Category: Transitions

Review | Or something worse

Pete Cannell reviews Nicholas Beuret’s book, which critiques green capitalist transition pathways and sets out strategies to fight back against them.

This article was first published on the rs21 website.

Another year, another COP – this time in Brazil. Since the global climate summits began in 1995, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have climbed inexorably. They now stand approximately 20 per cent higher. It looks like 2025 will have been the year when the 1.5 degree increase in global average temperature was breached. Yet in the face of pressure from petro-states and fossil capital the final statement from COP30 could scarcely hint at the need to end the use of fossil fuels.

The need for a new climate movement

Or Something Worse by Nicholas Beuret is an uncompromising call for a reinvigorated climate movement that faces up to the reality of this crisis and adopts new tactics which reflect the urgency of the situation we find ourselves in. He has no time for the professional optimism of the NGOs looking for slivers of hope in the dismal outcomes of each annual COP conference. In the first half of the book Beuret lays out the stark reality of the consequences of years of inaction. Not just extreme weather events, but crop failures, water shortages and everywhere higher food prices – all of which hit the poorest hardest. The climate crisis is here now, and it has real material impacts on the lives and livelihoods of people around the world.

In the introduction Beuret argues that ‘What is needed is for us to understand the shape of the transition, to map its contours and contradictions … in order to organise not against it, but through it.’ He goes on to explain that ‘we are in the midst of a profound social, political and economic transition’. But throughout the book he describes this process as a ‘green transition’. He makes it clear this is a capitalist transition – one that prioritises the interests of dominant groups and reinforces the status quo. However, I found the green tag unhelpful and a barrier to understanding. 

The first three chapters provide a bleak assessment of the impact of the crisis, using the steel plant at Port Talbot as an example. Together, they paint a compelling picture of the depth and extent of the crisis. In my view, however, the overall framing in terms of green transition has a distorting effect. Part of Beuret’s case is that countries in the Global North bought into the necessity of green transition while establishing a social contract predicated on a state-promoted transition that stimulates economic growth. I think the idea that there was ever such a social contract is overstated. It’s true that governments engaged in green transition rhetoric, some even acknowledging the climate emergency in response to the mass movement of young people that exploded in 2018 and 2019. But most often they put their faith in the market to achieve a transition framed by the priorities of fossil capital. For example, in Britain and elsewhere strategic investment was directed towards hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear. So, we can talk about a process of economic transition that involves increased utilisation of wind and solar power – but it is not clear that there is any meaningful sense in which this is a greentransition either in intention or in practice. 

We are witnessing a rapid growth in new ‘green’ technology. Globally, capital expenditure by the fossil fuel industry is down to just under $600 billion a year, a decline of 40 per cent in the last decade. Yet at the same time (witness COP30) fossil capital is digging in for the longer term. Beuret describes very well how in the Global North countries are pushing down carbon emissions within their territory while pushing fossil fuel use and resource extraction onto the Global South. What’s happening looks like previous capitalist energy transitions – wood to coal (and wood), coal to oil (and coal) – that Jean-Baptiste Fressoz criticises in More and More and More. Can we call this a ‘green transition’ when energy consumption globally continues to rise, and when the expected future use of fossil fuels goes far beyond the level at which limiting global temperature rise to two- or even three-degrees remains achievable?

At one point Beuret talks about governments in the Global North becoming more interventionist and allocating billions of dollars to support national industrial policies. Yet this conflicts with what he says later on in the chapter on the ‘transition economy’, where he explains that in general, policy goals for green transition are almost always left to the market; he’s also scathing about liberal utopianism that assumes that governments or markets will respond to the crisis rationally. This reflects a weakness in the book’s analysis of the economics of the climate crisis. It seems as if Global North ‘transition’ initiatives are the main driver of change rather than mediated through a world economic system which is in flux. Rather than framing what’s taking place as a ‘green transition’, I would argue that technological and economic transition driven by the climate crisis is shaped by and mediated through the changing contours of global imperialist competition following five decades of neo-liberalism. Crude Capitalism, published earlier in 2025, has a much firmer grasp on the geopolitics of the world economy, the deep entanglement of fossil fuels with the military industrial complex and the shifting balance of power between major imperialisms, principally but not exclusively between the US and China. 

