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| Brian Kohler |
Getting to Sustainability
Working people and their unions want a future in which the environment is protected and where sustainable industries create decent, safe and healthy work. That, essentially, implies changes in present patterns of production and consumption. However, if society wants workers and their unions to make changes to what they are doing today; logic dictates that it must be able to tell them what they will be doing tomorrow. Furthermore, it had better sound good; otherwise the resistance to change will be overwhelming. The challenge is to build a bridge from where we are now; to the future we must reach. A Just Transition for workers, their families, and their communities is the essential prerequisite for a movement towards a sustainable future. Such a transition would incorporate the elements of sustainable industrial policy; robust social protections; and creative labour-market adjustment programs.
Fear Uncertainty and Doubt
In popular understanding of climate issues, unscientific scepticism often triumphs over science because it is a form of asymmetric warfare. Scientists are not engaged in a scholarly debate with other scientists but are debating a climate-denial noise machine. A scientist may spend years researching climatic forces and refining the algorithms in a climate model, and finally publishing a scholarly paper in a peer-reviewed journal; only to have the noise machine ridicule it and be given equal weight to real science in the popular media. In the face of rejection, the scientist responds with further years of research and another peer-reviewed paper. There is a possibility that it will again be rebutted when it is released, and the cycle continues.
Working people and their unions want a future in which the environment is protected and where sustainable industries create decent, safe and healthy work. That, essentially, implies changes in present patterns of production and consumption. However, if society wants workers and their unions to make changes to what they are doing today; logic dictates that it must be able to tell them what they will be doing tomorrow. Furthermore, it had better sound good; otherwise the resistance to change will be overwhelming. The challenge is to build a bridge from where we are now; to the future we must reach. A Just Transition for workers, their families, and their communities is the essential prerequisite for a movement towards a sustainable future. Such a transition would incorporate the elements of sustainable industrial policy; robust social protections; and creative labour-market adjustment programs.
Fear Uncertainty and Doubt
In popular understanding of climate issues, unscientific scepticism often triumphs over science because it is a form of asymmetric warfare. Scientists are not engaged in a scholarly debate with other scientists but are debating a climate-denial noise machine. A scientist may spend years researching climatic forces and refining the algorithms in a climate model, and finally publishing a scholarly paper in a peer-reviewed journal; only to have the noise machine ridicule it and be given equal weight to real science in the popular media. In the face of rejection, the scientist responds with further years of research and another peer-reviewed paper. There is a possibility that it will again be rebutted when it is released, and the cycle continues.
