The recent decision by TATA to close down its two blast furnaces at Port Talbot steel works over the coming year, with loss of around 2,800 jobs, is a devastating blow to both the workers and to their wider community.
What is happening in Port Tabot is precisely the âcliff edgeâ of sudden mass redundancies, the threat of which is often ruthlessly weaponised to create opposition to climate action
But despite the rhetoric about decarbonisation, TATAâs decision to shut down the blast furnaces ahead of starting production with an electric arc furnace is based purely on financial not climate considerations.
Their decision not to install the additional technologies needed for low carbon primary steel production (as opposed to recycling) is not a decarbonisation plan, but a business plan.
In contrast to this disaster, a worker-led, socially just transition plan would determine the most effective way to decarbonise across the economy, whilst meeting the immense labour needs of new or growing sectors vital to the transition.
It would do this whilst fully protecting the pay and conditions of all workers affected by technological transitions, whether work is currently available for them or not, as well as during any re-training.
The level of coordination and planning required across numerous sectors is not possible within the context of private companies vying for markets, but implies a need for public ownership of key industries, with full worker participation in planning, and delivery overseen by a public National Climate Service.
Below is a motion of support for the TATA steelworkers written for urgent adoption by union branches, regions and trades councils.
A âhistoric agreementâ? COP28 was the first such summit in three decades of UN climate negotiations to agree the necessity of moving away from fossil fuels. Which frankly says more about the failures of the process as a whole than the success of COP28. So what are the key outcomes from Dubai that we need to understand?
The final text, the âGlobal Stocktakeâ did not in the end agree the âphase outâ of fossil fuels which more than 100 countries had called for, with oil producing nations, notably Saudi Arabia, implacably opposed. Instead, it called on countries to contribute to global efforts to transition âaway from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the scienceâ.
The overwhelming message from Global South countries was that while language might be significant, at COP28 it was much less important than the failure of richer nations to put money on the table. Poorer countries face three overwhelming costs they are unable to meet without this:
Adaptation: In a heated and unstable world, preventative investment in climate-resilient food production, coastal flood adaptation, management of scarce water resources, etc., is essential. But climate finance for this has been minimal. The adaptation finance gap is estimated at $194-366 billion. At COP28 an adaptation framework was agreed but not the money needed to deliver.
Loss and damage: Extreme weather events are increasingly causing severe losses, and those in poorer countries who have done least to cause the climate crisis are least able to bear the cost. At COP27, countries finally agreed to set up a fund to pay for this loss and damage, after a 30-year fight led by small island states and developing countries. On the very first day of COP28, the fund was formally adopted, and by the end of COP28 $770m had been pledged. Some countries, such as the UK, re-pledged funding already announced. Notably the US pledged a measly $17.5m. By comparison, estimates for the annual cost of climate damage have varied from $100bn-$580bn - the fund so far covers less than 1% of what is needed.
Transition: Richer nations built their economies on exploiting fossil fuels. The Paris agreement includes a commitment from developed countries to transfer funds not just for adaptation to climate impacts but so that poorer countries are able to develop without reliance on fossil fuels and meet their emissions targets. The commitment to provide $100bn a year by 2020 has not been met. The governments of countries such as Uganda say they cannot be expected to forgo the billions that exploiting their oil reserves would bring in when no alternative funding is forthcoming. Many countries are locked in a debt trap, forced to keep drilling to service their debts. 'Climate finance' as further loans is a bitter irony.
There are clear loopholes in the text, such as the call for the acceleration of carbon capture & storage, a technology which is unproven and expensive but can be used as a fig leaf for fossil fuel expansion. âTransitional fuelsâ are ârecognisedâ for ensuring energy security, a clear reference to the idea that gas could be used as a âbridge fuelâ - which is not compatible with staying below 1.5C.
COP28 was supposed to finalise rules on carbon markets (Article 6). However, talks ended in deadlock. Despite multiple scandals around carbon trading, the US had been pushing for âlight touchâ regulation, which would allow secrecy and potentially double counting of emissions cuts. This was blocked by countries demanding greater scrutiny as well as human rights and environmental safeguards. However this leaves the existing âvoluntaryâ carbon market unregulated for at least another year.
When it comes to climate breakdown, the bottom line is not politics but physics, which is not affected by words but only by the reality of cumulative global greenhouse gas emissions which continue to rise. The nations facing the most immediate existential threat, the Alliance of Small Island States, were clear in their statement, âIt is not enough for us to reference the science and then make agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do. This is not an approach that we should be asked to defend.â
The annual UN climate summit, COP28, arrives as 2023 is set to be announced the hottest year the planet has ever experienced. Accumulated heat in the oceans and on land has driven a series of climate disasters and the urgency of the crisis has never been greater - but still the fossil fuel industry is determined to block action.
