I'm not sure I'm ready to do that. The only thing I can say is that people, as you know here, people don't get involved just because it's climate. People go to a protest because of climate change but they don't do what they're doing in Wisconsin - occupying the state capital for almost a month - and this is why politicians feel they can ignore climate issues. Even the people who care, as opposed to the people that deny anything is happening, even the people who care don't care that much! They always rank it at the bottom of a list of all these other issues. They care more about education, they care more about unemployment, they care more about health.
So obviously the task is one of integration and to show how climate is connected to health, it's to show how a more resilient future needs an education system and to me it needs a powerful public education system. I think that there is something to learn from the coalitions that emerged around the so called anti-globalisation movement and the commonalities that emerged. I don't think any of this is a new idea, but I do think there needs to be a really clear vision for what's going to happen to people who lose their jobs and livelihoods, and this is something I don't think the environmental movement has ever done that well.
There's a lot of literature out there about what a just Transition would look like and what sort of retraining would be in place and how you get past that fear. But I think there are a lot of opportunities for the labour and environmental movements to work together…and this is why I think what you're doing here is so important, that it's about articulating a coherent vision of Transition that includes every sector. I think that needs to be done everywhere. Then I think the coalitions emerge really organically. Read the full report here.
Source: by Rob Hopkins, Energy Bulletin.
