The PRO Act would make common-sense changes to existing law to enable workers who want to organize and form unions to do so. It would penalize corporations that break the law, limit tactics used to intimidate workers, help workers who organize secure timely collective bargaining agreements and institute a number of changes to better enable workers to act in solidarity with one another.

“As organizations dedicated to a sustainable future, we believe that such a future must include fair treatment for the people and communities working to build a clean and thriving economy,” the letter says. “The PRO Act would help advance that goal and help us rebuild our economy to function for both people and the planet.”

Read the full letter and review the full list of signers here.

Expert contact: Lukas Ross, (202) 222-0724, lross@foe.org
Communications contact: Patrick Davis, (202) 222-0744, pdavis@foe.org

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In the letter, the groups challenge the committee to make recommendations that will address the structural inequities that disproportionately impact frontline communities. Further, the groups call for a commitment to phase out fossil fuel production with a just transition.

“The Select Committee on the Climate Crisis must do more than recommend the same myopic policy solutions that failed to generate enthusiasm a decade ago,” said Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager at Friends of the Earth. “Democrats in Congress must embrace the Green New Deal platform and take a comprehensive stance that includes a just transition to phase out fossil fuel production and justice for frontline communities.” 

“Too often, environmental policy-making excludes those directly facing the ravages of the climate crisis, including small farmers, farmworkers, rural communities, and indigenous families affected by drought, downpours, disease, and displacement,” said Navina Khanna, Director of the HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance. “As stewards of the land, these folks know that the best solutions to climate change are in the soil. The Select Committee on the Climate Crisis must center their knowledge and experience if it is serious about our survival as a species.”

“We know what we have to do to stop the ever-worsening effects of our climate crisis — get off fossil fuels,” said Mitch Jones, climate & energy program director at Food & Water Action. “The Select Committee on the Climate Crisis must begin its work there, moving a fair and just transition away from fracking and pipelines and towards robust investments in frontline communities building a thriving renewables manufacturing industry in the United States.”

“The climate crisis has grown more acute during the ten years since Congress last tried — and failed — to pass a comprehensive climate bill. Congress needs to step up and make big structural changes,” said RL Miller, political director at Climate Hawks Vote. “Go bold. Imagine and create an American economy powered by renewable energy. Incrementalism won’t work.”

“Ignoring the platform laid out in the Green New Deal will be done at the peril of the world as we know it, which we are beyond  saving simply by making better personal choices. A Green New Deal, coupled with a Just Transition, could incentivize water and soil conservation and integrated, environmentally friendly, low input agriculture that would drastically reduce the cultivation of monoculture crops and concentrated livestock production. We call on Congressional leaders to use the Green New Deal as a foundation for systemic reform to ensure that farmers and workers are paid fairly for their products and labor and for sequestering carbon in the soil, thereby supporting more vibrant rural economies,” said Jim Goodman, Board President at the National Family Farm Coalition.

“Congress, and particularly the House majority that promised to tackle global warming, must provide action and solutions on par with the severity of the climate crisis itself. As California burns, as our coasts and cities flood, and as U.S. farmers face drought, Americans are already experiencing the devastating impacts of greenhouse pollution chaos,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We call on not only Speaker Pelosi and the relevant House committee chairs to step it up, but also a recalcitrant Senate to wake up and do its job. Half-measures and fake fossil fuel corporate solutions are not the answer.”

“Farmworkers are on the frontlines of climate change,” said Jeannie Economos, Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator at the Farmworker Association of Florida. “Increasingly high temperatures put them at daily risk for heat stress and heat stroke. We have seen farmworkers forced to work during the frightening, unprecedented wildfires in California. Increased pesticide use to counter pests in a changing climate poses real danger to the health of farmworkers and their families. The people who harvest our food and feed the nation are mostly low-income people of color. For farmworkers, climate change is a public health and a justice issue.”