COP28 is hosted by the United Arab Emirates. The COP President, Sultan Al Jaber, is CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, planning a massive expansion of its own oil and gas production (the biggest expansion of any single company), and UAE is reportedly planning to use the summit as an opportunity to strike oil and gas deals. COP28 will see record numbers of fossil fuel lobbyists, as well as representatives of other polluting industries - and of course government delegations who are closely linked to vested interests. Greenwash measures such as carbon capture and storage are expected to be heavily pushed.
The UK government is deliberately blocking the path to a green transition, intending to grant over 100 new oil and gas licenses and giving consent for the massive Rosebank oil field which would generate more CO2 emissions in total than the 28 lowest-income countries do in a year.
Rishi Sunak even boasted in his speech at COP28, âWeâve scrapped plans on heat pumps and energy efficiency, which would have cost families thousands of pounds,â showing a remarkable lack of shame about his backtracking and his ignorance that these measures are essential to actually cut energy bills.
Climate finance for climate justice
Last yearâs COP27 saw a crucial victory for countries on the frontline of climate breakdown. After decades of blocking by rich nations, a Loss and Damage Fund was finally agreed for countries most affected by climate change to cover devastating impacts like flooding and drought. The fund was formally set up at the start of COP28. For the first four years it will be hosted by the World Bank, a temporary arrangement reached in negotiations against the wishes of countries in the Global South who wanted an independent body to control the fund under the UN. The World Bank model is based on loans not grants, and is not set up to allow rapid access to funds after climate disasters. They also fear the dominance of the US over World Bank decision-making.
The history of climate finance has not encouraged trust. In 2009 in Copenhagen, rich nations pledged to provide US$100 billion a year to less wealthy nations by 2020, to help them adapt to climate change and develop sustainably. That target was not met in 2020. It was claimed to have been reached in 2023. However, analysis by Oxfam found that the majority of climate finance was in the form of loans to be repaid. Project funding which was not genuinely climate-related was also included - leaving the real value of funding just a fraction of the claimed total.
Take action
Communities and activists around the world will take to the streets on 9 December for the Global Day of Action. You can find events near you here.
In June the motion will be voted on at BFAWU conference and Unison conference (see agenda pdf download, p83 onwards for the motion as adapted by NEC and brought by branches)
The motion has been passed at PCS conference, May 2024
It has been passed at the NEU conference, April 2024 (amended text here)
Background to motion
Below and in printable form is a General Motion intended for wide circulation across the trade union movement, and adoption by branches, regions, trades councils and annual conferences, with an ultimate aim for it to be heard at the 2024 TUC.
The motion is deliberately pitched at a high level, starting with the basic assertion that climate change is a class issue and a trade union issue. It sets out the fundamental elements that should underpin the climate policies of every union in order to achieve a common understanding of the crisis, and how to respond to it in the interests of climate justice for workers, public service and the planet. Many of these elements will already be clearly understood, but there is a need for a consistent and coherent articulation of these across the movement.
The reason this General Motion is being raised now is due to the fragmented and inconsistent responses of different trade unions, within unions, and between members and their leaderships. In particular, the climate-related motions passed at recent Trades Union Congresses have been deeply regressive, producing a narrative that runs counter to the long term interests, and job security, of workers, both in the U.K. and globally. This motion seeks to redirect that narrative towards more progressive and radical solutions that will produce and secure thousands of jobs, restore a public service ethos, and make genuine progress towards countering the climate emergency.
Adaptations to the motion are welcomed to incorporate specific local, sectoral or international factors; the motion needs to be relevant to each constituency while ensuring that the fundamental elements are retained. It purposely avoids specific references in order to be universal, and it is envisaged that details of specifics would be covered in complementary motions.
Finally, this motion is not viewed as the property of any one union, climate organisation or political faction. It has emerged from a common analysis among activists across a number of trade unions, many of whom are also involved with the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union group (CACCTU), Greener Jobs Alliance (GJA) and other climate networks.
We stand with millions around the world calling for:
Ceasefire now. An end to the siege on Gaza: safe water, food, fuel, and medicine now.
Release all hostages and all Palestinian political prisoners being held illegally.
