Should the Sierra Club Be Befriending Unions?

Hey Mr. Green,

Since when did the Sierra Club start taking up union issues? My yearly dues say, “Stick to the environment," but I recently got a message from the Club urging me to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

–Paul in Richmond, California

The Sierra Club's position on the Employee Free Choice Act is based on the need to build green alliances and coalitions to promote a green economy. Many unions have been strong advocates for safety standards to protect their members from toxic substances and pollutants. In these industrial situations, the health of a union's workers coincides exactly with the goals of the environmental movement. Moreover, the growth of a green economy will be much stronger if it offers well-paid, safe jobs that union protection can provide.

The Employee Free Choice Act would allow employees to choose to unionize a workplace by simply by signing cards rather than going through an election process. It’s well-known that employers can intimidate or even fire pro-union workers during elections to decide on unionization, causing unions to lose. This is why Free Choice legislation is so important to labor. Seems to me that's not asking for much.

Alliance with unions is not something new for the Sierra Club. In the early 1990s, for example, the Club (and some other major environmental groups) allied with labor in opposing the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA). They rightly predicted that outsourcing jobs to countries with weak environmental laws would amount to outsourcing pollution.

More recently, the Club has been joining with unions like the steelworkers in the Apollo Alliance, which is pushing for major government support of clean energy. In advocating for green projects, the unions have common cause with environmentalists because it in the unions' interest to create jobs in this area. (The mere fact that installing alternative-energy equipment can't be outsourced is something both groups can take comfort in.)

Beyond these specific issues, because the unions generally support pro-environmental political candidates, stronger unions generally promote stronger environmental policies. The depressing rise of anti-environmental policies since the Reagan administration is, in my opinion, related to the decline in union membership. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of the workforce was unionized. By 1983 it had dropped to 20 percent, and now stands at 12 percent. It's also likely that erosion of union membership is one of the causes the oft-bemoaned demise of the middle class. What this means for the green economy is simply that the typical homeowner has less to spend on green technologies.

Having said all this, I'm realistic enough to understand that tree-huggers and construction workers aren’t gonna be smooching inside the cabins of earth-moving machines any time soon. Environmental interests can crash head-on with union interests, as, for example, when construction unions push for development and road-building that environmentalists oppose, or when autoworkers were as gung-ho for producing gas-guzzling SUVs as their bosses were. Such differences are bound to occur because the unions' foremost concern is jobs and income for their members. But even where there is serious discord, if environmentalists move closer to unions, they will be in a much better position to enlist union backing for green projects. Despite inevitable clashes between environmentalists and unions, in the long run, stronger unions will beget stronger environmental policies.

To Breed or Not to Breed

We received some strong reactions to my comments about population control in the March/April issue of Sierra. Here are a few, with my responses:

Hey Mr. Green,
I found the question from Jeff in Denver about population control very interesting. Has the Sierra Club ever thought about advocating for adoption?  There are millions of children all over the world that need a family, and as my cousin most succinctly put it, “That's the most ecological way to have kids.” –Lucia in Mercer Island, Washington

The Club has adopted many policies, but not one on adoption. Your proposal seems quite reasonable, though most people, I suspect, still favor keeping their own DNA in circulation. Not that you can ever be a whole lot more sure of the result than if you adopt. Consider the fate of William Shockley, who won a Nobel prize for inventing the transistor but later slid swiftly on a downhill path of loopy ideas about eugenics, including a proposal to pay people with genetic defects or low IQs for sterilization—castration for dummies, as it were. His own kids fell so far below his own standards that he claimed they represented "regression." After that, he hived his genes in a sperm bank of geniuses, affording his DNA opportunities for more fortuitious combinations.

Hey Mr. Green,
The theory that population growth will ruin our planet is completely and dangerously false. The world now produces more food on less land than ever before. The fact is that Europe is dying, with most countries fluctuating around the 60 percent replacement level. Each person is unique and has a dignity and worth that is unconditional. –Jeanne in Closter, New Jersey

True, the world produces more food on less land, but that doesn't mean we can feed an infinite number of people, or that runaway population growth doesn't cause considerable misery.