Expert Contact: Nicole Ghio, 510-900-8061, nghio@foe.org
Communications Contact: Patrick Davis, 202-222-0744, pdavis@foe.org

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“Agriculture—and the farmworker families on which it depends—are some of the first victims of a changing global climate,” said Jeannie Economos, Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator of the Farmworker Association of Florida. “Our current system of agriculture is one of the major contributors to climate change, but it’s also where we should look for transformative and just solutions. When we begin to pair social justice for workers with a just transition for our country, only then will a Green New Deal be able to bring about the systemic change we need to protect all our communities from the ravages of climate change.” 

Weather-related disasters and disruptions spurred by climate change are already devastating the agriculture industry and harming those who work within it. There’s been a 240% increase in dust storms in the central valley, leading to a huge increase in farm workers contracting valley fever fungus, which cost sick workers 20 work days each on average, and California taxpayers a total of $2.2 billion in valley-fever related hospital expenses. 

“Any Green New Deal that’s going to be truly effective in combating climate change must center around a transformation in our food and agricultural systems at their cores,” said Navina Khanna, Director of the HEAL Food Alliance. “If we are to succeed in building a sustainable future with racial and gender equity as core values, we need a Green New Deal that centers family farmers, farm workers, and food workers. Making fundamental changes to our food and farming system is urgent and central to stabilizing our climate, and ensuring food security for current and future generations, and making sure that all people working in the system do so with meaning and dignity.”

The original New Deal helped America’s farmers survive the Great Depression and feed our nation while restoring farmlands and soil. The Green New Deal can do even better: restoring our climate by regenerating soil and biodiversity while ensuring fair prices and family-sustaining livable wages for the farmers, ranchers, fishers, and workers who bring food to our tables.

“If we are to address the climate crisis, we must transform our food system,” said Lisa Archer, Food and Agriculture Director for Friends of the Earth. “We have no time to waste. Congress must support a rapid transition from the destructive, polluting industrial agriculture system we have now to a healthy, just food system that regenerates our soil, biodiversity, and communities.”

As average temperatures rise, the air can hold more moisture, which is released as an increasing amount of rainfall. This extreme rainfall leads to severe flooding which takes a toll on corn and soy farmers in the Midwest as the soil becomes too soaked to accept new crops. Droughts brought on by the climate crisis also pose unsustainable challenges for our agriculture industry, as California’s unprecedented droughts led to an almond shortage in 2015, even as the almond industry used more water that year than the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. 

“To embrace the future of agriculture is to end chemical-intensive agriculture by supporting and investing in the solutions posed by those at the frontlines of the climate crisis—including farmers, workers and their communities,” said Ahna Kruzic, Communications and Media Director of Pesticide Action Network North America. “Continued reliance on chemical-intensive agriculture would exacerbate the climate crisis while impacting the health of our environments, farms and farmers, workers, and communities.”

Fortunately, petition signees asserted, there are solutions—well-demonstrated, effective, and profitable agricultural practices at all scales and in all regions of the country—that can reduce pollution and repair the environment and climate while revitalizing communities across the country.

“Soil can actually capture carbon from the atmosphere, effectively reversing global warming and making soil healthier at the same time,” said Joey Lee, Digital Manager of the Center for Food Safety. “We must integrate regenerative farming practices such as cover cropping, the use of compost, and reducing tillage to improve soil quality and sequester carbon.”

Over 100,000 people have signed the petition to show support of a Green New Deal that adheres to the following principles:

4 Key Policy Priorities and Principles

• Carbon reduction, sequestration, and climate resilience;
• Fair prices for farmers, ranchers and fishers, anti-trust measures that help reverse food sector consolidation, and healthy working conditions with family-sustaining living wages for workers;
• Diversified, resilient local and regional food economies anchored by family farmers, ranchers, and fishers that ensure healthy, sustainable food for all to combat consolidation in the food and farming sector and reverse the rapid loss of farmers and deterioration of farmland;
• Avoid “false solutions” and agribusiness-sponsored proposals that do nothing to address the systemic causes of our climate crisis and delay progress.

