 Okay. Welcome to the third and final of the series of Exploring Climate Strategies series of webinars centered around the book Against Doom. And we're having these conversations to try and figure out how can we put together strategy and organize to protect our climate and raise up justice in the process. Tonight we're talking about Just Transition. Very excited to have Richard Lipsitz, who will talk a little bit later from Western New York area AFL-CIO, which he's the president, but they've done an amazing win-win experiment that he'll talk about a little bit later. And then we also have Jeremy Brecker, the author of Against Doom. And I'll say a little bit more about him, but just a couple notes before we go into the discussion, which is there's a study guide if you want to either read the book or watch the webinars and pull together a group, have a discussion at the bottom of the YouTube video that you're watching now. This video will stay up there as a permanent resource. You can download the guide, pull together a group and have a discussion group. Also the publisher, PM Press, has said that if people want to get five copies or more, they'll give them half off. And you can get the information there also on the YouTube. And this series of talks is brought to you by the Labor Network for Sustainability and 350.org. And Jeremy Brecker's got to kick us off. And I'm just talking with Richard, both of us, when we were young, read his labor history, the classic labor history strike. That's about the history of working people organizing. And that's how I, part of how I learn how ordinary people, when they get together and organize, can actually change the world and change their situation. And Jeremy's both a historian, but he's also writes about social movements, and he's also a participant. And this latest book he's done against doom, it's interesting. And as a historian, Jeremy, you kind of look back. But with this book, you're kind of looking around you and seeing what's going on to address climate protection and weaving it together into what could be a viable strategy. And then I'm not sure what you call it when a historian starts to look into the future, but I think that's the intention here. And so let's, without any further ado, hear from Jeremy talking about how Just Transition fits into this. Jeremy? Great. Thanks very much. And I want to thank both David and Emily, who's running the controls or women in the controls and 350 and my organization, the Labor Network for Sustainability for sponsoring this series of webinars. And I also very much want to thank Richard Lipsitz for being here with us and telling his quite extraordinary story of a project that he's been involved with, which we'll hear more about shortly. In the first two webinars, we talked overall about the strategy of what I call climate insurgency and about the public trust doctrine and the recently established right to a stable climate that have actually both been laid out by a federal judge and Aiken in a recent case. And these are very important aspects of how we go about challenging climate change and challenging the institutions and the corporations and the governments that are preventing us from making the transition we have to make to climate safe energy. But today, we're going to talk about one of the key problems that we all face when we start doing campaigns for shutting down power plants, for not building new pipelines, for legislation, to move to a climate safe economy and climate safe energy system. The the problem and this is the problem that many, many people fear that making that transition is going to threaten their jobs, their way of life, their livelihoods and their communities. And that is something that is played up by the fossil fuel companies who are always saying almost as a mantra that it's a question of jobs versus the environment. And if we protect the environment and protect the climate, we're going to be facing devastating economic consequences. And of course, this particular kind of scare was central to the campaign of President Trump and central to the argument that he makes for going all out to expanding fossil fuel production and use. And so part of the struggle that we need to engage in is not just telling people the obvious reality that climate change threatens us all, but also to begin laying out an answer to the question, well, yes, but what's going to happen to my job? If we abandon fossil fuels, I work in a coal mine, I work in a power plant, but also I work in a factory or an office or any kind of enterprise that is dependent on electricity and other things that are largely produced by fossil fuels. So we whether we're coming from the labor movement or from the environmental side, or some of us who come from both need to take head on the question of how do we protect working people from the possible consequences of a transition to a safe climate, safe energy system. I'm going to talk about three dimensions of this. One is countering present injustice. The second is making the transition to a fossil free energy system worker friendly and worker safe. And the third is more short term in terms of our current campaigns be they around pipelines, power plants or alternative energy systems that will allow us to have energy without destroying the environment and destroying our communities. How do we protect workers in fossil fuel shutdowns? So why don't I just start by talking about the transition to fossil free energy as an opportunity to counter the inequality, injustice and discrimination that our society has in such extreme form now, and that in the Trump era, we are moving towards even more protest forms of inequality, injustice and discrimination. This is a topic that we could talk about for a long time, and I've written about it a lot. You'll find a lot about it on the website of Labor Network for Sustainability. But just to hit a few of the key things that we need to include in our vision and our plans and our legislation for climate protection. First of all, we were facing a situation where large parts of the population are excluded from the labor market, either entirely or excluded from the better jobs and forced to work in the worst paid, most menial