An end to Israel's occupation and work towards a just peace
We are horrified at the ongoing suffering and condemn all attacks on civilians and collective punishment. We also look to a just solution to the conflict, based in human rights for all, and addressing Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land, apartheid policies and permanent sieges of Gaza and West Bank, which have limited access for Palestinian people to agricultural lands, clean water and fuel.
We stand with millions around the world calling for:
Ceasefire now. An end to the siege on Gaza: safe water, food, fuel, and medicine now.
Release all hostages and all Palestinian political prisoners being held illegally.
An end to Israel's occupation and work towards a just peace
We are horrified at the ongoing suffering and condemn all attacks on civilians and collective punishment. As trade unionists we also look to a just solution to the conflict. Many of the unions we belong to have policy which opposes Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land, apartheid policies and permanent sieges of Gaza and West Bank, which have limited access for Palestinian people to agricultural lands, clean water and fuel.
We're joining a protest at the Home Office this Saturday 4th November, following Suella Braverman's inflammatory speech at the Conservative Party Conference where she suggested that the UK was facing a 'hurricane' of migration and that the government's policy on immigration had been hampered by being 'far too squeamish about being smeared as racist'.
What are the links between refugees and climate change?
An obvious connection is that people are forced to leave their home by climate breakdown. Most starkly, the very existence of Pacific island states is at risk from rising sea levels. In recent years, we have seen a regular series of climate disasters around the world, extreme weather events which would have been unlikely or impossible without fossil-fuelled climate breakdown. These can force thousands, or even hundreds of thousands from their homes temporarily. But the destruction of homes and livelihoods mean not all can return. Changing weather patterns also cause less visible changes: repeated crop failures from drought, floods or both; rising sea levels causing salinisation of farmland.
Some areas, such as the Sahel region of Africa, face both climate change and armed conflict. Exacly how resource scarcity and conflict are linked is debated, but one thing is clear: this is a deadly combination. From Honduras to Afghanistan, from South Sudan to the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar now in Bangladesh, climate breakdown exacerbates situations of violence and inequality. And consistently, those who have done least to cause the climate crisis are suffering worst from its impacts.
Another link is that both immigration and climate action are being used by this government to in an attempt to stoke a 'culture war' ahead of the 2024 general election. This has led to complete abandonment of rational policy-making. Braverman's plans for asylum-seekers, including deportation to Rwanda, combine cruelty with sky-high costs to taxpayers and as a whole are widely considered unworkable. On climate change Sunak is wooing backbenchers and right-wing media by taking a wrecking ball to the political consensus on the UK's legally binding climate targets, ignoring not just climate scientists but industry experts, businesses and public opinion polls.
PCS Union was closely involved with developing the original One Million Climate Jobs campaign. As climate disasters intensify, global emissions rise, and the gap widens between UK climate targets and effective polices to achieve them, the need is greater than ever for a comprehensive climate jobs plan to cut emissions across all sectors. For PCS, we know this necessary transformation cannot be implemented effectively as the Civil Service is not designed to deliver a long term plan that requires the greatest degree of cross departmental working. That is why we have proposed the National Climate and Biodiversity Service, which would join together all net zero work in the UK Civil Service so that government operates as a coherent whole.
Faced with the government's backtracking, driven in part by misguided electoral calculations (as part of their war on woke and the alleged war on the motorist), we must redouble our efforts. Both in the trade unions and in the climate change movement we need to work together convince workers and the public that the government is wrong, but also to take the necessary actions to get this government and any future ones to adopt the right polices.
The full text of the new pamphlet is below, you can also
National Climate Change and Biodiversity Service: A PCS workersâ plan for an alternative civil service
The era of global warming has ended and âthe era of global boiling has arrivedâ, the UN secretary general, AntĂłnio Guterres, has declared.
In those circumstances, the notion that it is business as usual for the Civil Service or society as a whole, clearly is not sustainable. There needs to be a radical overhaul of how the UK Civil Service works. This would only be one element in the solution â you still need political will and a plan â but without effective state mechanisms there is no hope in ensuring net zero.
Sunak's dangerous backtracking on policies for net zero, in a craven attempt to win votes for an unpopular Tory government, is a disaster for the planet and does nothing to tackle the cost of living crisis. Every trade unionist should challenge and join campaigners in opposing this.
Sadly there is nothing new in backtracking on climate pledges from the Tory party in government. But we should expect different from trade trade union leaders.
This summer has shown the devastating impacts of climate change. Several thousand lives have been lost in Libya as a result of the most serious climate event to date, yet senior trade union figures are arguing for more fossil fuel extraction in the name of defending jobs.
Both GMB General Secretary Gary Smith and Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham want the Labour Party to reverse its decision not to grant new licences for extracting oil and gas from the North Sea.