This petition mirrors a letter signed by a coalition of 300 advocacy groups advocating that Congress support a Green New Deal that prioritizes food and agriculture solutions to climate change. The groups are asking anyone who supports the petition to tweet about it using the hashtag #GreenNewFoodDeal. This citizen petition component of this project was a collaboration between the Center for Food Safety, Friends of the Earth, the HEAL Food Alliance, the Farmworker Association of Florida, PANNA, 198 Methods, the Daily Kos, and the Organic Consumers Association.

Communications contact: Patrick Davis, (202) 222-0744, pdavis@foe.org

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“We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground once and for all and transition to 100 percent renewable energy,” said Friends of the Earth Colorado grassroots organizer Maryah Lauer. “That means no new drilling, no new fracking, no new pipelines and no new fossil fuel infrastructure like the Suncor tar sands refinery that is harming communities right here in DeGette’s district. To be considered a genuine climate leader, DeGette must support a Green New Deal which completely eliminates fossil fuels, the only solution that matches the size and scope of the climate crisis we face.”

Rep. Diana DeGette has been approached repeatedly by activists and constituents for the past six months, asking for her support of the Green New Deal and to halt all new fossil fuel extraction. The congresswoman publicly supports taking action to address climate change but has stopped short of calling for an end to fossil fuels and fully endorsing the Green New Deal. 

“Fossil fuels will continue to emit dangerous gases which harm people and impede the world’s ability to manage a climate-safe, equitable decline of oil and gas production,” said Sunni Benoit with the 350 Metro Denver Leadership Council, co-organizer of Monday’s protest and a constituent residing in Rep. DeGette’s district. “It is imperative we switch to renewables now and enact a Green New Deal to avert the climate emergency.” 

Organizing contact: Maryah Lauer, (719) 434-0677, MLauer@foe.org
Communications contact: Patrick Davis, (202) 222-0744, pdavis@foe.org

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If built, the Line 3 pipeline would endanger freshwater resources that local communities rely on. It would pass through the heart of the Indigenous Anishinaabe community’s territory and threaten critical resources on Ojibwe treaty lands.

“There’s no room in the Green New Deal for the giant, polluting Line 3 pipeline,” said Abigayle Reese, Friends of the Earth Minnesota grassroots organizer. “A Green New Deal that eliminates fossil fuels is the only solution that matches the size and scope of the climate crisis we face. Minnesota needs a bold Green New Deal that will eliminate fossil fuels to fight our current climate crisis and remove polluting oil infrastructure like the dirty Line 3 pipeline from criss-crossing our state.”

Sen. Klobuchar signed the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge and is co-sponsor of the Green New Deal in Congress. Yet Klobuchar does not yet support a ban on fracking or an end to fossil fuel exports, and has remained completely silent on the Line 3 tar sands pipeline.

“The Line 3 pipeline demonstrates exactly why we need to move away from fossil fuels and advance a strong and just Green New Deal,” Abigayle Reese added. “If Sen. Klobuchar truly supports a Green New Deal, she must stop Line 3.”

Communications contact: Kevynn Gomez, (202) 222-0709, kgomez@foe.org

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Demonstrators marched and staged a creative rendition of a faux oil spill in downtown Eugene to protest the project and support a vision of the Green New Deal that keeps all fossil fuels in the ground. 

“Rep. DeFazio and Sen. Wyden both talk a good game on climate action, but there’s no room for new fossil fuel infrastructure like the proposed Jordan Cove Pipeline in the Green New Deal. said Gabe Raviolo, Senior Fellow with Friends of the Earth. “At a moment when the Trump Administration is trying to ram through dozens of new fossil fuel pipelines and export terminals, Oregon needs to know where our leaders stand.”

