More than 130 people packed into Patagonia's SoHo store in Manhattan recently for a Sierra Club-sponsored panel discussion about the opportunities and challenges of moving off coal power and a "just transition" to a new clean energy economy in New York. That's Sierra Club president Aaron Mair, above at front, with forum participants.
Just Transition is a framework for a fair and sustainable shift to a low-carbon economy, proposed by trades unions and supported by environmental NGOs, that seeks to provide workers in the shrinking fossil fuel industry with training in new green skills, and create good, stable, living-wage jobs in the new -- and inevitable -- renewable energy economy.
"Investing in the Past: New York and the Coal Industry" brought together representatives from ten partner organizations, two legislative offices, all five New York City boroughs, and all over upstate New York for a conversation about moving New York's energy system into the 21st century in a way that genuinely supports workers and communities.
That's Dara Illowsky and Makayla Comas, volunteer activists with the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, at the forum, below.
"The forum couldn't have come at a better time -- the morning the New York Public Service Commission finally opened the public comment period on the fate of the aging Cayuga coal plant in upstate New York," said New York City-based Beyond Coal organizer Daniel Sherrell, below. "Governor Cuomo needs to stop bailing out coal plants and taking us years backward on climate. Beyond Coal is working to put an end to coal bailouts and effect a just transition to clean energy."
Beyond Coal volunteers traveled to the forum from as far away as Buffalo, nearly 400 miles away, to be part of the conversation and share their on-the-ground experiences fighting coal plants in their communities. Two of them, Irene Weiser and Diana Strablow, were among the four panelists at the forum, along with Matt Ryan, executive director for the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN), New York City's leading climate and labor organization, and Club president Mair.
That's Strablow and Weiser, above, and Ryan, below. Ryan spoke about involving workers in a clean energy transition that is as responsible to labor as it is accountable to the climate science.
Weiser, a Town Council member from Caroline, New York, near the Cayuga Power Station in Lansing, says Governor Cuomo's bailout of coal-fired power plants doesn't make economic or environmental sense.
"We should be investing in transmission upgrades -- the infrastructure of the future -- rather than propping up fossil fuel plants of the past," Weiser said. "We call on the governor to provide transition support to the communities that have carried the burden of hosting coal-burning power plants, so that the toxic sites can be cleaned up, the workers can be trained for new jobs, and the community can be made whole."
Strablow, who lives in Buffalo near the Huntley coal plant, located on the Niagara River in Tonawanda, said Governor Cuomo deserves "a huge thank-you" for the recently-passed fracking ban, but he needs to stop replacing coal with natural gas infrastructure.
"If fracking isn't safe in New York, it isn't safe anywhere," she said. "Why would we say to folks in Pennsylvania, 'we won't contaminate our water with fracking but we'll let you suffer the health and environmental effects and power our state with your fracked gas?' We don't have time to replace one fossil fuel with another highly potent heat-trapping gas. We need to spend our dollars and resources on the leap to 100 percent renewable energy -- wind, solar, and geothermal -- and we need to do it now.
New York has an opportunity to lead the way with a just transition away from the fossil fuel energy economy, Strablow asserted. "The workers and communities around these coal plants are already suffering due to the lost revenues of a dying industry, and we must support them through the just transition process. They have had to choose for too long between good jobs, a viable community, and a clean, healthy environment. It’s time for both!"
Mair, below, delivered a rousing closer to the evening, talking about the need for the environmental, business, labor, and social justice movements to "break out of their silos" and work in concert, the need to diversify the environmental movement, and the importance of the vote.
"The environmental movement cannot solve [the climate crisis] alone," he told the assembled crowd. "If we don't diversify our movement and break out of our silos -- whether you're Sierra Club, a union laborer, a teacher, a student, or a neighborhood association -- we cannot save this planet. Voting rights, civil rights, labor rights, environmental rights, and economic justice rights are all dynamically linked.
"Most of the environmental movement is still a middle-class suburban movement. But one thing I loved about the fractivist movement in New York was that middle-class people were reaching beyond their class in pursuit of a common goal. The fractivist movement gave us a real window into our potential. We need to pull in communities of color, we need to pull in labor, we need to pull in the business community, and we have to transcend class barriers. We have to reach outside our communities."
"Personal income insecurity will drive choices that we have to make," Mair said. "We can put in place a clean-energy program in every county in New York that could jump-start our local economies and not only provide living-wage jobs and a just transition, but also start to clean up and rebuild our grid and our infrastructure. And the skills you need to put solar panels on a roof are good old-fashioned vocational skills like using a hammer and a nail. We have to let people know that their material interests are linked to a green economy."
