matheson, Clean Energy Tax Credits Can’t Do the Work of a Carbon Tax, Tax Policy Center, Urban Institute & Brookings Institute (Oct. 5, 2021), https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/clean-energy-tax-credits-cant-do-work-carbon-tax.
[24] Olivia Belcher, et al., Hidden carbon costs of the “everywhere war”: Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot-print of the US military, 45 Transactions of the Inst. British Geographers 65, 65–80 (2019) /;
Paul Griffin, CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017, CDP (Jul. 2017), https://cdn.cdp.net/cdp-production/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1501833772.
[25] See Nguyen, supra note 15.
[26] Rund Abdelfatah, Ramtin Arablouei, & Dennis Hayes, Force of Nature, N.P.R. (Apr. 22, 2021), https://www.npr.org/transcripts/988747549.
[27] Id.
[28] Id.
[29] Id.
[30] See Tova Wang, Union Impact on Voter Participation—And How to Expand It, CNN (Jun. 2020), https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/300871_hvd_ash_union_impact_v2.pdf.
[31] Bureau of Lab. Stat.., Union Members — 2022 (Jan. 19, 2023), https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf.
[32] Mackenzie Hawkins & Craig Torres, Powell Says Further Rate Hikes Needed and Markets Take Heed, Bloomberg (Feb. 7, 2023), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-07/powell-says-further-rate-hikes-needed-amid-strong-labor-market.
[33] Justin McCarthy, U.S. Approval of Labor Unions at Highest Point Since 1965, Gallup (Aug. 30, 2022), https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-highest-point-1965.aspx.
[34] Indigo Olivier, With Reformers Victorious, It’s a New Day for the Teamsters, Jacobin (Nov. 2021), https://jacobin.com/2021/11/teamsters-united-democratic-union-ibt-election.
[35] Politico, 2022 Election Results: Republicans have won the House, regaining control of the chamber for the first time since 2018,, https://www.politico.com/2022-election/results/house/ (last updated Feb. 3, 2023).