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From Glass Ceilings to Green Houses: More Women Are Needed in Green Industry

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Monday, March 18, 2024

In an era marked by increasing environmental awareness and urgency, the need for more diversity in what we call “the green industry” has never been stronger. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines green jobs as those that produce goods or services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources, including ecological restoration, forestry, landscaping, and renewable energy. Despite its crucial role in preserving our planet, the field remains predominantly male, with only 10% women. As a woman in this field, I’ve gained field experience in both natural areas and urban green spaces, learned technical skills like operating a chainsaw and climbing trees, and secured credentials like becoming an International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist. I’ve had the chance to make a difference for the planet, protect habitat for birds and other species, and meet and mentor other women around the United States. The type of work is varied and dynamic — but why, in an industry dedicated to preserving and protecting “Mother Nature,” are there so few women conducting this important work? A primary barrier to women’s entry into green industry has been a perception of these jobs as involving physical labor and long hours away from home, features traditionally associated with a male demographic. As a result there hasn’t been sufficient outreach to, or education of, underrepresented groups like women on potential career pathways in the sector. Despite significant improvements in inclusive workplaces, representation is still lacking. One way to address this is to elevate the many benefits of working in the green industry. Outdoor work not only contributes to improved mental and physical health but also offers a fulfilling choice to those seeking a break from the confines of an office setting. Opting for a forestry career, for instance, means immersing yourself in nature more than the average person, which actively decreases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, preventing chronic inflammation and supporting a well-regulated immune system. Spending time in a forest, whether urban or rural, also contributes to the mitigation of health problems like respiratory diseases and skin cancer and encourages an active lifestyle, combating obesity. Growing Trees, Growing Careers The green industry is experiencing unprecedented growth. Based on data from the Urban Forestry 2020 Project, U.S. job opportunities in urban forestry are projected to grow 5-17%, varying by region. Thanks to many new government programs to mitigate the effects of climate change, there’s a historic level of funding and investment in green infrastructure, clean and renewable energy, and nature-based solutions for sustainable development. Tools of the trade. Photo: Openlands For example, through the Inflation Reduction Act, $1.5 billion is being invested in urban and community forestry through the U.S. Forest Service, promoting increased tree canopy cover in disinvested communities and the proper maintenance and management of urban forests. This growth demands a diverse workforce equipped to execute these projects and tackle future challenges. Opportunities for Women An increased emphasis on providing paid training and educational opportunities means there are now many ways women can enter the industry. Parts of the sector are recognized as skilled trades and utilize apprenticeship or earn-as-you-learn models that provide program participants with the equivalent of college-level education, mentorship, and hands-on learning experiences. One example is the Openlands’ Arborist Registered Apprenticeship program, which I oversee. This program is the first and only Department of Labor-approved Registered Apprenticeship for Arboriculture in the state of Illinois. Initiatives like these give individuals who feel under-qualified or face barriers to entry the opportunity for professional development. They also connect people with peers who can share knowledge, resources, and support to ensure success. In response to the unfortunate impacts of climate change, there is a global need for specialized foresters and conservation scientists to protect one of our most vital natural resources: trees. Photo credit Openlands Even in a male-dominated industry, women have found opportunities to support one another. An example in my field is the Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop, where participants join industry leaders to learn the fundamentals of tree climbing and expand existing skills. The workshop gives the group technical learning opportunities and fosters community and belonging. Companies and organizations are promoting networking opportunities for women across the industry. Events like the International Society of Arboriculture Annual Conference and the Tree Care Industry Association Annual Expo host programs focused on connecting and empowering female professionals. Despite these positive examples, there’s more work to be done in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the green sector. Companies and organizations must prioritize DEI initiatives and invest in training and professional development for all individuals, regardless of gender. As stewards of the environment and advocates for our planet, leaders and workers in green industries have to encourage and empower more women to pursue careers in the field. By breaking down barriers and fostering inclusivity, we can build a greener, more equitable future. The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees. Previously in The Revelator: The Solution to Extinction Is You The post From Glass Ceilings to Green Houses: More Women Are Needed in Green Industry appeared first on The Revelator.

Women play a critical role in sustainable development, combatting climate change, and taking care of our natural resources. But industry needs to do more to support them. The post From Glass Ceilings to Green Houses: More Women Are Needed in Green Industry appeared first on The Revelator.

In an era marked by increasing environmental awareness and urgency, the need for more diversity in what we call “the green industry” has never been stronger. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines green jobs as those that produce goods or services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources, including ecological restoration, forestry, landscaping, and renewable energy. Despite its crucial role in preserving our planet, the field remains predominantly male, with only 10% women.

As a woman in this field, I’ve gained field experience in both natural areas and urban green spaces, learned technical skills like operating a chainsaw and climbing trees, and secured credentials like becoming an International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist. I’ve had the chance to make a difference for the planet, protect habitat for birds and other species, and meet and mentor other women around the United States.

The type of work is varied and dynamic — but why, in an industry dedicated to preserving and protecting “Mother Nature,” are there so few women conducting this important work?

A primary barrier to women’s entry into green industry has been a perception of these jobs as involving physical labor and long hours away from home, features traditionally associated with a male demographic. As a result there hasn’t been sufficient outreach to, or education of, underrepresented groups like women on potential career pathways in the sector. Despite significant improvements in inclusive workplaces, representation is still lacking.

One way to address this is to elevate the many benefits of working in the green industry. Outdoor work not only contributes to improved mental and physical health but also offers a fulfilling choice to those seeking a break from the confines of an office setting.

Opting for a forestry career, for instance, means immersing yourself in nature more than the average person, which actively decreases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, preventing chronic inflammation and supporting a well-regulated immune system. Spending time in a forest, whether urban or rural, also contributes to the mitigation of health problems like respiratory diseases and skin cancer and encourages an active lifestyle, combating obesity.