Arguably, another weakness of the economic analysis is the discussion of the impact of transition on jobs and employment. Beuret accurately describes how the so-called ‘green transition’ has had a negative effect on employment and working conditions. He goes further, however, to claim that as jobs related to the fossil fuel economy decline:

… while there are many ways to cushion the blow, from reduced working weeks to building up the social economy to strengthening social services and public provisioning, none of these would amount to the creation of an equal number of similar jobs.

No evidence is given for the claim that whatever is done there will be a net loss in jobs. In fact there is strong evidence from a number of studies that suggests that a genuine green transition would involve substantially more jobs than those that will be lost as the fossil fuel economy ends.

Beuret’s pessimism over jobs is also related to pessimism about the way in which the production of solar, wind and other green technologies will take place. It is certainly the case that production is currently dominated by China and he assumes that this will inevitably continue. As a result, he believes that new jobs in the Global North will be exclusively concerned with installing technology produced elsewhere – what he calls the installation economy. Surely there’s a strong case for sites of production to be closer to where equipment will be used to minimise transport distances.

Blockade and refusal

The second half of the book discusses what is to be done. To date the climate movement has largely attempted to persuade states to see the logic of what needs to be done and take action. Beuret argues that there needs to be a much more confrontational approach. He notes that:

The fossil economy is produced in specific places. If we are to build the kind of disruptive power that can move us towards the rapid ending of fossil fuels, then it is precisely at these critical junctions that we must organise.

He characterises the direct action taken by Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and others as propaganda. He notes that this kind of direct action can win victories through raising consciousness and pressurising politicians. However, to win the kind of systemic change required to break fossil capital he argues that direct action in the form of the blockade is necessary. An effective blockade has to be long term, sustained and targeted at choke points in the fossil fuel supply chain. Most of all it needs to materially affect the operation of the production or the supply chain that is being targeted. It requires organisation and development of cadres. He notes that contemporary examples of the blockade are rare. In Britain in the 1990s direct action stopped the introduction of GMO crops and Thatcher’s huge programme of road building that began in 1989 was severely limited by persistent blockading through permanent encampments. Roughly ten years later in Australia the development of the Jabiluka Uranium mine was stopped by 5,000 protestors camped close to the proposed site. 

Having introduced the blockade, the discussion moves on to other forms of direct action. There’s an important emphasis on building on the anger of working-class people faced with paying the price of transition and a sympathetic use of the French Gilets Jaunes as an example of how this might be developed. There’s an interesting discussion of past examples of community-based campaigning such as the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, tenant organising and actions over transport costs. The emphasis is on developing popular campaigns of refusal. In Beuret’s view, deep community organising includes activity in communities and in the workplace. Workplace organising needs to include fighting around issues of social reproduction and wider political and community issues need to be taken into the workplace. The task is not simply to reject and disrupt the transition but to simultaneously build our own transition from below. In all this there is a rejection of asking governments to act – in effect the mainstream approach of the climate movement for so long.

I want to insist that although it has problems, Or Something Worse is well worth reading. At a time when the left is struggling to be relevant in the face of existential crisis and a burgeoning far right, books like this are essential. They help develop ideas about how to catalyse, grow and coalesce resistance at the level that is required to shift the momentum towards self-conscious collective working class led action locally and internationally.

Or Something Worse by Nicholas Beuret is published by Verso Books.

‘Transition’ from oil? Our idea now looks like a delusion

NEIL ROTHNIE, retired oil worker and climate activist, reflects on his participation in Extinction Rebellion and what we have, and have not, achieved.

This post was first published on the People and Nature blog. If you’d like to respond to this article please use the contact form to get in touch.

“The rebellion starts here”, I wrote in October 2019. “There must be non violent direct action aimed at big oil, and targeting oil production.”

The article, North Sea oil and gas: the elephant in the room, was originally a leaflet that I took to London, to Extinction Rebellion’s festival of rebellion.

