Key Points Mark made in his testimony:

• Fossil Fuel is the cause of climate change.
• Climate Change is the real job and budget killer.
• The Fossil Fuel industry likes to frame the choice between jobs and a clean environment: Job Blackmail.
• We can have good jobs and a livable planet.
• 98% of scientists agree the tipping point to irreversible climate catastrophe is near, with working class communities and people of color being disproportionality impacted.
• The Fossil Fuel industry has known and covered up for 50 years that extracting and burning fossil fuels would cause a global climate catastrophe.
• Who will you believe, science or an industry that knowingly continues to harm the health of our children, grandchildren and planet?
• Which side are you on?

Watch Mark’s full testimony on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/3AUnion/

The bill was defeated 5 to 2 in Committee.

On February 16, seven national unions and over 200 local unions formed the National Labor Network for Ceasefire (NLNC). Although ceasefire calls have reflected a range of views, the core positions are reflected in the Network’s central demands:

• An immediate ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas,
• Restoration of basic human rights,
• Immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas,
• Unimpeded full access for humanitarian aid,
• Our president calling for a permanent ceasefire.

Third Actors, Karen Szczepanski and Alice Freund, are all smiles following their release from jail for blocking the front entrance to Citibank during Spring Spark actions:

Shutting down Citibank headquarters:

Release of the Orca:

Orca joins protest:

Dancing Orca:

Bruce Patterson, Third Actor, being arrested:

More pictures:

See more: https://www.instagram.com/p/C6JVJ_-uQ6z/?igsh=bmlibGc5ZmlkZGxz

In his latest Newsletter, Bill McKibben reports that over the past 12 months average global temperatures have been 1.58 Centigrade over pre-industrial levels.

Let’s repeat: We won’t, in 6 years, go over the point where humans can’t adapt to climate disaster. We have already gone over that point.

And the 78 oil and gas profiteers (Yes, only 78 profit making companies decide the fate of the 8 billion humans now on this planet and those yet to be born,) who control our planet will set new records for burning fossil fuels in 2024 and 2025,

Now is not the time for depression. Now is the time for action. None of us can act alone. That’s why we have Third Act–so we can act collectively. On this website, you can find all you need to know about how you can work NOW, this spring, summer, and fall, to save democracy and the planet.

Our mission at Third Act is to fight to save democracy and our planet.  The relation between these two existential issues couldn’t be more clear: Donald Trump as U. S. president would be the single biggest climate disaster for all of humanity for decades and generations to come. That is not an exaggeration.

There is no comfort zone, not for the earth and not for each of us. This moment asks that we all step out of our comfort zone, face these existential challenges, and escalate our work in ways that meet the fierce urgency of now.

If you believe in democracy, if you believe in science, if you believe in justice and workers’ rights, let me be very clear: The next several months will be the most important in modern American history.

Unfortunately, we are confronting a very difficult and complicated political situation. 

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal released a poll showing Trump leading in almost every swing state. He leads by 5 in Arizona, 3 in Michigan, 4 in Nevada, 3 in Pennsylvania, and is tied in Wisconsin.

If Trump wins even two of those states, it’s game over. 

And I think sometimes we slouch off the idea that Trump can win. It’s hard to imagine that someone who was such a menace to the working class of this country could be popular enough with them to win a second term — especially after we all lived through his first. I also believe sometimes we don’t think enough about just how bad it will be policy-wise if he is re-elected.

Take one issue for example: Climate change.

Trump does not believe in climate change.

So what does that mean? 

It means that not only all of the work we have done in trying to transform our energy systems away from fossil fuel will be undone, but every other country in the world is going to say “Hey if the second largest emitter in the world is giving up, than we’re not going to do it either.”

And that really means dooming our kids and future generations to a very, very unhealthy, perhaps uninhabitable world. 

So you don’t need to know anything more than that to understand how dangerous Trump is. 

But obviously the danger is much greater than just climate change.

Take another issue for example: American democracy.

Trump does not believe in, or care about, the future of American democracy. 

So what does that mean?

It means that if he wins, you can expect more extreme gerrymandering, more laws and regulations making it easier for billionaires to buy elections, more efforts to keep people of color and young people from the ballot box, more election workers being harassed and threatened, more refusing to accept the outcome of election results, more political violence and, as a result of his policies and lies, more and more people increasingly believing democracy itself does not work for them.

I happen to believe that what this really means is that if Trump wins, the almost 250-year experiment of American democracy is all but over. 

But obviously the danger is much greater than just that.

Trump has already tried to take away health care from tens of millions of people. He’ll try again in a second term.

Trump signed tax cuts where almost all the benefits went to the top 1 percent. He’ll try to make them permanent in a second term. 

Trump brags about appointing 3 justices to the Supreme Court who helped repeal Roe v. Wade. He and his supporters have escalated their attacks on women’s’ rights across the country. In a second term he’ll try for a national abortion ban.

Other issues like education, gun control, criminal justice reform, income and wealth inequality, the cost of prescription drugs, workers rights, LGBTQ rights and more will all move backward.