Growing Trees, Growing Careers

The green industry is experiencing unprecedented growth. Based on data from the Urban Forestry 2020 Project, U.S. job opportunities in urban forestry are projected to grow 5-17%, varying by region. Thanks to many new government programs to mitigate the effects of climate change, there’s a historic level of funding and investment in green infrastructure, clean and renewable energy, and nature-based solutions for sustainable development.

A woman in a hardhat and bright yellow jacket stands among and holds forestry tools
Tools of the trade. Photo: Openlands

For example, through the Inflation Reduction Act, $1.5 billion is being invested in urban and community forestry through the U.S. Forest Service, promoting increased tree canopy cover in disinvested communities and the proper maintenance and management of urban forests. This growth demands a diverse workforce equipped to execute these projects and tackle future challenges.

Opportunities for Women

An increased emphasis on providing paid training and educational opportunities means there are now many ways women can enter the industry. Parts of the sector are recognized as skilled trades and utilize apprenticeship or earn-as-you-learn models that provide program participants with the equivalent of college-level education, mentorship, and hands-on learning experiences.

One example is the Openlands’ Arborist Registered Apprenticeship program, which I oversee. This program is the first and only Department of Labor-approved Registered Apprenticeship for Arboriculture in the state of Illinois. Initiatives like these give individuals who feel under-qualified or face barriers to entry the opportunity for professional development. They also connect people with peers who can share knowledge, resources, and support to ensure success.

A woman in professional gear prepares a tree for planting
In response to the unfortunate impacts of climate change, there is a global need for specialized foresters and conservation scientists to protect one of our most vital natural resources: trees. Photo credit Openlands

Even in a male-dominated industry, women have found opportunities to support one another. An example in my field is the Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop, where participants join industry leaders to learn the fundamentals of tree climbing and expand existing skills. The workshop gives the group technical learning opportunities and fosters community and belonging.

Companies and organizations are promoting networking opportunities for women across the industry. Events like the International Society of Arboriculture Annual Conference and the Tree Care Industry Association Annual Expo host programs focused on connecting and empowering female professionals.

Despite these positive examples, there’s more work to be done in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the green sector. Companies and organizations must prioritize DEI initiatives and invest in training and professional development for all individuals, regardless of gender.

As stewards of the environment and advocates for our planet, leaders and workers in green industries have to encourage and empower more women to pursue careers in the field. By breaking down barriers and fostering inclusivity, we can build a greener, more equitable future.

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or their employees.

Creative Commons

Previously in The Revelator:

The Solution to Extinction Is You

The post From Glass Ceilings to Green Houses: More Women Are Needed in Green Industry appeared first on The Revelator.

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Just Six Companies Create About a Quarter of Global Plastic Waste, Survey Finds

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates. That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven, point, is the main takeaway from a first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world […]

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The more plastic a company makes, the more pollution it creates. That seemingly obvious, yet previously unproven, point, is the main takeaway from a first-of-its-kind study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Researchers from a dozen universities around the world found that, for every 1 percent increase in the amount of plastic a company uses, there is an associated 1 percent increase in its contribution to global plastic litter. In other words, if Coca-Cola is producing one-tenth of the world’s plastic, the research predicts that the beverage behemoth is responsible for about a tenth of the identifiable plastic litter on beaches or in parks, rivers, and other ecosystems. That finding “shook me up a lot, I was really distraught,” said Win Cowger, a researcher at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research and the study’s lead author. It suggests that companies’ loudly proclaimed efforts to reduce their plastic footprint “aren’t doing much at all” and that more is needed to make them scale down the amount of plastic they produce. Significantly, it supports calls from delegates to the United Nations global plastics treaty—which is undergoing its fourth round of discussions in Ottawa, Canada, through Tuesday—to restrict production as a primary means to “end plastic pollution.” Volunteers across 84 countries collected 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste and counted the items contributed by specific companies. “What the data is saying is that if the status quo doesn’t change in a huge way—if social norms around the rapid consumption and production of new materials don’t change—we won’t see what we want,” Cowger told Grist. That plastic production should be correlated with plastic pollution is intuitive, but until now there has been little quantitative research to prove it—especially on a company-by-company basis. Perhaps the most significant related research in this area appeared in a 2020 paper published in Environmental Science and Technology showing that overall marine plastic pollution was growing alongside global plastic production. Other research since then has documented the rapidly expanding “plastic smog” in the world’s oceans and forecasted a surge in plastic production over the next several decades. The Sciences Advances article draws on more than 1,500 “brand audits” coordinated between 2018 and 2022 by Break Free From Plastic, a coalition of more than 3,000 environmental organizations. Volunteers across 84 countries collected more than 1.8 million pieces of plastic waste and counted the number of items contributed by specific companies.  About half of the litter that volunteers collected couldn’t be tied to a specific company, either because it never had a logo or because its branding had faded or worn off. Among the rest, a small handful of companies—mostly in the food and beverage sector—turned up most often. The top polluters were Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, Altria—the parent company of Philip Morris USA—and Philip Morris International (which is a separate company that sells many of the same products). More than 1 in 10 of the pieces came from Coca-Cola, the top polluter by a significant margin. Overall, just 56 companies were responsible for half of the plastic bearing identifiable branding. The researchers plotted each company’s contribution to plastic pollution against its contribution to global plastic production (defined by mass, rather than the number of items). The result was the tidy, one-to-one relationship between production and pollution that caused Cowger so much distress. Many of the top polluters identified in the study have made voluntary commitments to address their outsize plastic footprint. Coca-Cola, for example, says it aims to reduce its use of “virgin plastic derived from nonrenewable sources” by 3 million metric tons over the next five years, and to sell a quarter of its beverages in reusable or refillable containers by 2030. By that date the company also aims to collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one it sells. Pepsi has a similar target to reduce virgin plastic use to 20 percent below a 2018 baseline by the end of the decade. Nestlé says it had reduced virgin plastic use by 10.5 percent as of 2022, and plans to achieve further reductions by 2025. In response to Grist’s request for comment, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola listed several of the company’s targets to reduce plastic packaging, increased recycled content, and scale up reusable alternatives. “We care about the impact of every drink we sell and are committed to growing our business in the right way,” the spokesperson said. Similarly, a PepsiCo representative said the company aims to “reduce the packaging we use, scale reusable models, and partner to further develop collection and recycling systems.” They affirmed Pepsi’s support for an “ambitious and binding” UN treaty to “help address plastic pollution.” Countries need to lay down the law: “It’s not going to be Coca-Cola or some other big company saying, ‘I’m gonna reduce my plastic by 2030.'” In a response provided after publication of this story, Altria said it believes the study is “fundamentally incorrect” because Phillip Morris USA operates only in the US, yet the study includes data from more than 80 countries. “So, it is impossible for Altria and PM USA to be responsible for 2 percent of global branded plastics pollution this study reports. In fact, for the US data, Altria is not on the list of the top companies, further demonstrating this study is inaccurately attributing plastic waste found internationally to our companies.” Two of the other top polluting companies did not respond to a request for comment. It’s worth noting that many of the companies’ plans involve replacing virgin plastic with recycled material. This does not necessarily address the problem outlined in the Science Advances study, since plastic products are no less likely to become litter just because they’re made of recycled content. There’s also a limit to the number of times plastic can be recycled—experts say just two or three times—before it must be sent to a landfill or an incinerator. Many plastic items cannot be recycled at all. Richard Thompson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth in the UK, commended the researchers for making “a very useful contribution to our understanding about the link between production and pollution.” He said the findings could shape regulations to make companies financially responsible for plastic waste—based on the specific amount they contribute to the environment. The findings could also inform this week’s negotiations for the UN global plastics treaty, where delegates are continuing to spar over whether and how to restrict production. According to Cowger, if the treaty really aims to “end plastic pollution”—as it states in its mandate—then negotiators will need to think beyond voluntary measures and regulate big producers.  “It’s not going to be Coca-Cola or some other big company saying, ‘I’m gonna reduce my plastic by 2030, you’ll see,’” Cowger told Grist. “It’s gonna be a country that says, ‘If you don’t reduce by 2030, you’re going to get hit with a huge fine.’”