At that time I was four years’ retired, after 40 years as an offshore oilworker. I was experiencing a personal renaissance, as Extinction Rebellion (XR) crashed onto the streets. 

My article wasn’t particularly radical or controversial. Certainly not to most XR rebels who were its target audience. And it still today, at least in part, reflects what is a fairly mainstream position in the climate movement. 

I wasn’t really focussed on XR’s demands as such – e.g. getting the government to “tell the truth”.  Even then I wasn’t convinced that that was very likely, but I certainly didn’t disagree. I knew next to nothing about the popular assemblies that XR was calling for, or about whether Net Zero was remotely achievable by 2025.  

But I’d been hugely impressed by the way Extinction Rebellion had burst onto the scene, blocking bridges over the Thames the year before. That’s when I’d become aware of the movement.  

By this time, I was troubled about global warming and thought that it would take the masses to intervene in this existential issue. Really all I wanted to do was to bring my own experience to bear on the situation.

I’d been flabbergasted that many rebels I’d spoken to had little awareness of the North Sea oilfield’s existence.

I felt that the “fossil fuels” that were understood to be the major source of greenhouse gases when burned, were in fact still pretty much a “concept” – something in their heads, rather than real stuff mined by real people in our patch.  

My article called on the climate movement to turn towards the oil workers with a call for a “just transition”.

Just transition of course was not my formulation, but was a concept that I swallowed whole, and expected would appeal to the offshore oil workforce on some level and might be the basis for workers to mobilise around.  

This, after all, was the workforce that had engaged in a huge struggle after the 167 deaths by burning and drowning on the Piper Alpha platform, albeit 30 years previously.

In what now seems like an age since 2019, we’ve seen virtually no response from oil and gas workers, despite a concerted turn towards them by parts of the climate movement.

Perhaps the one concrete thing is that we know that they would be more than happy to transfer from offshore oilfield to offshore wind field … if they can keep the lifestyle and the wages.

But the workers are still in lock step with their trade unions (the minority that are actually organised) and with their employers, with Big Oil globally, and with our government. 

Short of a massive storm event on the North Sea creating another major tragedy, it’s hard to see this unholy alliance unravelling any time soon.  

But while I’m not embarrassed by the 2019 article, I don’t think it reflects the reality we’re experiencing, never mind the future we’re facing. That is why I came back and asked Simon for the use of his blog again.  

Right now, everywhere, we have an accelerating pattern of disasters, intermittently destroying lives and the natural environment and by all accounts driving the tendency towards mass extinctions of species. 

We’ve seen a succession of global heating-induced disasters rock the planet. The floods in Pakistan, the fires in the Amazon, and today in California, stand out for me. It’s relentless. You’ll have your own list.

Can I tell the future? Well obviously not. But, as far as any layman can understand the climate science consensus, it seems that we’re way way further down the road to a radically different global climate, and massive changes to local weather that cause mayhem and misery.  

My characterisation of the industry/government strategy as “business as usual” was, and remains, accurate, I think.  

The court decision last week, that the process that gave the go-ahead for the development of the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields on the North Sea was unlawful, should pose absolutely no problem for the industry that was complicit in the hanging of Ken Saro-wiwa, and has been involved in human and ecological atrocities across the globe.  

Not much of a problem either, I’d have thought, for Rachel Reeves and Sir Starmer with their Growth & Growth & Growth mantra.  

The concept of a transition – never mind “just” – from fossil fuels to renewables, led in any part by the massed ranks of the proletariat self-organised in the offshore unions, now looks like an ongoing exercise in self delusion.

Long before XR was set up, in 1989-90, I was desperate to get some sort of an idea of the nature of the relationship of oil and capitalism – something that might inform me whether the rank and file Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC) could chew what we’d bitten off by organising strikes and platform occupations after the Piper Alpha disaster. [Note. Here is an interview with Neil about this, and an archive of the rank and file paper he edited, Blowout.]

I was looking for some sort of an understanding of the possibilities and opportunities. Where did any of this lead? 