Protestors gathered on the steps of the Wayne Lyman Morse United States Courthouse and heard speeches from protest leaders. They then marched down 8th Avenue to stage a faux oil spill in the street with their bodies, signs, and recycled fabric. The faux oil spill was then cleaned up as part of a healing dance, and replaced by a vision of a clean energy future. Protest leaders said the theatrical assembly was intended to dramatize the risks of the proposed Jordan Cove Pipeline, the risks of crude oil on our railways and all fossil fuel infrastructure projects, and to juxtapose that risk against the promise and potential of a Green New Deal.

The group noted that, if approved, the Jordan Cove Pipeline and LNG export facility would contribute to the climate crisis. As cosponsors of the Green New Deal, Sen. Wyden and Rep. DeFazio should publicly oppose these and other fossil fuel projects that move us away from the sustainable future we need to avoid climate chaos.

Expert contact: Gabrielle Raviolo, (541) 543-9892, GRaviolo@foe.org
Communications contact: Patrick Davis, (202) 222-0744, pdavis@foe.org

The post Faux oil spill and clean up action demands DeFazio and Wyden match talk of Green New Deal with action to stop Jordan Cove appeared first on Friends of the Earth.

Recent catastrophic flooding across Nebraska and Iowa is just the latest reminder that farmers, farmworkers and rural communities are on the frontlines of the deepening climate crisis. Worsening storms, floods and droughts threaten farmer livelihoods and our nation’s food security — and compound the existing economic crisis faced by our family farmers and rural communities.

The New Deal helped farmers survive the Great Depression and feed our nation while restoring farmlands and soil. The Green New Deal can do even better: restoring our climate and food system resiliency by regenerating soil and biodiversity while ensuring fair prices, economic viability and family-sustaining livable wages for the people who bring food to our tables.

Our agricultural system is so intertwined with the economic system that is causing the climate crisis that any Green New Deal will need to address how we produce and consume what we eat. That will require actions from combatting corporate consolidation to ensuring fair prices for farmers to supporting growers to transition to sustainable farming practices.

For the Green New Deal to be effective, the people who make our meals possible — our nation’s farmers, ranchers, fishers, farmworkers, and food industry workers — must be at the negotiating table. Solutions must promote the leadership of frontline communities disproportionately burdened by our climate crisis and by the unsustainable industrial food system.

Given that the food sector currently generates nearly one-third of all climate-change emissions, we must enact policies that ensure carbon reduction, sequestration and climate resilience. To accomplish this, we need a rapid transition from chemical- and energy-intensive industrial monoculture production to organic, diversified and regenerative practices that build healthy soils, which in turn sequester more carbon.

The Green New Deal must also reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. A key way to accomplish this is by restricting methane emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Another would be reducing federal supports for highly polluting industrial animal and monocrop agriculture.

The Green New Deal must enable America’s family farmers to thrive while practicing or transitioning to sustainable agriculture through policies ensuring parity pricing (fair minimum prices), supply management and equitable access to land, credit and markets. These policies must also address economic and racial inequities endured by African American, Native American, Asian American, Pacific-Islander, Latinx and other historically disadvantaged farmers.

It must also ensure fair, family-sustaining living wages and safe, humane working conditions for workers. Key priorities to this end are equalizing labor laws to provide farmworkers with full legal rights and ensuring that all food system workers have the freedom to organize and unionize without retaliation.

New Green Deal policies must also build and support resilient local and regional food economies anchored by family farmers, ranchers and fishers that ensure healthy food for all. They must combat consolidation in the food and farming sector and reverse the rapid loss of farms and deterioration of farmland by shifting public investments away from subsidizing wealthy agribusiness to supporting small and medium-sized farmers.

This will require investing in urban and rural food and agriculture programs and expanding local and regional food infrastructure. By reversing consolidation, we can bolster rural economies’ diversity and resilience to climate change. Congress must also avoid false solutions and agribusiness-sponsored proposals that do not address the systemic causes of the climate crisis that cause great harm by delaying progress.

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Nadler, whose district includes neighborhoods hard hit by Superstorm Sandy like Red Hook and Sunset Park, told Friends of the Earth’s N.Y. organizing fellow Jo Cutrona, “We shouldn’t be, um, prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels.”