Climate
Pollution
Science

The world agreed to create a climate reparations fund. Now comes the hard part.

A 26-member board is finally beginning work on the UN’s new loss and damage fund.

After three decades of work, advocates for developing countries scored a major win at last year’s United Nations climate change conference in Dubai: World leaders unanimously agreed to set up a climate reparations fund. As the planet warms, the poorest nations are being hit hardest by drought, rising sea levels, hurricanes, and a slew of other climate impacts — even though these countries did the least to cause global warming, compared to their early-industrializing peers. Enter the so-called loss and damage fund, which is supposed to compensate them for the unavoidable effects of climate change. So far, the international community has pledged more than $650 million to the venture. Now the tedious, unsexy — and often boring — work of setting up the fund is just beginning.  This week, a 26-member board is meeting for the first time to discuss the administrative and institutional policies required to operationalize the fund and dole money out to developing countries in need. The board’s to-do list is long. It ranges from the procedural — selecting co-chairs and agreeing on a host country for the fund — to the more substantive: deciding which countries are eligible to receive funding, how to fundraise and replenish the fund, and whether or not the World Bank will help manage the fund.  The board was supposed to hold its first meeting at the end of January, but a stalemate among wealthy countries, including the U.S. and those of the European Union, about who to nominate to the board led to delays, putting the meetings three months behind schedule. Much of this work must be completed in just over six months, before the next United Nations climate conference, known as COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan. “There’s a very large work plan for the year,” said Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns and head of international climate justice work at the nonprofit ActionAid USA. “They are still trying to squeeze in three meetings before COP29 to be able to stay on schedule.” Wu is attending the board meeting as an observer. The stakes are high. The roughly $650 million that has been pledged so far is a sliver of the estimated need — which researchers have pegged at as much as $580 billion per year by 2030 — and is broadly seen as startup money sufficient only to establish the fund.  As the main contributors to the climate crisis, wealthy countries are expected to be the primary donors to the fund. But before the fund can begin allocating money to poorer nations in need, a number of decisions need to be made. Key among them is whether the World Bank will serve as a trustee and help manage the operations of the fund. Wealthy nations believe that the bank, which houses several other environmental and climate funds, has the experience, reputation, and administrative know-how to best manage a financial endeavor of this size. But developing countries were initially opposed to the idea, citing the failures of the bank’s past programs and its role worsening debt crises in poor countries. Ultimately, developing countries reluctantly agreed to allow the World Bank to host the loss and damage fund on an interim basis. But that decision was contingent on the bank meeting 11 conditions, including allowing recipients to directly access money from the fund instead of requiring that money pass through an intermediary international institution, such as a United Nations agency or multilateral development bank. The World Bank has until June to deliberate, and report on whether or not it can meet those conditions.  Initial discussions about those conditions have already hit snags, according to reporting by E&E News. The loss and damage fund’s board and the bank can’t seem to agree on who should sign off on financial agreements when money is disbursed. The World Bank has a number of policies in place to ensure that the money it doles out isn’t misused and meets various environmental and social safeguards. Since the loss and damage fund is expected to hand out money to a range of national and subnational groups as a result of the direct access condition, the bank will likely work with hundreds of entities. That increases the chances that a recipient misuses the money or fails to pay back a loan, putting the bank on the hook. As a result, the bank wants the responsibility — and liability — to lie with the board, while the board has argued that as trustee, the bank should have final signing authority.  If a project that receives money from the fund is unable to pay the bank back, the bank’s credit rating could be affected, which in turn could lead to a decrease in the bank’s borrowing power, said Michai Robertson, a lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, a group representing 39 island nations. “They see this as a big cluster of issues,” he said. “If you have one entity from each developing country, that’s 140 countries that can access the fund directly and not use a go-between. The bank sees this as a huge risk.” If the bank ultimately reports that it cannot meet the 11 conditions, countries will go back to the drawing board to establish an independent fund. Those decisions will be made at COP29 in Azerbaijan.  Even if the stalemate between the board and bank is resolved, the board will still have many more thorny questions to work out, including which countries will be eligible to receive money from the fund. In the agreement inked in Dubai last year, countries agreed that the fund’s resources are meant for “developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.” But the agreement did not define which countries qualify as “particularly vulnerable.” The phrase has typically referred to small island states and those classified as “least developed countries” in climate talks — but that leaves out countries like Pakistan, which faced catastrophic floods in 2022, and others that are widely seen as appropriate recipients for loss and damage funding.  Hanging over these discussions is also the question of how the fund will raise the trillions of dollars that will be required in the coming years to address the loss and damage countries will face due to climate change.  “There’s sort of the elephant-in-the-room question, which is when is the fund actually going to get meaningful amounts of money,” said Wu. If the fund receives very little money, the board will end up designing policies meant to facilitate the transfer of millions of dollars — not the trillions that are needed, he said.  “The scope of the ambition of the fund is a big question,” he said.  This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world agreed to create a climate reparations fund. Now comes the hard part. on Apr 29, 2024.