and most insecure ones. And one of the great things that's going to happen as we make the transition to climate safe clean energy is that it's going to open a huge number of jobs, which if we insist that they're quality jobs and insist that they're made available to those who most need them because they've been excluded from the labor movement or discriminated against in the labor movement. This is a tremendous opportunity to begin rectifying the core discrimination and inequality that is as former President Obama said, the critical issue of our era. It's also an opportunity to begin remedying the horrible pollution of environmental justice communities of poor communities of color, inner city communities, in some cases, impoverished rural communities where the most destructive effects of fossil fuels and asthma is the one that comes immediately to mind are unjustly and unfairly concentrated. And we need to make the starting place for where we start shutting down the fossil fuel energy system and replacing it with a clean safe energy system. Start out in those places that are most devastated by the local pollution that comes out of those power plants and mines and other fossil fuel facilities. We also need to have in mind the protection of low income utility consumers. Many, many people face the choice of paying for their heat or paying for their rent, or if their heat is part of their rent and their cooling is part of their rent. It's a huge part and it's a huge part of the housing and energy poverty that a substantial proportion of people, especially in inner city area space. And we need to, as we make a transition to clean energy, we need to make sure that there are programs such as maximum energy payments or what sometimes called lifeline utility rates that provide, for example, that no one should pay more than 30% of their housing cost for their utilities energy needs. And again, we'll find very concrete proposals for how to do that. And there are places that are actually developing that kind of program at a state and municipal level. We also have total injustice in our other social services like transportation, housing and the like that discriminate against poor people against people of color. And those systems also need to be transformed as part of reducing our energy costs and our energy waste. And that can be done in a way that also challenges our inequality and discrimination and injustice. Of course, there's masses of details that could be given for each of those points, but these need to be front and center in what we think about when we think about how we're going to make that just transition. So the second part I want to talk about is those people who are in the fossil fuel economy either as producers of fossil fuels or working in power plants and other facilities that use them or people who are dependent on them because, for example, they work in a factory that is highly energy dependent and they're getting their energy from fossil fuels or they use raw materials that are greenhouse gas releases. And here, the thing to keep in mind, first of all, is that more jobs, in fact, far more jobs are created by the clean energy transition than will be lost. And you can see that spelled out in many, many studies. We at Labor Network for Sustainability did one called the Clean Energy Future, protecting the climate, creating jobs and saving money, which shows that the number of jobs that will be created is somewhere in the range of five to ten times as many as those that might be threatened in going to a predominantly fossil free economy. But it's crucial to remember that any job is important if it's your job. And people who feel threatened by the loss of their jobs are potentially breaths unwillingly and unhappily, but they're candidates to be enemies of the change to a fossil free economy. And they are vulnerable to being poster children for the Trumps and fossil fuel companies that are always looking for an opportunity to exploit the potential vulnerability of working people as a way of putting them up as poster children for their claim that, oh, if you start restricting fossil fuels, you're going to cause mass unemployment and economic disaster for American workers. So the climate protection movement needs to partner with unions and working class organizations to create long term strategies for a just transition for those workers. This is often talked about in terms of a GI bill of rights for workers who might be affected, whose jobs might be threatened by climate protection. At the end of World War Two, there was tremendous worry about the economic impacts of demobilization and a peacetime economy. And the United States solved that problem in substantial part by creating a very large, very favorable benefit program for the returning World War Two veterans that provided them off in many cases up to four years of education and training, funding to start businesses, housing support, although that was extremely discriminatory in actual practice. But sectors of the returning veterans were able to buy houses on the GI bill while others were excluded. And there is a need for something very similar for those who might be harmed by the transition to a clean energy economy. If they're ready for retirement or close to it, they should receive decent pensions with healthcare. And there are very clearly laid out programs for doing this in the state of Washington. The trade union movement is developing a plan for protecting laid off workers, workers who might be threatened with these kinds of protections, very clean energy workers, Just Transition Act that was drawn up by Senator Sanders and Senator Merkley that incorporates many of the Just Transition provisions that have been advocated by a number of unions and by our labor network for sustainability. And by many, many environmental organizations. But this gives them an opportunity to incorporate something concrete along these lines for the protection of their members. And it allows the environmental and climate protection movement to come forward as supporters and protectors of those whose jobs might be threatened rather than as the source of that threat. So the final piece of this I want to talk about is what