Watch the video here.

The Stop the Williams Pipeline coalition and Friends of the Earth are calling on federal elected officials to oppose the Williams fracked gas pipeline as part of a Green New Deal.

“As support for a Green New Deal in Congress builds, we think it’s important to make sure any Green New Deal legislation includes a plan to keep fossil fuels in the ground,” said Jo Cutrona, New York organizing fellow at Friends of the Earth. “We call on New York members of Congress to walk the talk of supporting a Green New Deal by fighting to stop local fossil fuel projects like the Williams fracked gas pipeline in New York City.”

The project, which would transport fracked gas from Pennsylvania through New Jersey out to an existing pipeline off the coast of the Rockaways, was approved last week by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but still requires permits from New York state and New Jersey to begin construction.

“The climate science on fracked gas is clear and Congressman Nadler is absolutely right that we should not be building new pipelines at this time,” said Lee Ziesche, an organizer with Sane Energy Project and the Stop the Williams Pipeline coalition. “Building a fracked gas pipeline in 2019 is spending a billion dollars to go in the wrong direction where as a Green New Deal could create thousands of good paying jobs converting New York City to the renewable energy heating we need.”  

“Governor Cuomo should heed Representative Nadler’s advice and stop this pipeline,” said Food & Water Watch organizer Laura Shindell. “We cannot take action on climate change if we continue building fossil fuel pipelines.”

“It’s exceptional to have Representative Nadler join the massive movement opposing the Williams fracked gas pipeline,” said Betamia Coronel, a New Yorker, 350.org lead organizer and member of the Stop the Williams Pipeline coalition. “This latest opposition is a direct result of people power, and the pressure New Yorkers are building for real solutions to the climate crisis. Now it’s up to Governor Cuomo to stand up for our health and safety, and halt this reckless and unnecessary pipeline.”

“Representative Nadler recognizes that the fracked gas the Williams Pipeline would carry threatens the health and safety of New Yorkers. We are at a critical moment in history. Governor Cuomo must also reject the pipeline to protect the lives of New Yorkers, and not the profits of the fossil fuel industry,” said Patrick Houston, climate and inequality campaigns organizer at New York Communities for Change.  

Communications contact Patrick Davis, (202) 222-0744, pdavis@foe.org

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The Green New Deal resolution is a bold and necessary path forward to tackle the climate crisis. To be successful, it must leave nuclear power behind.

With just a decade left to stop the worst effects of climate change, we must dramatically transform how we produce, use and pay for energy. And as momentum around the Green New Deal turns into concrete proposals, we must recognize why nuclear power is a discredited and dishonest distraction, not a solution.

To reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 60 percent by 2030, and down to zero by 2050, we need cost-effective, proven energy generation technology that can be scaled up to meet these benchmarks. Nuclear power does not and will not ever meet these criteria.

After 60 years, despite massive subsidies, the nuclear industry is dying of its own accord. Why? Because it’s too expensive, too dangerous and dirty, and takes too long to deploy. Reactors are closing across the country, and major corporations have declared bankruptcy.

Nuclear power simply cannot compete against safer, cleaner and cheaper renewable energy. Nuclear power is also expensive. Nuclear’s subsidies have been buried in hundreds of spending bills, it’s costs externalized to the environment and future generations, and its bills literally unpaid, defaulted on or passed to taxpayers. Conservative estimates suggest that the nuclear industry has received more than $85 billion in subsidies. A centrist estimate might double that.

Nuclear power is too expensive, too dangerous and dirty, and takes too long to deploy

For 60 years, nuclear power has posed a serious risk to people and our planet. It will be the same for the next 10,000 years. Our children and generations of their children will be forced to endure the radioactive pollution and fallout from devastating accidents like 3 Mile Island, Fukashima and Chernobyl, and the permanent waste that no one can safely store. The risks of nuclear proliferation and the spread of dangerous weapons and technology only adds to this.