Climate
Crisis

Defying Climate Change: Yellowstone’s Lake Ice Isn’t Melting Like Others

According to recent research led by scientists from the University of Wyoming, the duration for which Yellowstone Lake remains ice-covered each year has remained constant...

Yellowstone Lake, North America’s largest high-elevation lake, freezes over completely in late December or early January and usually thaws in late May or early June. The period of ice cover has not changed in the last century, despite warming temperatures in the region. Credit: Lusha TronstadAccording to recent research led by scientists from the University of Wyoming, the duration for which Yellowstone Lake remains ice-covered each year has remained constant over the past century, even amidst rising regional temperatures.That is an unexpected finding, as most lakes around the world are experiencing shorter durations of ice cover, the scientists note in a new paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.“We show that contrary to expectation, the ice phenology of Yellowstone Lake has been uniquely resistant to climate change,” wrote the scientists, led by Lusha Tronstad, lead invertebrate zoologist with UW’s Wyoming Natural Diversity Database and Department of Zoology and Physiology, and Isabella Oleksy, a former UW postdoctoral researcher now on the University of Colorado-Boulder faculty. “The unchanging ice phenology of Yellowstone Lake stands in stark contrast to similar lakes in the Northern Hemisphere.” Other researchers involved in the study are from Utah State University, Colorado State University, and Colorado Mesa University.Geographic and Environmental ContextSituated at 7,733 feet above sea level in the heart of Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone Lake is North America’s largest high-elevation lake, roughly 20 miles long and 14 miles wide with a surface area of 132 square miles. It freezes over completely in late December or early January and usually thaws in late May or early June.Records for the lake’s ice-off date have been recorded each year by Lake Village Ranger Station staff since 1927, and the ice-on date has been recorded since 1931. In addition to studying those records, the scientists analyzed climate data for the same period, 1927-2022, including air temperatures and precipitation. They also compared Yellowstone Lake’s data with seven similar lakes in northern Europe.The lack of long-term change in the duration of Yellowstone Lake’s ice cover was unexpected because the Yellowstone region has seen a warming climate, the researchers say. Since 1950, annual temperatures have increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The changes are particularly pronounced at the high elevation of Yellowstone Lake, where air temperatures increased by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit between 1980-2018.“Using local weather data, we found some evidence for increased summer, fall, and spring temperatures, primarily in the last three decades,” the scientists wrote about air temperatures at Yellowstone Lake. “Given the key role of air temperatures in driving ice formation and break-up, it is noteworthy that we did not find evidence for corresponding shifts in ice phenology.”The Role of Snow in Ice PhenologyWhy the apparent discrepancy?While it is possible that fall minimum temperatures — which are important in predicting ice formation — are not rising as quickly as overall temperature trends in the region, a more likely explanation is that increased snowfall at Yellowstone Lake has served as a buffer against warmer weather, the scientists say.Snow cover, particularly in spring, can delay ice break-up. Cumulative spring snow, which was strongly correlated with delayed ice-off dates, has nearly doubled over the last century at Yellowstone Lake, the research showed. In general, precipitation has increased in spring and fall there.That differs from the Upper Green River Basin to the south, where snowfall has declined or been relatively stable at high elevations.“Shifts in local precipitation, especially increases in fall and spring snow, appear to be buffering (Yellowstone Lake) ice phenology against warming temperatures,” the researchers wrote.But, the scientists are not sure how long this phenomenon will last, noting projections of continued warming and shifting precipitation regimes in the high Rocky Mountains.“Our results, paired with recent analyses of climate projections, suggest a ‘tipping point’ may be coming when ice phenology abruptly changes for Yellowstone Lake,” they wrote. “This tipping point will largely stem from the ongoing shift from snow- to rain-dominated precipitation regimes in the fall and spring.“… Increased spring rainfall has not yet caused a detectable long-term trend toward earlier ice break-up, potentially because of the counteracting effects of increased spring snow. As temperatures warm further, and fall and spring snowfall decreases, ice phenology may rapidly change on Yellowstone Lake.”If that happens, “there may be wide-ranging consequences for nutrient cycling, lake productivity, fisheries, and recreation,” the scientists concluded.Reference: “Despite a century of warming, increased snowfall has buffered the ice phenology of North America’s largest high-elevation lake against climate change” by Lusha Tronstad, Isabella Oleksy, Justin P. F. Pomeranz, Daniel Preston, Gordon Gianniny, Katrina Cook, Ana Holley, Phil Farnes, Todd Koel and Scott Hotaling, 8 April 2024, Environmental Research Letters.DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad3bd1