happens when the climate movement and the environmental movement start threatening, being perceived as threatening workers' jobs because they are saying that a power plant like the Keystown XL power plant, excuse me, pipeline, and there are many, many struggles throughout the country now about other pipelines. So they say, and you can see this in the media and the Trumps all the time, oh, the climate protectors and the environmentalists are threatening the jobs of the pipeline workers. Or if there's a movement to shut down, I say a coal-fired power plant that they are threatening livelihoods of the workers in those plants and the communities around them. So let me just lay out a few pieces of how climate activists should be trying to reach out to and cooperate with workers and trade unions and labor organizations more broadly. There is a short book about this interactive book. It's on the LNS website. It's called Jobs Beyond Coal, but it really applies to any kind of fossil fuel facility. And if you're facing a case where you're involved in an environmental or climate struggle and you are concerned that you may be coming up against people whose jobs may actually be threatened or they may feel they're being threatened, I recommend you take a look at Jobs Beyond Coal because it gives a lot of concrete advice. And I'll just mention a couple of the points. It's incredibly helpful not to wait until there is some crisis-like threatened power plant shutdown before you start trying to develop communications and relations with unions and trade union movement in your communities. There are many, many issues on which labor and environmentalists have common interests and can and have involved in common struggles. And where people have done that beforehand, it makes a huge difference in the ability to find some kind of cooperative relationship around things like a plant closing. And there was, just to give one example, there was a move to close a power plant in the state of Washington a few years ago. And the unions and who represented the workers in the plant and the environmental organizations were very much at loggerheads about this. But they had worked together a few years before in the struggle against the World Trade Organization millennial summit in Seattle. And so they had long-standing relations and they were at loggerheads, the negotiations to find common ground broke down. And then some of the people who had been involved in that earlier struggle said, you know what, let's give it another try. And they sat down and began talking and eventually they were able to actually negotiate a plan for the closing of that plant with support and cooperation of the unions representing the workers who were staying, who were working there. One of the other, a second key point which is also illustrated in that example is a starting point for discussion is for everyone, unions, environmentalists, politicians to listen to the actual concerns of the workers who work in that plant because they may not be what you would assume. In that particular case the environmental movement had done a nice job of saying we want jobs for all the people who are threatened in clean energy jobs and we want to retrain them from clean energy jobs, which was a very good thing for them to say, but it turned out that it was almost entirely irrelevant. The reason is that many of the people who were working there were near retirement and what they were most concerned about was what was going to happen to their retirement situation. And so the settlement that was made guaranteed good secure retirements for that sector and then this was a rural area with almost no decent jobs and the other great concern was not individual workers having a new career which they mostly didn't want to have, but that there be a way that their kids could get jobs in the local community. And so part of the settlement was that the company would support and develop local industries in that county that would employ local workers and would provide jobs in the producing the materials that were going to be used for their transition to a clean energy economy, not to work in a power plant but to work in a factory or other facility that was producing materials for that transition. And the third example I want to give here is that really any local environmental group could do, but we were in, I was working with a group in Bridgeport that was trying to shut a power plant and they said to the union and they also looked at what people were doing elsewhere and said okay here's a proposed list of things that ought to be part of the just transition when we shut the power plant and that included bidding rights for the workers to have other jobs, it included workers in the plant being able to have jobs in the cleanup and replacement of that power plant and a variety of other things, eight or ten demands including a union contract for specifying the rights that workers would have as the plant was closed. And that made a tremendous difference in the ability of the wasn't just environmental groups there was a whole coalition of inner city groups and environmental justice groups and it created a situation where they were able to play a very different role in relation to the unions and the workers in the plant. So just to give a couple of other quick examples of the ways people have addressed this. Another crucial point is to try to find alternative economic development possibilities for the local communities that are going to be affected. So we did a study during the Keystone pipeline controversy where we hired some economic development firm to go and develop a plan for alternative pipeline infrastructure that was needed in the states and even in the counties that were along the route of the KXL pipeline and show how the people who worked doing pipelines that was their craft what they knew how to do and were able to do extremely well could be making water pipelines and sewer pipelines which were desperately needed and that had proposals for where you get the money and so that's the kind of thing that could be repeated in any program of this kind. When their plants are closed or long before they're closed we can develop community worker protection funds