"Just transition" links labour and climate in a ideologically-lame wishful thinking way. It is organized labour seeking a historical compromise from capital at a time when capital is under no compulsion to compromise. Where is the incentive for capital to compromise when capital can have its own way?
Just transition is labour's version of "ecological modernization." It assumes an essential harmony in a market economy between social justice, ecological sustainability and economic growth, as long as the state plays an active role correcting for market failure. It would indeed be nice if there was an essential harmony and if the state did play an active progressive role. Wake me when there's historical evidence for those assumptions. There IS a way to realistically and effectively link labour and climate and that is to treat labour power as a common pool resource. I've outlined what it means to treat labour power as a common pool resource in a piece responding to Sam Gindin's "Rethinking Unions" from the 2013 Socialist Register. I'm waiting for a reply to it from Sam and from Jacobin magazine before I publish the essay but I'll send a draft to anyone who requests one. On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 2:59 AM, Patrick Bond <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2/12/2013 5:40 AM, martin schiller wrote: > > Rather would that the agency charged with administering the national > > resource begin charging the full social cost for the extraction of > > resources and apply that revenue to restoring the environment - many > > entry level jobs, for organized labor. It should be the cost of doing > > business, and the people can be brought together around that idea, > > rather than divided. It should be much easier to sell the idea of the > > government as a super-corporation, with the citizen a shareholder, > > than to argue for preserving environment at the expense of industrial > > jobs. > > We definitely need to rid the planet of a great many 'industrial jobs' > that are profoundly eco-destructive. You'd agree, for instance, that a > transition/'conversion' from the arms industry to peacetime activity is > urgent. > > And you'd probably agree with the people at Cornell in NYC, or Million > Climate Jobs in the UK and SA? They are all linking labour and climate > in a very progressive 'just transition' kind of way... > > http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/globallaborinstitute/projects/climate/index.html > http://climatejobs.org.za/ > http://www.campaigncc.org/greenjobs > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