Climate
Mountains

UAW’s Latest Labor Victory Is a Huge Climate Win, Too

Angel Gomez, a second-shift underbody mechanic at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was on the line when United Auto Workers won the factory union election. “I heard hollering,” said Gomez, as the news broke through the shop floor on Thursday, April 18. “There were people who’d been trying to do this for fourteen years, they’ve been putting in the work through all these failed elections, and finally they got it. It was a good feeling.”Renee Berry, 58 years old and a veteran of those two failed elections, was even more ecstatic. Apologizing over and over again on the phone for being so emotional, she told me the ballot count was agonizingly slow: Yes, no, no, yes, yes. “I almost had an anxiety attack,” she said. “We put our blood sweat and tears in this plant.”The Volkswagen plant had become a litmus test for the South. After UAW’s union campaigns at the plant were defeated in 2014 and 2019, the popular adage was that labor just couldn’t win here. The country’s media outlets of record united to declare the south a resource pit, a place where labor goes to die. And it’s true that states here are right-to-work, where the power of unions is severely curtailed by legal barriers to organizing and wages overall are far lower than the national average. But as this election shows, the South is home to an energetic homegrown labor movement that’s patient and insistent in the face of a hostile political climate. That, combined with an injection of federal investment in renewable energy industry, is pushing the region towards a very different trajectory than the one imagined by conservative politicians who have opposed these developments.Corporations, and the incredibly wealthy people who run them, have become Republicans’ biggest donors, swaying even more moderate politicians into virulent anti-unionism. That’s trickled down to local politics in places like Chattanooga, where many people lacked unionized family members or much context for the what union membership might mean. “It was just a lot of people who are ambivalent, and just seemed like, I’m not sure, a lot of these guys, you really just needed to give them just a little bit of information, like a little bit of like, Hey, this is what could be possible,” said Zach Costello, a worker who was on the organizing committee. It was often easier to convince people like Berry, whose dad was a union steelworker: she knew it meant healthcare, a pension, higher wages, and job security. They and Gomez fanned the embers, despite Southern politicians over the past few decades doing their best to stamp the spark of the labor movement out.The Volkswagen plant is the first new auto industry union in the South in eighty years, and the only union plant owned by a foreign automaker. “In the nineties, governors began trying to entice foreign auto plants to come to the south,” said Stephen Silvia, a labor economist at American University. “They told auto producers that wages are lower, taxes are lower, land is cheaper, and we cultivate a nonunion environment.”It all began when Tennessee offered Nissan generous incentives to establish a plant in the community of Smyrna. Nissan became the first foothold in a wave of industry relocation to the South, and amongst the state’s owning class, a sign of incoming prosperity. “We’re all gonna be rich!” exclaimed the mayor of Smyrna at the time, according to an account in the Journal of Southern History. In 1989, UAW’s attempts to organize the Nissan plant lost by a two-one margin. The companies’ union-busting playbook—frightening ads that threatened the plant’s closure, captive audience meetings, rhetoric about losing jobs, and offers of competitive pay should the union lose—became the playbook for anti-union campaigns across the region ever since. As unions lost, the auto industry’s landscape tilted southwards, meaning that about half of auto workers now work in nonunion plants, which are mostly located in the Southeast. Before that time, nearly all autoworkers belonged to a union. Auto manufacturers located themselves in rural areas, often establishing racist hiring practices to keep solidarity out of the shop floor. Other industries trickled into the region, too—aviation, tech, chemical manufacturing, and paper products, just to name a few. All made their homes in various states where business came cheap and easy.Climate regulations and the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous incentives are now stimulating electric vehicle manufacturing. Despite the Biden administration’s pro-labor economic agenda, IRA funding—and thus billions of dollars in public and private investment—has largely gone to areas with low union density, spurring worries among auto workers that the EV shift could create a second tier of lower-paid, nonunion workers spearheading the transition to electric vehicles, working in dangerous conditions with flammable elements like lithium.In 2022, Volkswagen broke ground on EV production and assembly; the same year, the Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama—UAW’s next battle, organizers tell me—began manufacturing an electric SUV. In the most recent union contract between UAW and the Big Three automakers, General Motors