that collect money in advance for example by fees on the companies and then replace taxes and invest in good local jobs and Richard's going to talk about what's really a leading pioneering example of that and so the thing that I would say at the end is this is something where the labor side the workers side on the one hand and the environmental side the climate side on the other needs the basically two things one is we need to recognize that we all have to make a living and we all have to create a climate that's safe for all of us and it's not there's no one who is a worker but not someone who's threatened by climate change and there's no one who is threatened by climate change who doesn't have to think about the problems that climate protection is going to make for workers and so each side in these situations needs to take the initiative in reaching out to the other thank you for that Jeremy and I'm going to say a few things but before I do that Richard I'm Emily put your mute on so I'm wondering if you can tap your screen in on the lower left hand corner turn your sound back on give us a thumbs up or thumbs down if you have it figured out or not and for folks who have joined us if you're having trouble watching you can refresh your browser and we're asking folks as soon as Richard shares some of his wisdom with us we're going to take questions and give answers and so you can just do that in the chat in your youtube account do we have sound yet Richard hi I think so can you hear me you're perfect and so I'm really excited to hear from Richard about this thing called the Huntley coalition which is an experiment they did that I think our movement cannot learn a lot from him Richard Lipsitz is the president of the western new york area AFL-CIO thanks a lot for taking the time and joining us Richard well thanks for asking me this is a pleasure I've never done anything like this before and it's a very interesting experience tonight I really enjoyed what the remarks that led into you asking me that question and thanks a lot for having me let's see I want to just take off a little bit to start on Jeremy's point about building relationships both the environmental justice and the labor movement have common interests that if we work together we can help solve this devastating problem of climate change that is hurting working class people more than anybody else and we we took up this problem at least in a local sense when a power plant shut down outside of Buffalo New York in a working class suburb called Tana Wanda the plant was called Huntley you're right and that's why we call it the Huntley project and Huntley experiment the the question there was the impact on the community of the plant shutting down the role that the plant's production played in providing a tax base for the community and that's that question when it shut down became one of serious importance the the the tax base would have been eroded was eroded eroded by the shutdown of this plant by a significant amount of money that would have led to the closing of three three four public schools perhaps the merger of the public school system the layoff of 150 teachers the layoff of other municipal employees so the union that represented the workers in the Kenmore in the in the Tana Wanda Kenmore Tana Wanda school district came to the Labor Federation and asked for help and that this is what this was all about this is what this was all about that's where the the beginning of this of this project came from we we didn't know what to do as the Labor Federation except we thought that it might be a good idea to work with an environmental justice group in the community that was involved in that in that Tana Wanda community and work with them to figure out how do we how can we keep this shutdown from devastating the tax base of this community the question of the workers in the old plant was somewhat mute because the plant had been shutting down over a period of time and there weren't that many workers left in the plant it was really a question more than anything else of what do you do to to replace a large amount of money to losing their jobs like I said before in the school district and in the in other civil servant positions and to keep the town from raising taxes so that the ratepayers would end up paying more in property tax or the consumers would pay more in rate in rate increases for the energy that was coming out of the plant now this this one took us into work with the with the industrial unions in the region because the the area around the power plant is the most heavily industrialized section of western new york western new york buffalo is still one of the more important industrial sections of the united states our industrial workforce is about 12 of the population which is down considerably since its heyday when it was 33 percent but it's still about 25 percent 33 percent rather higher than the national average so we still have an industrial manufacturing base in the town the industrial users if their rates go up they're going to start agitating with the unions to represent the workers there to take concessions in their labor agreements otherwise they'll move into a place some other part of the country or some other part of the world for that matter where their taxes aren't as high so we had this double whammy that we were trying to deal with we engaged with the clean air coalition of western new york made an alliance with the kenmore teachers had discussions with the i b w had the workers in the plant had discussions with the industrial unions the ua w and the steel workers and and and engaged in a program to try to to pressure new york state to pass legislation that would allow for tax assistance to be given to communities where fossil fuel plants shut down in the tax base is significantly eroded it took about a year and a half or two years of of some really intense struggle inside of our coalition and then outside of the coalition with the lobbying the state government but we were able to lobby and and pass the fossil fuel closure act of 2015 which provided for money for the community of tanwanda and kept school teacher policemen from being laid off garbage collectors from being laid off and all the