Gary Smith claims âWeâve cut carbon emissions by decimating working class communitiesâ. This is nonsense. Mining communities were destroyed for economic reasons and to break one of the best organised trade unions in Britain. It was not to reduce carbon emissions. British pits were considered uneconomic and were replaced with cheaper imported coal. The years of austerity and falling real wages account for what has happened since.
Allowing uncontrolled climate change would be the ultimate assault on working class communities in Britain and across the world. That is why we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels in a way that protects workers rather than the profits of the fossil fuel companies.
The science is absolutely clear. The more carbon and other greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere, the greater global warming, and the more devasting the impact on the climate and our lives.
We already know that climate events happen with little or no warning and can have a catastrophic consequences for those impacted. People can lose not just their jobs, but also their homes and even their lives.
Far from defending jobs, demanding new licences for another 30 years of even more carbon emissions actually puts jobs at greater risk of coming to an abrupt end, either from climate events or their economic consequences.
Our Climate Jobs report, 'Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency' shows that to successfully transition away from fossil fuels it will be necessary to recruit, train and deploy many more workers than those currently working in fossil fuel related industries. It will take time to do this so we need to start now.
Instead of pandering to the interests of the fossil fuel industry and its Government supporters, the trade union movement must use its full weight to demand that employers and Government urgently create and invest in the climate jobs and the just transition that we need to secure the future of us all.
If you want to campaign for urgent climate action within the trade union movement as well as jobs, then join us.
This Tuesday, it's Shell's AGM in London. If you can, do come and join the protest:
When: 23 May, from 9am
Where: ExCel London, Royal Victoria Dock, 1 Western Gateway, London E16 1XL
They will be celebrating their obscene profits - ÂŁ7.6 billion over the first three months of 2023, almost ÂŁ1000 every second - and obscuring the truth about the impact on people and the planet with greenwash.
So lets get our facts straight about Shell and their corporate cronies:
1. We can't afford any new fossil fuel infrastructure
Climate scientists have been warning for years that we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. In 2021, even the International Energy Agency did the maths and concluded there could be no new fossil fuel infrastructure. But fossil fuel companies and governments never got the memo. They continued drilling, building pipelines and exploiting new fossil fuel fields. Analysis last year found just eight oil and gas companies to be involved in over 200 expansion projects
2. Shell and other companies are making record-breaking profits because the rest of us are getting poorer
Last year, the Westâs five largest oil and gas companies, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies made $134 billion in excess profits, (profits in addition to what they would normally expect). These profits came from higher energy bills, taken from households and from businesses which then passed on the higher costs to consumers. The cost of living crisis in the UK is part of a wider global crisis caused in large part by energy companies profiteering from the war in Ukraine.
3. The UK's planned North Sea oil and gas expansion would be a climate disaster
4. Fossil fuel expansion doesn't help workers or those of us struggling with the cost of living.
Can North Sea oil and gas help with UK energy bills? No - the vast majority of what will be produced is oil, not gas, and will be owned by the companies extracting it and exported. Longer explanation here.
But will it help the UK economy? Also no. The windfall tax ('energy profits levy') which Rishi Sunak brought in last year came with a giant loophole - a tax break for oil companies opening up new fields for drilling. For Rosebank, this would mean UK taxpayers handing back ÂŁ3.75 billion.
A just transition is possible. Recent research by Platform and Friends of the Earth Scotland with oil and gas workers sets out their concerns about working conditions, fears for the future, and what they need for a just transition: making it easier for oil and gas workers to move into the renewable industry; ensuring safety, job security and fair pay across the energy industry; new public owned energy companies and a tax regime that works for the public good.
5. Greenwash enables destruction.
Companies like Shell and BP produce a barrage of advertising on social media and elsewhere, with prominent photos of wind turbines and solar panels. But in 2021 Shell invested just 1.5% of its total capital expenditure ($244 million out of ÂŁ19.7 billion) in wind and solar.
So what makes up the rest of its so-called 'Renewables and Energy Solutions' expenditure ($2.4 billion in 2021)? Analysis by Global Witness revealed this included not just 'solutions' such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen and carbon offset projects but also marketing and trading of fossil gas.
Government subsidies are also being diverted to false solutions. A recent leaflet produced by our trade union group sets out the facts behind the greenwash around carbon capture, hydrogen and biomass in the UK.
We have also increasingly seen the capture of UN climate negotiations by fossil fuel interests and consequent greenwash - a huge concern for this year's COP28 to be held in UAE. (more detail here)