and Stellantis agreed to allow joint-venture EV manufacturing plants under the union umbrella, and now, Tennessee may be the next step.Since the beginning conversations about reducing dependence on fossil fuels—a necessary transition that nonetheless could have deleterious impacts on workers across steel, coal, oil, auto, and building trades industries—workers have demanded a “just transition”: an energy transition that prevents as much of the workforce as possible from being dislocated, allows for training and opportunity, and provides jobs equal to or better than the ones that came before. Environmental organizations have taken up the demand, too, seeing that a united front for labor rights and environmental justice is more powerful than keeping the two at loggerheads, as right-wing politicians might prefer. A just transition is what workers in the South are demanding as the IRA funds flood in.“We’re seeing a bunch of EV manufacturers come here,” said Michael Adriaanse, “and they should be union.” Adriaanse organizes with the Blue Oval Good Neighbors Committee. In rural, working class Black communities in west Tennessee, this labor and community coalition is mobilizing to bargain with Blue Oval City, a Ford joint venture electric vehicle plant that’s the recipient of the largest public investment the state of Tennessee has ever made, with an added $9.2 billion in funding from the Department of Energy. The VW victory has given workers hope for their efforts to negotiate good jobs and community benefits with the EV industry, he added. But it’s going to be hard won.“Anti-union sentiment across the country is virulent, and laws across the country don’t support unionization,” said Vonda McDaniel, who serves as a part of the Blue Oval coalition and is president of the Middle Tennessee Central Labor Council. Lawmakers in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama passed bills just this year and last year barring state incentives to companies that voluntarily recognize unions. In 2022, Tennessee enshrined right-to-work into its constitution. The prospect of this election had Southern governors running scared, so much so that the governors of Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia wrote a joint public condemnation of the union drive. In Alabama, which boasts the seventh highest poverty rate in the country, Governor Kay Ivey lambasted UAW, saying that “the Alabama model for economic success is under attack.” Research has shown that any economic growth in right-to-work states tends to benefit the already wealthy. In its previous attempts to organize Volkswagen, the UAW attempted a top-down strategy, where they tried to simply persuade Volkswagen to recognize the union. The UAW employed a different strategy this time, a bottom-up strategy that truly involved deep organizing in the plant. “This has to be personal, person to person, door to door,” McDaniel said.The simple power of conversations worked for Zach Costello, who found that once people started talking about their conditions, they started flipping themselves more than he really flipped them, often across partisan lines. “You really saw a lot of people you would expect, because of their political leanings, to not really be pro-union,” he said. “But people are ready to throw out culture war crap, when they’re talking about real things that affect them.”McDaniel now hopes national unions—many of which have been wary of investing resources in the region—see the success of this strategy. Currently, state-level politics in the South mean many unions tend to write it off, refusing to engage their resources in what they have seen as a losing battle.Outside the automotive industry, other regional rank-and-file workers and labor organizers see these victories reinvigorating their own long-term struggles for economic and racial justice. While Tennessee is still ranked thirteenth lowest state for union representation, its union membership is the fastest-growing in the country, across all job sectors. UAW’s changing strategy and priorities certainly made the win possible, but so, too, did the genuine exuberance and support of the statewide and Southern labor movement, which has been chipping away at poor working conditions, workplace inequality, and depressed wages for two hundred years—through the end of slavery, through miners’ rebellions and textile strikes, through Black sharecroppers’ uprisings, and the Memphis garbage collectors’ strike that saw Martin Luther King’s final speech. Workers in Tennessee say they’ve been working for this kind of breakthrough.“Something feels different in Tennessee,” said Bobbi Lyn Negrón, a public school teacher and member of the Metropolitan Nashville Educators Association, which won a fight against school privatization only this week. “But we still have workers across the South that have been resisting.” Negrón listed a few fights off the top of her head: Memphis fragrance factory workers who’ve been on strike; an active campus workers’ union in the eastern part of the state that’s won repeated graduate stipend raises. Amid a dispiritingly anti-labor state political climate, this feels like a moment of true possibility. “We have a saying in Spanish, ‘like candela’,” Negrón said, “meaning the fire in us is going to ignite.”