other civil servants white collar as well from being laid off school district from being either merged or shut down considerably and all the attendant problems that that has in a community that is again a highly working class community so we were successful and now we are in the in the stage of working to find a economic development plan with the town supervisor in the town council that will backfill good jobs jobs that are environmentally safe we hope that pay good wages and benefits that have union neutrality that have promotional opportunities that have a hiring policy that seeks to diversify the workforce and all the other things that we think are important in a job and in industry that can revive this town so that its tax base isn't wiped out five years from now when this fossil fuel or seven years rather when this fossil fuel money is no longer available through the state of New York and I think we're and we're moving forward on that as well so I just talked to you a lot about what happened over about a really it's about a three-year period and which we're still involved in but the the lessons are exactly as along the lines of what Jeremy laid out earlier working together with an environmental group that understands the transition away from fossil fuels should not be born on the working people we did not create this problem it it was created by fossil fuel industry that frankly has been running our country in large measure for a long long time and doesn't want to give up the economic benefits from that and obviously it helped the current president get elected so doesn't want to give up the political benefits from that that lead to things like incentives and industrial advances money for the fossil fuel industry how do we work together to to to address the questions that are brought on by the necessary switch over from energy sources which are destroying not the planet are destroying human beings on the planet planet itself I think would survive without human beings one way or the other we weren't here before we're not going to be here forever but actually that that deals with the problems that human beings are going through by the overuse of these fuels which are destroying and causing the the climate change which is as devastating impact all over the world how do we actually work together so that the working class people are not the ones who pay for this switch transition and that it actually and it leads to all the positives that Jeremy described for the that same working class community that's the question I think that has to be addressed and has to be struggled with and then real life attempts have to be made to address this in a way that I just described and that's sort of the way I was looking at that's that's the reason I'm excited to be on this call this webinar and I hope we can ask some further discussion but that's that's the story in a thumbnail in a short sketch thank you Richard that was a great example I'm gonna questions off of the the YouTube screen and invite anyone who'd like to hear from either Jeremy or Richard to ask questions and let us know where you're from I'm starting with Luke Grossmiller from 350 Eugene Oregon she says it seems solar energy will be very limited in winter months so how will there possibly be enough renewable green energy to replace the fossil fuels well I'll take a first stab at it the overall strategies that are developed for making the the large-scale change to fully renewable energy are based on the fact that different forms of energy and exist in different locations and that's why actually while local forms of energy are very important also hooking them up so the areas where you have huge amounts of wind are sources of energy for the places where solar is not as viable in other in other regions however let me also say that relative to the question that my understanding is that the amount of solar energy that's available is colossal relative for example to even the present energy use of the United States that it's tens and tens and tens times more energy available just on existing rooftops and potential solar gardens and so on so while there's a lot to be done by compensating between solar wind geothermal and so on it's also also true that even in in most areas in winter there's going to be plenty of solar if it's developed seriously and if energy efficiency is applied and one place you can see that is in Germany where the very very large proportion of electric energy is now supplied by solar even though i haven't been there but as i understand it you're talking about a country that is socked in with clouds a very very big part of the talk especially in winter and Rich I know you have more things to say about the german example well after we did this work in the town of Wanda we got invited over by the Rockefeller family foundation and the german political wing rather the green party the environmental wing of the green party and we were able to tour the country and we saw how they've transitioned away from especially coal and they've done they've done this and at the same time they still have a very active industry that produces steel makes steel and does auto manufacturing and they do it in a way that they use they use renewable energy sources not completely but to a large extent to to power the the steel plants and the automobile plants so if they could solve the problem there and they in your right solar wind i saw both those things in a large number of examples if they can do it there there's no reason the united states of america can't do it except a political one and an economic one and that's where the real that's where the rubber meets the road to be able to fight through this crazy analysis coming from the white house and from others on the right uh that it's it's a hoax that climate change is a hoax nobody believes that and i don't think they actually believe it either i think they're just protecting the economic interests that have gotten them as far as they as they've they've gone and they don't want to switch that over and the world be damned so i think that's really what's at stake the german national economy is making this transition it's it's not without problems we we heard about those