It’s Friday, June 7, and a huge labor union is Green New Dealing.
The Service Employees International Union is one of the largest unions in the country with more than 2 million members in all kinds of work — home care, security, airlines, and much else. On Thursday, the powerful SEIU endorsed the Green New Deal resolution — an economy-wide proposal to green the economy and avert the worst effects of climate change.
So much for the old union vs. environmentalists divide.
“We’ve been inspired by the fearlessness and courage of the climate change activists whose direct action and bold demands for change have put this issue front and center in the national conversation,” Mary Kay Henry, the SEIU’s International President, said in a statement. The resolution in support of the Green New Deal promises to organize its members in the fight against climate change.
That’s a major shift, not only because the SEIU is the first union to endorse the progressive proposal, but also because many unions have opposed green legislation in favor of fossil fuel infrastructure projects in the past. For example, the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which has been a strong supporter of the Dakota Access Pipeline, came out against the Green New Deal in February, arguing it would cause “economic and social devastation.”
Now that the SEIU is on board with the Green New Deal, will other labor unions follow? Watch this space.
The Smog
Looks like the Keystone XL pipeline is back on. Federal judges reversed a lower court ruling on Thursday that froze the construction of TransCanada’s pipeline, granting its request to get back to work. The decision comes two months after President Trump signed a presidential permit that helped revive the project.
Flooding and tornadoes continue to batter parts of the South, leaving homes destroyed, cars overturned, and streets shut down. At least one person has been reported dead in Louisiana. Officials continue to evacuate residents as they brace for more heavy rains over the weekend.
Hundreds of students set to speak at high school and college graduation ceremonies vowed to read a prepared message supplied by a youth-led movement called Class of 0000 that would warn about “catastrophic climate change” and call on leaders to take action. But many students have complained that school officials are censoring these climate crisis speeches for being too political.