Angel Gomez, a second-shift underbody mechanic at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was on the line when United Auto Workers won the factory union election. “I heard hollering,” said Gomez, as the news broke through the shop floor on Thursday, April 18. “There were people who’d been trying to do this for fourteen years, they’ve been putting in the work through all these failed elections, and finally they got it. It was a good feeling.”Renee Berry, 58 years old and a veteran of those two failed elections, was even more ecstatic. Apologizing over and over again on the phone for being so emotional, she told me the ballot count was agonizingly slow: Yes, no, no, yes, yes. “I almost had an anxiety attack,” she said. “We put our blood sweat and tears in this plant.”The Volkswagen plant had become a litmus test for the South. After UAW’s union campaigns at the plant were defeated in 2014 and 2019, the popular adage was that labor just couldn’t win here. The country’s media outlets of record united to declare the south a resource pit, a place where labor goes to die. And it’s true that states here are right-to-work, where the power of unions is severely curtailed by legal barriers to organizing and wages overall are far lower than the national average. But as this election shows, the South is home to an energetic homegrown labor movement that’s patient and insistent in the face of a hostile political climate. That, combined with an injection of federal investment in renewable energy industry, is pushing the region towards a very different trajectory than the one imagined by conservative politicians who have opposed these developments.Corporations, and the incredibly wealthy people who run them, have become Republicans’ biggest donors, swaying even more moderate politicians into virulent anti-unionism. That’s trickled down to local politics in places like Chattanooga, where many people lacked unionized family members or much context for the what union membership might mean. “It was just a lot of people who are ambivalent, and just seemed like, I’m not sure, a lot of these guys, you really just needed to give them just a little bit of information, like a little bit of like, Hey, this is what could be possible,” said Zach Costello, a worker who was on the organizing committee. It was often easier to convince people like Berry, whose dad was a union steelworker: she knew it meant healthcare, a pension, higher wages, and job security. They and Gomez fanned the embers, despite Southern politicians over the past few decades doing their best to stamp the spark of the labor movement out.The Volkswagen plant is the first new auto industry union in the South in eighty years, and the only union plant owned by a foreign automaker. “In the nineties, governors began trying to entice foreign auto plants to come to the south,” said Stephen Silvia, a labor economist at American University. “They told auto producers that wages are lower, taxes are lower, land is cheaper, and we cultivate a nonunion environment.”It all began when Tennessee offered Nissan generous incentives to establish a plant in the community of Smyrna. Nissan became the first foothold in a wave of industry relocation to the South, and amongst the state’s owning class, a sign of incoming prosperity. “We’re all gonna be rich!” exclaimed the mayor of Smyrna at the time, according to an account in the Journal of Southern History. In 1989, UAW’s attempts to organize the Nissan plant lost by a two-one margin. The companies’ union-busting playbook—frightening ads that threatened the plant’s closure, captive audience meetings, rhetoric about losing jobs, and offers of competitive pay should the union lose—became the playbook for anti-union campaigns across the region ever since. As unions lost, the auto industry’s landscape tilted southwards, meaning that about half of auto workers now work in nonunion plants, which are mostly located in the Southeast. Before that time, nearly all autoworkers belonged to a union. Auto manufacturers located themselves in rural areas, often establishing racist hiring practices to keep solidarity out of the shop floor. Other industries trickled into the region, too—aviation, tech, chemical manufacturing, and paper products, just to name a few. All made their homes in various states where business came cheap and easy.Climate regulations and the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous incentives are now stimulating electric vehicle manufacturing. Despite the Biden administration’s pro-labor economic agenda, IRA funding—and thus billions of dollars in public and private investment—has largely gone to areas with low union density, spurring worries among auto workers that the EV shift could create a second tier of lower-paid, nonunion workers spearheading the transition to electric vehicles, working in dangerous conditions with flammable elements like lithium.In 2022, Volkswagen broke ground on EV production and assembly; the same year, the Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama—UAW’s next battle, organizers tell me—began manufacturing an electric SUV. In the most recent union contract between UAW and the Big Three automakers, General Motors and Stellantis agreed to allow joint-venture EV manufacturing plants under the union umbrella, and now, Tennessee may be the next step.Since the beginning conversations about reducing dependence on fossil fuels—a necessary transition that nonetheless could have deleterious impacts on workers across steel, coal, oil, auto, and building trades industries—workers have demanded a “just transition”: an energy transition that prevents as much of the workforce as possible from being dislocated, allows for training and opportunity, and provides jobs equal to or better than the ones that came before. Environmental organizations have taken up the demand, too, seeing that a united front for labor rights and environmental justice is more powerful than keeping the two at loggerheads, as right-wing politicians might prefer. A just transition is what workers in the South are demanding as the IRA funds flood in.“We’re seeing a bunch of EV manufacturers come here,” said Michael Adriaanse, “and they should be union.” Adriaanse organizes with the Blue Oval Good Neighbors Committee. In rural, working class Black communities in west Tennessee, this labor and community coalition is mobilizing to bargain with Blue Oval City, a Ford joint venture electric vehicle plant that’s the recipient of the largest public investment the state of Tennessee has ever made, with an added $9.2 billion in funding from the Department of Energy. The VW victory has given workers hope for their efforts to negotiate good jobs and community benefits with the EV industry, he added. But it’s going to be hard won.“Anti-union sentiment across the country is virulent, and laws across the country don’t support unionization,” said Vonda McDaniel, who serves as a part of the Blue Oval coalition and is president of the Middle Tennessee Central Labor Council. Lawmakers in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama passed bills just this year and last year barring state incentives to companies that voluntarily recognize unions. In 2022, Tennessee enshrined right-to-work into its constitution. The prospect of this election had Southern governors running scared, so much so that the governors of Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia wrote a joint public condemnation of the union drive. In Alabama, which boasts the seventh highest poverty rate in the country, Governor Kay Ivey lambasted UAW, saying that “the Alabama model for economic success is under attack.” Research has shown that any economic growth in right-to-work states tends to benefit the already wealthy. In its previous attempts to organize Volkswagen, the UAW attempted a top-down strategy, where they tried to simply persuade Volkswagen to recognize the union. The UAW employed a different strategy this time, a bottom-up strategy that truly involved deep organizing in the plant. “This has to be personal, person to person, door to door,” McDaniel said.The simple power of conversations worked for Zach Costello, who found that once people started talking about their conditions, they started flipping themselves more than he really flipped them, often across partisan lines. “You really saw a lot of people you would expect, because of their political leanings, to not really be pro-union,” he said. “But people are ready to throw out culture war crap, when they’re talking about real things that affect them.”McDaniel now hopes national unions—many of which have been wary of investing resources in the region—see the success of this strategy. Currently, state-level politics in the South mean many unions tend to write it off, refusing to engage their resources in what they have seen as a losing battle.Outside the automotive industry, other regional rank-and-file workers and labor organizers see these victories reinvigorating their own long-term struggles for economic and racial justice. While Tennessee is still ranked thirteenth lowest state for union representation, its union membership is the fastest-growing in the country, across all job sectors. UAW’s changing strategy and priorities certainly made the win possible, but so, too, did the genuine exuberance and support of the statewide and Southern labor movement, which has been chipping away at poor working conditions, workplace inequality, and depressed wages for two hundred years—through the end of slavery, through miners’ rebellions and textile strikes, through Black sharecroppers’ uprisings, and the Memphis garbage collectors’ strike that saw Martin Luther King’s final speech. Workers in Tennessee say they’ve been working for this kind of breakthrough.“Something feels different in Tennessee,” said Bobbi Lyn Negrón, a public school teacher and member of the Metropolitan Nashville Educators Association, which won a fight against school privatization only this week. “But we still have workers across the South that have been resisting.” Negrón listed a few fights off the top of her head: Memphis fragrance factory workers who’ve been on strike; an active campus workers’ union in the eastern part of the state that’s won repeated graduate stipend raises. Amid a dispiritingly anti-labor state political climate, this feels like a moment of true possibility. “We have a saying in Spanish, ‘like candela’,” Negrón said, “meaning the fire in us is going to ignite.”

