PARTIAL EXCERPT
So what can we do about it? To answer this question we need to go back into our history a little. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union address called for a right to a job for every American. This talk is often referred to as his "Second Bill of Rights" speech. It contains a call forthe right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. After 12 years as the American President, he had come to the conclusion that the U.S. government should guarantee a job to all who are able and willing to work. If private industry can hire everybody, fine. If not, the federal government should step in as a backup. And if Roosevelt thought we could have Jobs for All in 1944, I say we can have Jobs for All today.
With a decent job no longer a worry, all working people will be free to join us in the environmental movement, and help us stop global warming. Without a government job guarantee, people will remain under the threat of job loss, and every time they hear about a new super storm or drought or rise in sea level, they'll say, "I wish I could help, but I need to work, you know?"
Jobs for All will mean creation of government programs like the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA offered millions of jobs to the unemployed in America at the height of the Great Depression. And these jobs were, for the most part, green jobs, created long before the need to protect the environment was understood like it is today. Jobs in a new WPA would probably be almost entirely green. Replanting forests, insulating homes and buildings, taking care of national parks, daycares, libraries, live theater groups, etc, etc, etc.
There are many differences between the idea of "Jobs for All" and calls for just "jobs" or "green jobs." When we don't say "for all," working people wonder if they will be included. If people don't trust a government jobs program to include them, they will not join a movement to pressure Congress for the program. If we want to have a mass movement in support of our calls for more jobs, we have to say "for all" or "everybody." This is why current proposals for more jobs don't get too far.
Another concept of considerable importance to the environmental movement is "Just Transition." This idea usually refers to the provision in a union contract to provide equivalent jobs to workers who are laid off as the result of a business like a dirty coal-burning power plant closing down. If just transition can be worked out, it seems like a fine idea to me. But we should keep in mind that the whole working class, including the unemployed, needs to be covered by just transition. That would be Living-Wage Jobs for All.
When we achieve "Jobs for All," we will have ended forever the problem of "Jobs Versus the Environment." Then we can welcome working people into the environmental movement. One thing such a movement can push for is a tax on burning fossil fuels -- a carbon tax. James Hansen makes a proposal for such a tax in his book, Storms of My Grandchildren. An intriguing part of Hansen's idea is that he would have all the money collected from the tax refunded, in equal shares, to everybody in America. Gas would cost a lot more for cars, as would heating of buildings, but people could use the money they receive for transit and insulation. Everybody could relax because of the government guarantee of a decent job, and the CO2 in the atmosphere would start to go down, instead of up. Global warming would slow way down. It would be very cool!
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