Bottom line: We have to appreciate how unbelievably severe this current moment is.

Many of us believe that while the Biden administration can lay claim to some significant accomplishments, they are simply not enough given the very serious crises facing the working families of our country. Further, millions of us strongly disagree with the President’s position on the war in Gaza. 

So what are we as progressives to do in this election? 

First, we must all acknowledge that sitting out this election or even voting for Trump is definitely not the answer. That leads to catastrophe.

So then what? 

In this unprecedented moment in American history we must make clear to the Democratic leadership and everyone else that we cannot return to the same old, same old establishment politics. 

We must make it clear that if Democrats are given another chance after this election we cannot continue to ignore the needs of tens of millions of working families. We cannot continue to accept a political system where billionaires buy elections and an economy which has more income and wealth inequality than at any time since the 1920s. We cannot accept a government where the very rich get much richer while a majority of Americans live in economic desperation. We must go further on climate change. And we must restore faith in American democracy.

We must make it clear that we will fight for a strong, progressive agenda that represents the needs of working people, and not just the billionaire class, lobbyists and wealthy campaign contributors.

How do we do that? 

It means supporting not just Joe Biden, but progressives who will fight for that agenda in Congress. It means donating, volunteering, posting on social media about your desire not just to beat Trump, but that your expectation for what a second term would look like for a Biden administration.

Books:

• Todd Vachon – “Clean Air and Good Jobs”
• Matt Huber – “Climate change as Class War”
• Naomi Klein – “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Planet”

Newsletters:

• Bill McKibben – “The Crucial Years”
• Bill McKibben – “By the Numbers”
• Bill McKibben – “A Bit Closer to Holding Big Oil Accountable”
• Bill McKibben – “Memo to Joe: Fight a Climate Election”
• Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS)
• Third Act Union Newsletter Archive

Articles:

• Article from Inside Climate News by Phil McKenna – ‘Oil and Gas Executives Blast ‘LNG Pause’
  • Call Natural Gas a ‘Destination Fuel’: Following a global agreement to transition off fossil fuels, industry leaders gathered in Houston, doubled down on oil and gas.
  • “Granholm gave her keynote address on March 18, the first day of CERAWeek, kicking off a week-long conversation on the LNG pause by executives who were overwhelmingly opposed to the action.”
  • “I think this decision was incredibly misguided,” Toby Rice, president and chief executive officer of EQT Corporation, the largest U.S. natural gas producer, told those assembled at the energy conference. “This needs to be ended today.”
  • Michael Smith, chief executive officer of Freeport LNG Development, a leading U.S. liquified natural gas exporter, agreed.
    “It’s a bad policy and it sends a terrible message to the world,” Smith said.
  • For more than a decade, natural gas has been portrayed by industry executives and some politicians as a bridge fuel or “transition fuel” as the world shifts to cleaner, renewable energy alternatives.”
• Article from The Guardian by Oliver Milman – ‘World’s top fossil-fuel bosses deride efforts to move away from oil and gas’
  • Executives at Texas summit claim clean-energy transition is failing and say world should ‘abandon the fantasy’ of fossil-fuel phaseout
  • “The oil executives, gathered at the industry’s annual Cera Week conference in Houston, Texas, have taken turns this week to denounce calls for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, despite widespread acknowledgment within the industry, as well as scientists and governments, of the need to radically reduce planet-heating emissions to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis.”
  • “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas, and instead invest in them adequately,” said Amin Nasser, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, to applause in the room.
  • Nasser dismissed projections by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that global demand for oil and gas will peak by 2030, claiming that rising energy costs mean that people will require “the importance of oil and gas security” rather than shift to renewables.
  • “In fact, in the real world, the current transition strategy is visibly failing on most fronts,” Nasser added, criticizing solar, wind and electric vehicles for what he said was a minimal impact in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
  • “And, despite our starring role in global prosperity, our industry is painted as transition’s arch-enemy,” Nasser complained.”
• Article from The Guardian by Oliver Milman – ‘Surge of new US-led oil and gas activity threatens to wreck Paris climate goals’
  • World’s fossil-fuel producers on track to nearly quadruple output from newly approved projects by decade’s end, report finds
  • “The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed climate goals, a new report has found.”
  • There can be no new oil and gas infrastructure if the planet is to avoid careering past 1.5C (2.7F) of global heating, above pre-industrial times, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has previously stated. Breaching this warming threshold, agreed to by governments in the Paris climate agreement, will see ever worsening effects such as heatwaves, floods, drought and more, scientists have warned.
  • But since the IEA’s declaration in 2021, countries and major fossil fuel companies have forged ahead with a glut of new oil and gas activity. At least 20bn barrels of oil equivalent of new oil and gas has been discovered for future drilling since this point, according to the new report by Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco-based NGO.
• Article from The New York Times by Stephen Markley – ‘A Planetary Crisis Awaits the Next President’
  • Still “just can’t vote for Biden”? Read this article by Stephen Markley.
  • We have 62 months to avoid catastrophic warming.
  • Trump to oil and gas executives: “I hate wind.”
  • We are in denial if we do not recognize that this is a crisis that will define this century, and if we fail, the entire human future.”
• Article from The New York Times by Neal E. Boudette – ‘VW Workers in Tennessee Vote for Union, a Labor Milestone’
• Article from The New York Times by Aatish Bhatia – ‘Carbon Dioxide Levels Have Passed a New Milestone’
• Article from Democracy Now – ‘Climate Activists Blockade Citigroup HQ in NYC to Demand Banking Giant Stop Funding Fossil Fuels’
  • Excerpt: “Hundreds of climate activists gathered at the global headquarters of Citigroup in New York on Wednesday to demand the banking giant stop financing fossil fuel companies. The protests come on the heels of a first-of-its-kind Earth Day hearing where environmental activists from around the world gathered in New York this week to condemn what they call Citigroup’s environmental racism. Citibank is the world’s second-largest funder of coal, oil and gas. “They always say, ‘We care about the planet.’ … But actions speak louder than words,” says Alice Hu, climate campaigner for New York Communities for Change. “Citibank has poured over $332 billion into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreements were signed in 2015.” We also speak with Roishetta Ozane, a Black environmental leader from Sulphur, Louisiana, who has been leading the fight against the expansion of Citigroup-funded liquified natural gas projects in her community. She says she has seen the health impacts of such projects on her own family. “I’m fighting not only for myself and my community, but for my children. And by fighting for my children, I’m fighting for everyone’s children,” says Ozane.”
• Bernie Sanders to Benjamin Netanyahu: ‘Stop Murdering Innocent People’
• Exxon Mobil is suing its shareholders to silence them about global warming
  • If you think of Exxon Mobile as a corporate bully and “bad actor” you are right!!  In their latest outrageous action, Exxon Mobile has filed a lawsuit against their own stockholders who introduced a resolution, calling for more aggressive action on sustainability measures to combat global warming. Silencing stockholders will not end this fight!!! Read the full article by clicking above.