Nuclear power is too slow to scale up to our current challenge. Far too slow. In 1997, when the historic Kyoto Protocol was signed, nuclear power’s share of electricity generation globally was around 17 percent. Now, after two decades, the aging fleet of reactors account for barely 10 percent of global electricity generation and about 4.4 percent of global commercial primary energy consumption. Even the nuclear industry’s grandiose and preposterously expensive proposal to build two new nuclear reactors a month, from now to 2050, would be far too little and far too late.

The endless talk of a new nuclear technology that will magically transform this problem is a pipe dream that has a proven record of failure. Hundreds of billions were spent on “breeder” reactors and other esoteric designs and not a single one has yielded a commercial scale reactor.

And continuing to subsidize and retool current reactors will re-direct massive resources that should be put into renewables, while doing nothing to slow global warming.

The task ahead is indeed daunting if we are to turn around global greenhouse gas emissions in the time we have. We must move from a 20th-century energy system based on dirty, dangerous and expensive fossil fuel and nuclear power to a 21st-century energy system based on renewables.

For 60 years, nuclear power has posed a serious risk to people and our planet

The solution is a massive commitment to ramping up renewable energy coupled with energy storage while applying modern energy efficiency technologies to decrease demand. Wind and solar are cheap, clean and proven to work. We must focus all resources on scaling those up.

Some have suggested that climate change is so dire that all options must be on the table. But that’s an ideology, not a strategy. We must choose the technologies that will not produce greenhouse gases and can be scaled up quickly, safely and at lowest cost. That means the path ahead must be based on renewable energy. If we want to stop the worse of the climate crisis and pull humanity back from the apocalypse, this is the only way forward.

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“The Green New Deal offers a unique and profoundly important opportunity to protect our common shared future,” the groups write. “Science shows conclusively that we have no time to lose, and that making fundamental changes to our food and farming system is urgent and central to stabilizing our climate and ensuring food security for current and future generations. Fortunately, there are solutions — well-demonstrated, effective and profitable agricultural practices at all scales in all regions of the country — that can help reduce pollution and repair our environment and climate while revitalizing communities across the country. ”

The letter identifies four key policy priorities for a Green New Deal:

• Carbon reduction, sequestration and climate resilience via a rapid, just transition that empowers farmers and ranchers to adopt ecologically regenerative, organic and agroecological practices;
• Fair prices for farmers, ranchers and fishers, anti-trust measures that help reverse food sector consolidation, and healthy working conditions with family-sustaining living wages for workers;
• Diversified, resilient local and regional food economies anchored by family farmers, ranchers and fishers that ensure healthy, sustainable food for all, combat consolidation in the food and farming sector and reverse the rapid loss of farmers and deterioration of farmland;
• Avoid “false solutions” and agribusiness-sponsored proposals that do nothing to address the systemic causes of our climate crisis and delay progress.

“The original New Deal helped America’s farmers survive the Great Depression and feed our nation while restoring farmlands and soil,” the groups write in the letter. “The Green New Deal can do even better: restoring our climate by regenerating soil and biodiversity while ensuring fair prices and family-sustaining livable wages for the farmers, ranchers, fishers and workers who bring food to our tables. Solutions must be community-driven, equitable, regionally specific and appropriate, and must promote the leadership of frontline communities disproportionately burdened by our climate crisis and by the unsustainable industrial food system.”

The letter continues: “Climate upheaval threatens our nation’s food security and costs taxpayers, farmers and food companies tens of billions of dollars a year at a minimum. Agriculture and industrial food production generate nearly one-quarter of all global climate-change emissions, making the food sector a leading producer of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.”

Read the full letter here.

Communications contact:
Patrick Davis, Friends of the Earth, (202) 222-0744, pdavis@foe.org
Ahna Kruzic, Pesticide Action Network, (510) 788-9020, ahna@panna.org

The post More than 300 Groups Urge Congress to Make Food and Agriculture Central to the Climate Crisis and Green New Deal Debate appeared first on Friends of the Earth.