The situation in Europe is nowhere near as simple as the enemies of family planning and women's choice make it sound. The drop in births has by no means been uniform. In France, for example, it has been rising, and 50 years from now is projected be at 72 million, up from today's 64 million. Britain is also projected to rise. By contrast, Spain, Italy, and some other countries have a rate well below replacement.

One convincing explanation of this disparity has to do with differences in social policy and, yes, gentlemen, in the degree of sexism. Among the European countries, the birth rate is generally lower where 1) there are less generous public benefits, and 2) where men remain more sexist and help out much less in the home. A survey of women done by the European Union revealed that in fact women want an average of 2.36 children, which is above the replacement rate. But the governments—and their lazy male chauvinist mates—make it too difficult for women to fulfill this wish.

Therefore, I wouldn't worry about Europeans going extinct; before they allow themselves to vanish, they could jolly well change policies and attitudes to favor a higher birthrate.

Finally, in some countries, immigration will continue to increase the number of Europeans, if not the net amount of European DNA, a development that would doubtlessly perturb the aforementioned Shockley.

Hey Mr. Green,
Why does the Sierra Club refuse to take a stand on illegal migration and historically high legal immigration? The sheer number of immigrants is having a negative effect on the environment and the amount of resources consumed, not to mention the social costs. Why is the Club being politically correct when there is a clear relationship between population and environmental balance? –Michael in Ashburn, Virginia

While some of my environmentally minded readers dread any reduction in procreation, which would also reduce the number of immigrants, others, like you, want to shut the immigrants out. I just hope you’re not in favor of that environmentally destructive boondoggle of a fence they're building on our border with Mexico.

The simplest answer to your question about the Sierra Club’s immigration policy is that the Club's members voted overwhelmingly some time ago to remain neutral on this issue. Many are convinced that it is more helpful in the long run to work to help change the sinister circumstances that drive so many people to immigrate, including poverty, lack of education, lack of women's rights, and lack of family-planning options.

A less-known driver of immigration is environmental devastation, which has produced millions of refugees; they now number more than 10 million per year. By the year 2000, there were 25 million such refugees, actually higher than the number of people who had fled for political reasons. Among the environmentally related causes of displacement are floods, landslides, water shortages, and desertification caused by deforestation and overcultivation, not to mention climate change and the more intense devastation caused by the more intense storms brought on by global warming.

Let There Be Light

Not all readers of my last mailbag wrote to defend Fox's honor. Some had interesting points to raise and embarrassing errors to point out.

Hey Mr. Green,
Your CFL article makes many excellent points. Here are a few more items that you might share with the public: The EPA's Office of Solid Waste has slightly updated the cleanup guidelines you're linking to, so in case anyone asks about the minor differences, keep pointing them to the linked FAQ as the latest from the EPA.

The Office of Solid Waste has also introduced a new resource for finding local bulb-recycling programs that will continue to be updated, epa.gov/bulbrecycling. Hope this helps!

Finally, I hope that in the future you'll tell people to look for the government's Energy Star label on lighting. This indicates the longest-lasting CFLs out there, and in training people to look for the label on lightbulbs (the most commonly purchased energy-using item in the home), we also help them look for it on the more than 50 other types of products that can now earn the label, and set the stage for the next advances in energy-efficient lighting: light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. --Wendy Reed, Energy Star campaign manager, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Through a Bulb Dimly

My disparaging remarks about a Fox News report on compact fluorescent lightbulbs in the July/August mailbag brought a flood of comments, many of them defending Fox against my purportedly mean-spirited, angry, and divisive attitude. Here is a sampling of those responses:

Hey Mr. Green,
Before you rant that anyone with a different point of view from yours is demented, you should check out not only the condition of your own brain but also the depth of your knowledge and the sources of your information. ---Marilyn in New York