Films:

• “The Third Harmony and the History of Nonviolence” – An excellent short film on NVDA.

Meanwhile, at a big oil and gas conference in Houston last week, the head of the world’s largest oil company told a packed room that the world “should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas.” 

And at the same conference, Exxon’s CEO, D.W. Woods, who was paid over $33 million dollars last year said: Exxon does not “see the ability to generate above-average returns for investors” from established clean energy generation such as wind and solar.”

Also lending weight to Hansen’s analysis have been the extreme temperatures recorded as recently as this week. Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian who monitors extreme weather events, has a social media feed that is now a litany of shattered records. “South Africa is living a madness. Months with thousands of records destroyed every day,” he wrote on Wednesday. “Today 45.1C at Vioolsdrif, latest 45C in Southern Africa history.”

Days before he noted a temperature recorded in Turkmenistan of 35 degrees, 10 degrees above the previous record. “Latin America is boiling from Mexico to Argentina,” he wrote a day earlier. “Guyana 37.4 at Lethem, hottest March day in Guyana history set twice in few days.”

Read the full article here: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/scientists-struggle-to-explain-really-weird-spike-in-world-temperatures-20240320-p5fdvm.html

And here’s a compelling Guardian account of the record heat across much of Africa in recent weeks.

Trade Unionists Fight for Democracy and Our Planet

In our Second Act we fought bosses for ourselves and our co-workers. Now, in our Third Act, we fight the fossil fuel industry for our children and our grandchildren. 

The climate justice movement has to confront capital.  In our Second Act as trade unionists we we fought capital–we organized, united workers,  fought bosses, bargained contracts, elected public officials, lobbied for and passed legislation, and fought for racial, economic, and social justice.  We have a responsibility to bring that experience to the fight to save the planet.

All of our struggles took time, compromise, and a continuing agenda–la lucha continua.  Now we are in a different fight–a struggle to save our democracy and our planet.

The physics of the climate crisis doesn’t compromise.  Science tells us we have to stop burning fossil fuels and cut emissions by 50% in the next 6 years or face climate disasters far worse than we are already experiencing. We can’t bargain with physics.

Join us this Spring and Summer as we continue our struggle to stop the four dirty banks–Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Chase–from investing in future extraction and infrastructure–like the LNG pipelines and ports.  The campaign kicks off April 22, 23, and 24 with protests and civil disobedience at CITI offices and banks around the country.

In 2024 nothing could be clearer than the relationship between democracy and the climate crisis. Electing Trump and the radical republicans threatens democracy and creates the single worst global setback to saving the planet.

As retirees, we all have full plates. But leaving a legacy of democracy and a cleaner planet for our children and grandchildren isn’t an item for our bucket list. Physics doesn’t allow us the time, and we don’t have the time. We can’t say: For our legacy, for our children and grandchildren, we have to join this fight now. 

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at ThirdActUnion. For more information and to find out how you can get involved, email 3actunion@gmail.com or call 301-346-3665.