Thirty-five years later, and along comes Adam Hanieh with his book Crude Capitalism: oil, corporate power and the making of the world market (reviewed here and here). He says, as I read him, that the capital system and fossil fuels are inextricably entwined.

His book begs the question, at least for me, of the likelihood that the capital system can turn off oil and gas, and replace the world’s energy needs from renewables, before climate chaos becomes the norm.  

The vision this question conjures up, in my imagination, is of someone ripping out their own heart with one hand, while trying to construct a replacement organ with the other. 

Meanwhile Jean-Baptiste Fressoz tells us, in his book More and More and More: an all-consuming history of energy (Allen Lane, 2024), that that holy grail of the climate movement, a “transition” to renewables, is in fact a pipe dream, a chimera.  

There never was, it seems, in human history a precedent – an energy transition – corresponding in any way to the fantasy we hold of fossil fuels being replaced by renewables. Oil didn’t replace coal. Coal didn’t replace wood. It’s just been “more and more and more”.

The history, Fressoz insists, is of “symbiotic” relationships. Burning coal leads to using (more) wood. The exploitation of oil and gas drives (more) wood and (more) coal to be used, and crucially, renewable energy adds to and encourages the use of (more) wood and coal and oil and gas in such a way that Fressoz sees no plausible scenario where global heating might remain within 1.5, or 2.0 degrees C. 

We’re looking at “three degrees C – a catastrophic increase” he says. “How can we make do with less and less and less?” he asks.  

And Brett Christophers, in his book The Price is Wrong: why capitalism won’t save the planet (reviewed here) challenges another growing orthodoxy. The idea is firmly out there that now that the price of renewables is right, that renewables are “cheaper” than fossil fuels.  

This, the argument goes, will inevitably, according to the laws of the market, mean that renewables will supplant fossil fuels. Only who would have guessed that in fact “the price is wrong”, and that all along it’s been profits, not prices, that drive capitalism?

Let’s suppose that you’ve checked out these authors for yourself, and found that my very crude argument, largely drawn from my reading of them, casts reasonable doubt on the idea that there is a snowball’s chance in hell of the current “powers that be” getting us out of this mess.

Then your next step might be to have a look around for the Leninist parties that are going to wrest global power from the current crop of megalomaniacs and oligarchs and downright genocidal bastards. Where are the forces that will lead us over the barricades, kalashnikovs in hand, to capture the state (everywhere) and plan our way out of this one?

Perhaps that’s not the place to look. Perhaps it’s going to be more complicated.

If you are, like I am, disabused of almost every certainty you ever held dear, then there is at least one step that might help us “take care of ourselves”. No! This is not about Lush bath bombs (if they are still a thing). It’s not about playing Radio 3 in the mornings instead of exploding from bed shouting and swearing at Radio 4’s climate-deniers-lite.

April 2012: Volunteers running a centre where Hurricane Sandy survivors could stock up on staples. Photo by Liz Roll/ Creative Commons

“Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire” is the subtitle of Adam Greenfield’s book Lifehouse (Verso, 2024). The “care” he’s talking about is putting human need, human relations and self organisation at the centre of our practice – in a period when it would seem that we are going to have to learn to survive and make worthwhile lives with less and less and less.  

And all this in the face of escalating climate emergencies and the inevitable breakdowns they provoke. 

The book is rooted in Greenfield’s own experience as part of Occupy Sandy, which had morphed out of Occupy Wall Street, organising relief to the victims of the hurricane that hit New York in 2012.  

He draws material together from the way people have been self organising in the face of inadequate official support, abandonment and just downright open hostility, in places as disparate as Rojava in Kurdistan; Jackson, Mississippi, in the USA; Greece in 2010, during the debt crisis that exploded health care; and in California, where the Black Panthers organised from the late 60s to the early 80s.  

The book is “optimistic”, not “hopeful”. Greenfield inveighs against hope, and lays out a rationale and a blueprint for a practice, and a physical space, that offers us a place to organise and the chance of shelter and community and dignity.

