Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/12/2012 12:29:33 PM PST by jazusamo
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Thursday that climate change deniers call the shots in Congress.
“[I]t is clear that as long as Congress is effectively controlled by climate change deniers, all of us — investors, companies, workers and the broader public — must take action ourselves,” Trumka said.
In a wide-ranging speech in New York at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk & Energy Solutions, Trumka made the case for creating jobs with the build-out of low-carbon infrastructure.
He said the collapse of global warming legislation has prompted the labor federation to seek other means to spur investments in climate-friendly technologies. The federation backed the sweeping climate bill that passed the House in 2009, but climate legislation collapsed in the Senate the following year and remains politically moribund amid GOP control of the House and the Democrats' slim Senate majority.
“So a year ago, as the climate bill failed in Congress, as the jobs crisis deepened and as workers’ pension funds continued to suffer from microscopic fixed-income yields, the American labor movement decided we couldn’t wait — we had to act to help advance profitable, risk-weighted investments that would create jobs and address climate change,” he said, according to prepared remarks.
The speech — which cites the risk of “catastrophic” climate change — touts efforts such as investments by the AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment Trust in efficiency retrofits, and work with the Clinton Global Initiative on spurring investments in retrofits, transportation and other infrastructure.
But Trumka also urges renewed efforts to pass climate legislation, arguing capital markets aren’t currently addressing climate risks because it remains an “externality.”
He states:
That’s why investors need, for our own economic reasons, government policies to make sure that critical investments get made — investments in building retrofits, in high-speed rail and the smart grid, in carbon capture and sequestration. That’s what comprehensive climate legislation is about — and that’s why we as nation must return to the work of passing a climate bill.
Trumka also notes concerns that tackling climate change and EPA rules to curb other pollution from coal-fired power plants will be economically harmful to regions like West Virginia and the Ohio Valley.
“The truth is that in many places — and not just places where coal is mined — there is fear that the 'green economy' will turn into another version of the radical inequality that now haunts our society — another economy that works for the 1 percent and not for the 99 percent,” he states.
Trumka says the AFL-CIO wants new dialogue between workers, environmentalists, companies and investors to “forge pathways to fair and politically sustainable change.”
He said labor will help lead talks to discuss strategies for boosting technologies like “smart” power grids, building high-speed rail, retrofitting coal plants and expanding renewable power.
Trumka argues such talks must consider how to help communities thrive when coal plants and mines close, and how to create jobs for unemployed construction workers.
“In particular, we need dialogue between environmentalists and workers and communities about the future of coal. About what the global labor movement calls a Just Transition to a low-carbon-emissions economy. And the AFL-CIO is ready to host that dialogue,” he states.
I really don’t know either.
I know there are supposed climate “scientists” that say it’s man made but I’m sure that those “scientists” come from the enviro-nazi type people prevalent in all forms of the enviro nutjob movement.
Thanks for that link. The EPA is working overtime to see just how many people they can put out of work, they have be eliminated and soon.
That’s good, very good and true!
Me “ Unions controlled by communist scum”.
“[I]t is clear that as long as Congress is effectively controlled by climate change deniers, all of us — investors, companies, workers and the broader public — must take action ourselves,” Trumka said.)
This may be hard for you to understand assclown, but those in Congress were ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE to represent us. YOU WERE NOT.................
Maybe Trumka should go ‘splain it to the 25,000 unemployed union members who would have jobs on the Keystone Pipeline if not for his buddy Obama and the Warm Mongers.
The big offenders appear to be energy, metals, and food. Guess we’ll just have to learn to get by without those things.
The left is, for the most part, an alliance between power-mad charlatans and good-hearted folk who are clueless about the way the world (esp. economics) works. In some cases one gets power-mad charlatans who are clueless about the way the world works. It seems Trumka falls into this last category.
Ah, you still speak English. Trumka speaks Newspeak.
In Newspeak, the phrase “climate change” can have the same denotation as the English phrases “global warming”, “anthropogenic global warming”, “climate change” or “anthropogenic climate change” as suits The Party at any given moment.
If Dick “Mumbles” Trumka is a strong proponent of “global warming” theory, then you KNOW it’s a scam and a shakedown.
*That* is the key statement. It's not about real or imagined global warming, it's about the legislation that fills the coffers of union thugs and other sundry scum. Actually, I'm surprised he went on the record with that statement. A lapse of judgement in the 'heat' of the moment, perhaps...
Wow...There actually is a resemblance in looks and deeds.
What would their answer be?
I really don’t know. All you hear is “consensus” and some mumbling about “the UN reports”. Never any science.
I like to ask them how their science can completely rule out solar activity as a cause of intermittent warming. I concede that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but without an impermeable ceiling, and with the presence of salt-water oceans that absorb CO2, how is it that the earth is a greenhouse?
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