Hey Mr. Green,
If you had been less snide and less concerned with attacking Fox, you might have been more convincing in defending the environmental benefits of compact fluorescent lightbulbs. I am legitimately concerned about the existence of mercury in CFLs, which you downplay and the Sierra Club appears to be trying to minimize. --Jonathan in Endicott, New York

Hey Mr. Green,
Your recent response to the inquiry about the safety of compact fluorescent lightbulbs reminds me why I let my membership in the Sierra Club lapse. I suggest that if this involved something other than CO₂ buildup, you would have difficulty seeing the positive in adding to the already increasing environmental load of mercury. It is hard for me to see how this discussion makes the case for CFLs. --Brice in Berkeley, California

Hey Mr. Green,
Wow. There are people who care about the environment and aren't brain-damaged right-wingers, but aren't off-the-edge lefties either! I am a [Sierra Club] member and listen to Fox News. Stick to the facts and don't try to run off those of us who aren't so near the edge. --Clare

Hey Mr. Green,
It was quite disappointing to see Mr. Green exhibit his ignorant, narrow-minded bigotry by his discourteous name-calling and unfair bashing of Fox News. Although they could have presented their article a little differently, it was factual. As you may already know, Fox News is probably the most accurate news source on television, and they do make an honest attempt to present opposing views, which is refreshing, since most networks peddle their own.

But people like Mr. Green obviously do not want to hear the truth unless it is consistent with their own biased views and distorted beliefs. It is disappointing to see that the Sierra Club allows such inaccurate propaganda and stupid insults to appear in its publication. --Michael in Coldspring, Texas

Hey everybody,
Well, now, I never dreamed of being in the same predicament as Fox's poor old Bill O'Reilly, who is so often accused of being a narrow-minded, bigoted, and discourteous name-caller.

But I'm not sure that challenging Fox News makes anybody an "off-the-edge leftie." The network has been criticized by plenty of people who are miles away from the leftist fringe, as can be seen in interviews with mainstream journalists who rip Fox in Robert Greenwald's documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.

Moreover, since Fox's headline reads "Junk Science: Light Bulb Lunacy," meaning it thinks fluorescent bulb advocates are bad scientists and nutcases, tweaking Fox for brain damage from mercury poisoning seems fair enough. I certainly didn't mean to offend anybody but Fox News, though the network's many dedicated viewers seemed to take my jabs personally. But come on, folks. Listing the EPA's detailed instructions on how to clean up a broken fluorescent bulb isn't "downplaying" the toxic problem of mercury in said bulbs. (In fact, I've harped incessantly on the need to recycle them).

This didn't satisfy some readers, who argued that the "difficult" cleanup procedures only go to show that fluorescents are too dangerous.

My advocacy of fluorescents is not motivated solely by concern about carbon dioxide emissions. It seems to me that what's getting lost in the debate about global warming is the basic fact that we ought to be (and easily could be) using a lot less fossil fuels anyway. Fossil fuels pollute the water and air and do tremendous environmental damage in many ways. (To name a few: the destruction of entire mountaintops in West Virginia, the polluting of streams with coal slurry, wrecks and leaks from oil tankers, gas and oil residues in streams, forests harmed by acid rain from power-plant emissions, drilling threats to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and oil-driven urban sprawl.)

On top of this, the very fact that the fossil-fuel supply is finite ought to make us consume it more prudently-something we recognized more than 30 years ago during the energy crisis, when we doubled fuel efficiency in cars, but soon forgot, thanks to the malignant efforts of the energy and auto czars.

Finally, profligate use of fossil fuels shifts capital away from more essential and practical investments. In a sense, wasteful burning of fossil fuel is like burning money. Some would argue that if we didn't waste so much money igniting gasoline in the SUVs we drive across bridges, there might be more capital left to fix those structures.
Environmentally,
Mr. Green