This is a rant, not a series of book reviews. And it may turn out to be no more prescient than that one from 2019. 

But is Greenfield, broadly speaking, right?  No point in just hoping so. The point of his book is, it seems to me, not just to understand the world but to change it. I’ve heard that somewhere before. A first step might be to have a look. 

North Sea Transition

We were invited to contribute to a panel on North Sea Transition at the conference ‘Working for Climate Justice: trade unions in the front line against climate change’ at Toynbee Hall in East London on 27th of October.

Aberdeen – image by Pete Cannell CC0

Since we launched in the autumn of 2017 Scot.E3’s emphasis has been on building capacity for a worker led transition with a focus on workplace and community organising.   Arguing for the rapid phase out of North Sea Oil and Gas has formed a central part of our campaigning.  The Sea Change report, published in 2019, remains very relevant.  It shows how switching from oil and gas to wind and solar would create a big net increase in jobs in Scotland and failing to make this transition would mean that targets to cut carbon emissions would not be met.

It’s very important that the climate movement has embraced the significance of North Sea oil and gas and a just transition for workers in the fossil fuel industries.  That wasn’t so much the case in 2017.  But two critical and closely linked challenges remain:

  • How do we build a mass movement with powerful roots in every workplace and working-class community that pushes for the necessary changes?
  • How do we engage workers in the energy sector, who are very aware that change is needed, but have very little confidence that it will be socially just?

For more than fifty years the big oil and gas companies have used their operations in the UK sector of the North Sea to blaze a trail for what we have come to know as neoliberalism; establishing practices that have been copied and taken up internationally.  Outsourcing, multiple layers of subcontracting, anti-union policies and the use of blacklists.  At the same time the so-called free ‘market’ has been featherbedded by massive state subsidies which have exceeded taxation revenue.  

The onshore construction industry has been on the same journey.  In Scotland the Construction Rank and File group has grown a new network through taking the construction industry using direct action tactics, picketing sites, and building combative organisation from the ground up. Just under a year ago two Unite activists, working on the new high voltage transmission lines from the Moray Firth to central Scotland were sacked for their union activity just before Christmas.  However, after the Rank and File group picketed the main subcontractor and Scottish and Southern Energy they were reinstated with full back pay.  The group has been a consistent supporter of Scot.E3 and have very publicly advocated for the importance of building worker organisation to ensure that the energy transition is a just transition.  

Despite many analysts and some industry insiders warning that oil and gas is an increasingly risky investment global levels of investment are high and currently booming while the industry remains determined to squeeze as much oil and gas out as it can out of the North Sea.   Among Westminster’s policy turns there has been a consistent adherence to the North Sea transition deal which describes in broad terms how that it is to be achieved.  The Scottish Government and the offshore trade unions remain signed up to the ‘transition’ deal.  Pursuing this path means that investment in hydrogen and CCS is prioritised at the expense of renewables, condemning UK consumers to a high cost and uncertain future and undermining progress to a genuine energy transition.   There’s no evidence that big oil has any particular commitment to the North Sea, and they must know that hydrogen for domestic heating is hugely problematic, but they are very keen to stick with false solutions that are compatible with the existing infrastructure and networks of fossil capital.

The cost-of-living crisis isn’t over.  However, to date, the climate and workers movements have failed to nail the intimate connection between fuel and food poverty and the oil and gas industry.  Perhaps there’s a lesson here.  At a time when we face a drawn-out existential crisis there is a need for new ways of organising that bring unions and communities together in common understanding and common struggle.  There are some examples of what this might begin to look like. In Scotland Edinburgh Trade Unions in Communities provides an innovative model, while in France social movement trade unionism is having an impact.

Climate justice, climate jobs and the military industrial complex

This is the slightly expanded text of a contribution that Pete Cannell (speaking for Scot.E3) made to a meeting organised by the global climate jobs network at the COP26 people’s summit.