two and and finding jobs for people is always a problem in a situation like this but at least there's a recognition on the part of the government and the political parties over there even the center right parties in germany uh understand that the climate global warming is not and it has to be addressed uh soon and and and in a significant and sustained fashion we don't have that we don't have that political will in this country it was it was closer when the former president obama was there than it is today but we're just not in that position yet so that's a that's an added dimension to the struggle we've got to solve this question and we've got to do it in a way that puts as i said earlier puts the working-class people in the forefront and and and enforces a transition to be made that doesn't come on the backs of ordinary working people but is paid for by those who frankly can afford it the most and i think we can do that i think there's a there's a lot of not just jobs but money to be made in the switching over and if it's plowed back into the society it can make a tremendous difference as you said earlier Jeremy in the living standards of working-class communities and i think that's the that's the that's the direction and if we don't i think we're helping the world go down a path that while i'm not a alarmist about this stuff i get i get it this is pretty damn serious and we'd better we'd better deal with it and deal with it now and until we help we can actually solve it i got children and grandchildren i you know we didn't create this mess but i certainly don't want to sit back and just let it happen i'll say that thanks for that Richard and thanks for the question luke and luke is from uh Eugene where there's a whole group sitting around a church watching this webinar together thank you for joining a couple more questions from albanias uh one is uh where is it uh in upstate new york the big fossil fuel issues are not coal and gas but oil pipelines as well as plants and compressor stations i'm just going to ask either of you to respond to that and and maybe throw this also at richard uh richard if folks watching are part of the local climate justice or environmental or community group that's trying to address a fossil fuel facility what's uh what's some steps they might take to try and do it in common cause with uh workers and unions well that's that's that's a good question and that's one which i think uh we need to take a look at uh everybody does established relationships don't just go and lecture the union leaders who have workers in these plants uh about how dangerous the plants are how bad they are for the the economy for the ecology or for the world's environment but actually establish a relationship with the with the organ with the organized workers in a plant and i think through their unions we have a highly unionized section of new york state and and and join together and and and and and without lecturing about climate change being real by the way i i don't have a single person on the executive board of the west new york area labor federation who doesn't believe this is a real problem that isn't the issue the issue is how do we make common cause that as i said a couple times now it doesn't take this problem and make ordinary workers pay for it including the workers in the plants how do we work together in order to to find our way to a better economy i have nothing i have i i i couldn't be more uh clear on that as far as i'm concerned as far as i think the the objective situation is the environmental movement and the labor movement have a lot in common and we should we should take that as the starting point and work towards solving this problem together instead of taking the the starting point one which essentially drives us a wedge between us that does nobody any good tony mesaki was the first person i ever heard use the term uh just transitions he was the the health and safety director for ocaw the oil chemical and atomic workers union and he spent a lot of time in Niagara Falls new york in fact it was one of his he told us was one of his favorite places it's the most it was it's where love canal is or was still is actually where lots of chemical plants are tony took the position that we have to figure out ways to transition away from polluting plants into clean ones that take is is is the first thing what are the concerns of the workers in the plant what are the concerns of the communities that are around the plant and where the workers live and work and and and and and play and recreate and i think that that's that i can't i mean it sounds simple but establish the relationship before issuing letters to the editor and editorials talk to people and i just think it's it's common sense to do so and that's that's the way we should be doing and that goes for us too that's the labor movement as well we can't just assume everybody is a quote doesn't care about this the impact on on workers jobs i don't think it's i don't think that's a fair generalization anymore than i think it's a fair generalization that all working class leaders only care about you know improving their own living standards and working conditions for their members both parties have a broader sense of the world and we ought to we ought to take advantage of that and work together against those who've created this situation and i want to add just one thing for local activists it's very easy when there's a strike or another labor action where there's a picket line to just go and join the picket line have an opportunity to talk to people and you have an opportunity completely divorced from any uh seeing suspicions that people may have a view because you're maybe threatening their job on the contrary showing up and joining a picket line for a group of workers whose livelihood is being threatened by their bosses is an awfully good way to start building those relationships i agree thanks for both that in the in the san francisco bay area we've uh the climate justice movement has been out to martina supporting steelworkers on strike and the fun thing is we use the same signs we use in the anti fracking demonstrations which is stand up to big oil on the refinery work pretty happy about that