Climate
Business
Culture

Congress Ponders Competing Bills to Aid Tribes and Wildlife

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Nine years ago, Glenn Olson joined a panel whose members, in ordinary circumstances, would rarely appear in the same room together—let alone work as a collaborative team. Olson, chair of bird conservation and public policy at the National Audubon […]

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Nine years ago, Glenn Olson joined a panel whose members, in ordinary circumstances, would rarely appear in the same room together—let alone work as a collaborative team. Olson, chair of bird conservation and public policy at the National Audubon Society, sat with executives from Shell Oil, Toyota Motors, and the National Rifle Association, as well as with sportsmen, scientists and former government officials. The panel’s stated goal was to design a new system of funding conservation, one that would ensure the long-term flourishing of the nation’s wildlife. State and territorial wildlife agencies currently receive most of their funding from hunting and fishing fees and equipment purchases. This revenue is prioritized for game species, while non-game species have to rely on the approximately $60 million agencies receive from the federal budget every year—an amount that, once divided among more than 50 agencies, forces many state and tribal wildlife managers to pick and choose which species to protect. If annual funding was increased to $1.3 billion, Olson’s panel reported, those agencies could reach thousands more “species in greatest conservation need,” restoring some populations before they become endangered. The America’s Wildlife Habitat Conservation Act includes $300 million for local wildlife agencies and $20 million for tribes every year for five years. The panel laid the groundwork for what is now known as the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. If passed, RAWA would secure an annual $1.3 billion for wildlife agencies and $97.5 million for conservation work by tribal nations. Since it was first introduced in 2021, RAWA has been backed not only by environmental groups but by corporations hoping to avoid the costs associated with federal endangered species regulations. In a polarized Congress, the bill has earned unusually broad bipartisan support. “We got to the point where we just got more and more co-sponsors,” Olson said. “Everybody came together and said, ‘This looks like a durable solution.’” This year, RAWA is poised for another vote on the Senate floor. The bill continues to gain co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle, but lawmakers have yet to settle on a funding source. Now, a new conservation bill may compete for supporters, particularly among Republicans. Last week, the America’s Wildlife Habitat Conservation Act (AWHCA) cleared the House Committee on Natural Resources with a 21-17 vote along party lines. The new bill seeks $300 million for local wildlife agencies and $20 million for tribes every year for five years. These funds would be “subject to appropriation” by Congress, however, meaning the full amount may not be granted each year. And to offset this spending, the bill would rescind $700 million of the federal funding appropriated to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Inflation Reduction Act. (NOAA plans to use most of its funding from the federal investment for coastal resilience and conservation projects.) The $320 million was the amount the bill’s authors felt comfortable offsetting, said an aide to the House Committee on Natural Resources. Regarding the rescission, the aide said that the committee looked at departments that had received funding from the Inflation Reduction Act but had yet to spend it. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, would also amend the Endangered Species Act, enabling states to submit their own recovery plans for threatened species to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In some cases, the agency would be required to establish “objective, incremental goals” for recovery, with regulations becoming less stringent as those goals are met. The bill would also limit the agency’s ability to designate critical habitat on private lands and remove the requirement that federal agencies update their land-management plans every time a new species is listed or new critical habitat is designated. Supporters of Westerman’s bill say the proposed funding mechanism appeals to fiscally conservative Republicans, and they argue that the amendments to the Endangered Species Act would encourage private landowners and government agencies to collaborate on species recovery. Environmental advocates, however, say the bill is riddled with dealbreakers. RAWA supporters contend that the five-year sunset provision would limit what agencies can accomplish and even who they can hire. In contrast, RAWA would provide the baseline funding necessary for long-term environmental projects, such as forest restoration. Many supporters also worry that the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act will weaken species conservation plans. As the new bill left the committee, Rep. Jared Huffman, (D-CA), lamented the loss of the “gold standard” embodied in RAWA.  “We still need base funding for tribes, and RAWA has been the most promising avenue for that.” When it comes to tribal-led conservation, RAWA offers multiple benefits that are not reflected in the new bill. For one, it would provide almost five times the amount of funding—a critical difference, since that money would be distributed across more than 574 federally recognized tribes and over 100 million acres of land. For another, RAWA drops any matching requirement for tribes, relieving them of the obligation to constantly reapply for more grants. Tribes are already undertaking significant conservation work, said Julie Thorstenson, executive director of the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, citing historical and ongoing contributions to the recovery of bison, salmon and the black-footed ferret. The amount of annual funding proposed by RAWA would allow them to expand the scope of their work and take on a more active role in national conversations, rather than dividing their budget between conferences with partners and action on the ground. “We still need base funding for tribes, and RAWA has been the most promising avenue for that,” Thorstenson said. Mike Leahy, senior director of wildlife, hunting and fishing policy at the National Wildlife Federation, said that the annual funding requested by RAWA is the minimum—not an inflated estimate—of what is needed to protect over 12,000 at-risk species nationwide. While acknowledging Rep. Westerman’s intentions, Leahy pointed out the bill has a major “political problem,” given that most Democrats firmly oppose rescinding any money from the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, RAWA faces its own challenges: Its sponsors still have yet to agree on a source of funds for the billion-dollar plan, though many ideas have been proposed. Previous iterations of the bill sought funding from oil and gas leases, taxes on cryptocurrency and fees paid by polluters. Like Leahy, Olson applauded the new bill’s willingness to dramatically increase funding for conservation.  But it lacks the widespread support that has fueled RAWA for nearly a decade, and, as Olson pointed out, “In order to be durable, it almost has to be bipartisan.”

Climate
Conservation
Government

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