UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Saturday 4 January 2014

Why Unions Need to Join the Climate Fight

‘My argument is that the climate threat makes the need to fight austerity all the more pressing, since we need public services and public infrastructure to both bring down our emissions and prepare for the coming storms. Far from trumping other issues, climate change vindicates much of what the left has been demanding for decades’ said the campaigning writer Naomi Klein in a seminal speech to the founding conference of Canada’s largest trade union Unifor last September: http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2013/09/why-unions-need-join-climate-fight

‘In fact, climate change turbo-charges our existing demands and gives them a basis in hard science. It calls on us to be bold, to get ambitious, to win this time because we really cannot afford any more losses. It enflames our vision of a better world with existential urgency. What I’m going to show you is that confronting the climate crisis requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook – and that we do so with great urgency.’
Click here for the full text of the speech