And It’s Not The One Which Rewards Dirty Energy Mercenaries With New Clean Energy Jobs
The kind of justice I believe in does not give “them that’s got” an uninterrupted pipeline to keep profiting from pollution. That ain’t justice. That’s granting the workers who pocketed great salaries and benefits, while filling our air and water with toxic waste, a free pass from taking any responsibility for their actions.
None of them are innocent bystanders. Oil, gas and coal workers have all known for more than a dozen years that their work was helping to destroy people’s health and well being. But they fiercely fought any and all attempts to transition to clean renewable. I know. I was there and watched them do it. Im still watching them do it.
So the justice I want to see is first, second and third for the victims in the sacrifice zones created by the oil, gas and coal companies. Make the victims a priority for a damn change.
I need to see the fence line and frontline communities repaired and rehabilitated using fossil fuel company money. Putting free solar on every roof, batteries in every building and electric vehicles to replace every gas powered vehicle would be a minimal start.
I want to see the residents of those communities put at the front of the line for guaranteed job training and employment in the clean energy industries. Those are the brothers and sisters of mine who should be paid top dollar and given the Cadillac benefits the dirty energy workers have long enjoyed.
If it’s justice you desire then like me, you want to see Health Recovery Centers built and staffed with oil, gas and coal company money to rightly address the people with asthma and other respiratory diseases, not to mention the wide range of cancers caused by living near petrochemical operations.
Those health bombs were dropped deliberately by the oil workers who cannot cop to a “I’m just a worker. I didn’t know” excuse. They knew and still know today.
So what justice has been earned and is now deserved by the dirty energy workforce? What responsibility should they bear for their professional actions?
That’s an easy one for your Greenius.
Let my old pals at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the United Steelworkers unions point the way. They have both long argued that as long as refineries and oil and related facilities are still operating that they are best operated by the top pros who know them intricately. That their union members are the best trained and most experienced to operate those facilities safely.
That’s the exact same reason I have for keeping all those workers on the job at their same facilities to decommission and dismantle them expertly and safely. And their current employers should pay for it all till it’s all done.
That’s years of guaranteed work in their same industry going to work at the very same place for the workers. No reason to relocate or start anew. Then these same pros have many more years of additional employment cleaning up the toxic messes they helped cause. Talk about real justice.
Every fossil fuel-related union has fought against a far less “just” offer and definition of Just Transition that put them first in the new clean energy economy. They belittled and rejected the Green New Deal. They’ve paid totally cynical lip service to the so called BlueGreen Alliance which is just a scam to keep environmentalists at bay and postpone any phaseout of the fossil fuels they profit from.
So take them at their word, know that they will NEVER ally with frontline communities or any semblance of environmental justice and put them to work taking down their death machines.
Just. Do. It.
Creative Greenius 