Climate crisis webinar takes centre stage during Heart Unions Week

Prospect hosted a webinar on Wednesday 10 February as part of its Heart Union Week activities looking at the union’s role in fighting the climate emergency and the importance of a Just Transition.

The session was started by Nick Kardhaji, Prospect research officer, who began by demonstrating how the climate emergency was no longer a ‘hypothetical thing in the future’ but was something that was already happening all around us.

“California has been hit several years running by increasingly large and devastating wildfires… There has a lot of research looking at what could have caused this increasingly devastating cycle of wildfires and there’s little doubt that the warming of the climate is a major factor,” said Nick.

“Summer temperatures in California are now about a degree and a half higher on average than they were in the 1970s, and that’s caused plant matter, forest areas and grassland to dry out. That’s creating the fuel for these wildfires in California to be much more devastating than they were in the past.”

He stressed that, of course, California was a wealthy state in a wealthy country and that many other places around the world affected by climate change would have less resources to respond.

Nick said:

“We now have a pretty good sense of what the trajectory of climate change will look like if we don’t take mitigating actions to limit the damage. Potentially in the worst-case scenarios it could be truly catastrophic for human life and human societies around the world.”

UK progress

The UK government has set itself a target to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to Net Zero by 2050.

UK emissions are down about 40% on 1990 levels, yet Nick pointed out that while such progress was welcome, the reductions were primarily driven by factors, such as deindustrialisation and the decline of the coal industry in the UK.

“A lot of those factors were one-off things and to some extent were kind of relatively low hanging fruit,” said Nick who added that the next decade was going to be crucial.

“A lot of the more difficult and complicated changes that we need to make are going to be much more disruptive, like how our homes are heated, or the kind of transport systems that we use. Those are challenges that we still have to grapple with.

“While we have some sense of what technological solutions will be available to us, there’s still a huge gap between the theory of how we’re going to do this and the actual delivery on the ground.”

The UK, according to the government’s own Climate Change Committee, needs to be investing around £50bn per year fighting climate change by 2030, whereas currently it was only investing £10bn per year.

Just Transition

Nick ended his part of the presentation by talking about a Just Transition, where the energy workers and communities who are affected by the switch to low carbon sources are not properly supported.

“The legacy of the UK coal industry is still very much with us today. Former coalfield communities still have much higher rates of unemployment than other areas of the country.

“We need to make sure that we don’t repeat those mistakes again and that we put in place mechanisms of transition that can support groups of workers who currently work in offshore oil, gas or coal-fired power stations, to help them transition into alternative employment.”

What Prospect is doing

Sue Ferns, Prospect senior deputy general secretary, also addressed the webinar, and spoke in particular about the work that Prospect is doing to combat the climate emergency.

“As a trade union first of all, we have a role on the frontline of decarbonisation in the sense that we represent lots of members whose jobs are already being affected by the need to decarbonise the economy and we want to see a process of fair change for them.

“But looking ahead we’ve got a broader critical role in helping to affect the speed and shape of decarbonisation across the economy,” she said.

On a practical level, Prospect has thousands of workplace representatives who will be able to have conversations with their employers, whether that’s directly about their climate policies or about reshaping their office spaces in the post-COVID world.

In addition, Prospect also has an environmental training programme for its reps who would like to get more actively engaged in environment issues in their workplace and the union.

Sue added:

“We take our responsibility as an organisation very seriously. We have just started the process of auditing our own carbon footprint and we’ll be developing an action plan when we have the results. We know that there is a very strong appetite for us to move to net zero emissions, or as close as we can to that as an organisation.”

However, another important part of the union’s work is its lobbying of government and decision-makers to be an influential voice on shaping future policy in critical areas such as a Just Transition and green jobs.

For example, Sue sits on the government’s newly launched Green Jobs Taskforce.

“What’s really important is that we’re looking at an action plan, not just another policy statement. We’re talking about an ambitious action plan for 2m or so jobs, but also making sure they are good quality jobs and the people in those jobs are supported to get the skills they need.”

Finally, the senior deputy general secretary said that Prospect fully recognises the importance and the value of the natural environment and has been pressing the government to recognise the importance of nature conservation and the natural sciences.