there's a question from ronda have you mentioned the dark money trail the groups pitting workers against climate activists uh it's definitely addressed in actually two of my books uh it's very important uh a critical aspect of the whole story uh and is a critical part of how uh workers are turned against uh climate protectors and environmentalists so i think that's a very very good and relevant point yeah i i mean i don't know i don't know about exactly the details on all these questions but it just strikes me uh that this is not just a national questions international question the if you look around the world and i'm you know i'm quite suspicious of the connections between the russian oil oligarchs and the people who are running our country today and uh you talk about dark money and and and devious devious intentions i you know i think you can make an argument that they ended up putting the guy in the white house who's in the white house today who's a threat to all of us yes question uh will this presentation be available online for viewing later and yes this uh at this youtube site this will become a permanent video that will be available that folks can share um wanted to myself expand on the the last question about uh fossil fuel industry consciously playing off workers and environmental and environmental justice groups and i'd like to tease out from either of you jeremy or richard what are things that either folks on the the labor side or the climate side can do to prevent against being played off against each other how can we organize frame build relationship what can we do so that they can't do that well let me just say that i'll i'll just use the example that we just went that i just described earlier is engage in struggle together it's the way that we always learn uh and and analyze a situation i i wouldn't i wouldn't ever pretend to tell people who have conditions that are different than when i described that the proper tactics to take up uh i think that'd be rather intrusive i think it's better uh to identify a problem and then work from that and in doing so reaching out to the labor organizations that exist in your community and talking to them about what their concerns are and that's the way to i don't again i don't know about this dark money are exactly other than what uh we just talked about the um going to organizations that have real skin in the game and saying okay how can we work together it's a pretty down good place to start so let me just add uh in the state that i live in which is Connecticut we created a round table on climate and jobs which is co anchored by the state afl cio and the interreligious task force on environmental justice uh and involves a bunch of other organizations as well uh and one of the things that we got involved with was uh when the the local the utilities in the state wanted to raise the uh distribution uh portion of the utility bill uh by 65 percent in one jump and the reason they wanted to do that was to uh make a disincentive for people to be energy efficient and insulate their homes and solarize their homes and uh we developed a coalition that involved the the unions and the uh poor communities who were going to be hit very hard by this rate increase uh and of course the environmental groups uh and various others uh and building a working coalition around this that uh not only managed to block this rate increase but managed to put a cap uh on on uh increases in the distribution a cap on the distribution uh fee like the one that they have in california that was our model uh that uh meant a substantial reduction in the uh distribution fee that the utilities could charge so it's just one example of the way you can find common ground and issues to work around yeah and and just to that point that's the the common ground we had in tonawanda was the the impact on the tax base that was that's what brought us all together how do we stop teachers for being laid off how do we stop as i said before civil servants for being laid off because of the shutdown of a fossil fuel plant that became the paramount question that led to the unity between the industrial workers the utility workers the public sector workers and the environmental justice group that's how we did it so we found again we came to a common we found identified a common goal and i think you know that's sort of an abc organizing question but i think it's an important one to remember thank you richard uh just a short question from traven leishan which is if this is available online i'd like to post it to our label labor council page and uh traven you can just post the same url that you're watching now on youtube um and we're at about time i'd like to invite uh richard or and jeremy if you have any closing thoughts or like to share any resources for people uh working in the labor movement and the climate justice movement want to uh pursue this work so we can win justice and protect our climate well i'm going to bow to jeremy on this i i i just want to thank you for having me on this and i really enjoyed the opportunity to talk about the experience that we've we're having we had and we're having uh we've been putting really everything that we can find and a lot of material that we generated ourselves on this topic on the website of the labor network for sustainability for example you'll find an article that was written by richard and another uh and uh and indeed one of his environmental partners right about the huntley experiment on the lns website and uh we do a newsletter that includes a lot of case studies and examples of these kinds of things as well as my little book on jobs against coal uh and so uh uh that is www uh labor for number for sustainability dot org labor number for sustainability or obviously you can find out on google or search engine and i would encourage people who are uh either just interested or uh ag facing this kind of thing and try and decide figure out how to deal with it you'll find a lot of useful material there thank you so much jeremy thank you richard i want to thank emily joe vay who's been uh producing this webinar and this is uh david solnatt i'm an arts organizer with 350.org and thank you very much everyone for watching thanks