We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks, and dead ideas. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

 

Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020

 

Novelist Arundhati Roy likens the Covid pandemic to a portal which allows us the opportunity to make the same mistakes again and again or to envision a new world where we listen to and fight for our better angels. I believe her poignant imagery and prose brilliantly describe the choice we have facing climate change.

 

Scientists have discovered five past catastrophic events in our history where the diversity of life has plummeted - five periods of species extinction. Given the current rate of species decline and cataclysmic climate disasters, some are arguing that we are entering the Sixth Extinction.

 

The question is, are we just doomed?  Or can we mitigate climate change?

 

I  believe that if we  act  thoughtfully, focus on the common good, and act with sufficient urgency, we can go through the climate portal fighting for an equitable, just, and sustainable economy and world. “Protecting Our Assets and Protecting Our Asses” is the first in a series of articles makingthe case for divesting from fossil fuel assets and investing in Green New Deal solutions.

 

The Challenge

 

In January 2016, fresh from being part of the US labor delegation to the Paris Climate Accords, I testified before the Washington State House Environmental Committee, saying that “climate change is an existential crisis.” Speaking as president of the Washington State Labor Council,AFL-CIO, I received raised eyebrows by a number of committee members and a few knowing nods from others.

 

Eight years later, the horrifying devastation caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton in the Southeast and the multiple forest fires around Los Angeles should have convinced even the most skeptical among us that human-caused climate change poses an existential threat to life as we know it.

 

Never, in our lifetimes, has the planet issued such a clear and resounding clarion call to do something.

 

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that we are being told to leave fossil fuels in the ground; to make massive investments in non-fossil fuel renewable energy sources; to electrify our transportation infrastructure; to practice large scale regenerative agriculture; to invest in systemic energy retrofits to public and private buildings; and to figure out a global plan to address the accelerating climate refugee crisis.

 

Unprecedented crises require unprecedented changes. We should invest in Green New Deal projects as if there were literally no tomorrow. Because if we don’t, our tomorrows will be pretty bleak.

 

The Benefit 

 

Washington State Initiative 1631 was an attempt to go through the climate portal in an equitable, just, and sustainable way. Had 1631 passed, about $1.5 to $2.0 billion of clean energy projects a year would have been decided by a majority vote of environmental justice, labor, tribal, and environmental community leaders. These projects would have created tens of thousands of jobs with high labor standards – project labor agreements, prevailing wages, apprenticeship utilization standards, and local hire provisions.

 

The initiative would also have created a “Just Transition” fund providing wage replacement, health care and pension benefits, and retraining benefits to displaced workers, keeping both workers and communities whole during the transition period.

 

And of course, carbon emissions would have dramatically fallen, and there would have been no dubious carbon offsets to deal with.

 

What Else

 

Initiative 1631 was defeated by over $30 million contributed by the fossil fuel industry to sway the vote, and by not enough people recognizing the threat that climate change poses to our jobs, income, lives, and property.

 

What has become increasingly clear is that climate change is a job killer, a budget killer, and a species killer. Every additional dollar invested in fossil fuels contributes to arable land becoming increasingly scarce; shrinking fresh water reserves; a further loss of jobs, lives, and property; and tens of millions of climate refugees fleeing for their lives.

 

There is a moral imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since every dollar in- vested in fossil fuels accelerates climate disaster.

 

There is an economic and budgetary imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since every dollar spent cleaning up climate disasters is a dollar not spent on education, health care, addressing poverty and inequality, affordable housing, or public safety. This, of course, translates into thousands of lost jobs and a declining quality of life for most of us.

 

There is a fiscal imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since fossil fuels are consistently underperforming other assets. Sometime in the future, fossil fuel assets will become stranded assets. Financial prudence should, if nothing else, dictate replacing underperforming fossil fuel assets with climate-affirming assets with a promise of higher returns.

 

I have hope that in Washington State we are prescient and bold enough to go through the climate portal by investing in the clean energy economy as if there were no tomorrow. We should dramatically reduce our public and private consumption of fossil fuels and divest our state funds and public and private union pension funds from fossil fuels as well.

 

There is still time left to make good choices. How about we save our assets and our asses at the same time.

 

Jeff Johnson is a former President of the Washington State Labor Council and the Co-President of PSARA.