The nation's largest manufacturing union, the United Steelworkers of America, and the nation's largest environmental group, the Sierra Club, yesterday announced the formation of an alliance that will do something that labor and environmentalists rarely do: cooperate.
This tells me that the Sierra Club is hip to many of the criticisms of environmentalism raised in the Death debate and recognizes the need to build coalitions, reconnect with progressivism's blue collar roots, and emphasize workaday concerns like jobs and health. This will allow both the club and the union to reach new audiences.
Still, let's not get too excited. This is not a sea change for the steelworkers union. It's been part of the environmental coalition before.
We'll know a corner's been turned when we see coalitions with unions of autoworkers, or mine workers, or coal-fired utility workers. Once those unions see that their best interests are served by sensible regulation and private-sector innovation -- not by siding with corporate fat cats fighting tooth and nail to keep old, tired, backward-looking industrial practices afloat -- we'll know the message is sinking in.
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AE Posted 1:13 am
08 Jun 2006
The Sierra Club seems to be doing a good job of building coalitions; I heard someone from a hunting group, I think, say on NPR that the Sierra Club has strongly reached out to hunters and anglers. Too bad NRDC spends its time and wastes its good name reaching out to Big Oil (I had to get that in).
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Ana Unruh Cohen Posted 9:33 am
08 Jun 2006
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amazingdrx Posted 2:47 pm
08 Jun 2006
Melting steel with 2 cent per kwh, zero pollution wind power would make US steelmakers competitive again and retrieve disappearing outsourced jobs. Just as it would melting glass,in manufacturing, or in any sort of mass production
Putting up more coal and nuclear power plants to generate electricity to melt steel will keep outsourcing jobs to low wage, no environmental control nations.
Because power from coal and nukes costs way too much to compete if the pollution and contamination is controlled. Simple isn't it?
But you know that no one involved in the coalition knows that or would believe it even if they would listen to an explanation of why it is true. It's a hopeless battle.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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