Scotland is well placed to make a rapid transition to a zero-carbon economy.  It is well endowed with natural resources for wind, wave, tidal and hydro power generation.  Hydro power was developed in the 1950’s and sixties, more recently there has been some further development of local, small-scale hydro.  Offshore and onshore wind power has developed rapidly, wave and tidal has seen very little investment.  But Scotland also has a relatively strong representation of engineering skills among its workforces.  These workers have skills in electrical, marine engineering, fabrication and so on – skills that are needed for the transition to a zero-carbon economy that needs to begin right now.

Most of these workers are currently employed in either the Oil and Gas sector or ‘Defence’.  Sectors which are significantly larger as a proportion of the Scottish economy than they are of the UK as a whole. 

The current state of play with climate jobs is disastrous.  The policy of leaving transition to the market has resulted in declining numbers of jobs in renewables.  We’ve written about the closure of facilities at BiFab and Machrihanish elsewhere on this site.  At the same time there have been massive job losses in the North Sea and a long-term decline in engineering jobs in the defence sector.  While there has been a massive increase in offshore wind generation the private sector has driven down wages and conditions, used low paid workers from around the world, shifted production to sites thousands of miles away and focused on profit maximisation rather than just transition.

There’s a lot more we could say about oil and gas but in the context of the other talks at this meeting we want to focus now on the arms trade.  Britain is one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world and Scotland has a disproportionately large share of this activity.  It has been excellent that during this mobilisation around COP26 there has been a lot of discussion of the huge carbon emissions of the military.  

Defence Imagery CC BY-NC 2.0

In Scot.E3 we’ve argued for the need to go further – the military industrial complex in Scotland (and globally) acts as a barrier to transition.  It thrives on public subsidy – far more than that provided for renewables.  This is a characteristic it shares with the oil and gas sector. It distorts the economy, it’s secretive and hugely corrupt, dominates research agendas and monopolises skills and resources that should be directed to saving the planet.

We look forward to a day when the commitment and imagination of young people currently in school can be deployed to develop the kind of sustainable and socially just society that we are fighting for.  But time is short, and we need to start the transition now with the skills and knowledge that are already available. To achieve climate justice and win the climate jobs we need it’s going to be necessary to force a radical shift of resources away from the defence sector as well as from oil and gas.

Global Climate Jobs Network – Technical Conference

ScotE3 has been working with other organisations in the Global Climate Jobs Network, the Alternative Information and Development Centre (South Africa) and Climaximo and Empregos para o Clima (Portugal), on a proposal for a technical conference to be held in March 2022.

Call for Papers

Climate jobs and green new deal movements are springing up around the world. This is a call for papers for an international conference on the technical aspects of the jobs that will be necessary, in 10th, 11th and 12th March 2022.

The conference will be on zoom, over three days, and contributors will be able to participate from all continents. We want papers from engineers, scientists, system modellers, designers, architects, planners, educators and trainers, foresters, soil scientists, trade union researchers, NGO researchers and other specialists.

The Climate Jobs Approach

We want contributors to think about the technical and technological implications of a “climate jobs” approach. This approach involves several features:

Massive government spending on public sector, direct employment to make possible reductions of 95% in CO2 emissions, and deep reductions in other emissions, within 20 years. In South Africa or Britain, this would be something like one million jobs a year, or in the United States 8 million jobs.

People who lose their jobs in old, high carbon industries would be guaranteed training and well paid, permanent work in climate jobs.

The work would begin from year one, starting with training a new workforce and shovel ready projects. Over twenty years many new technologies would become possible.

Public sector bodies would share intellectual property across borders.

Profits would be less important. Technologies that are necessary but currently “unrealistic”, could be developed rapidly at scale even if the cost was very high for many years. For example, alternative methods of making steel, substitutes for cement, or expensive forms of renewable energy like marine power and concentrated solar could enter mass production.

We could also move beyond the market, with regulations of many sorts. So we could think about the sort of rail, bus and electric system needed if all flights of 5,000 kilometres or less were banned. Or what could be done if we banned the manufacture of concrete, or F-gases?

Or contributors to think about the details, and the implications, of a building code that required new buildings to have greatly reduced energy use, and to burn no fossil fuels for heating or cooking. In this, we would like not only papers that argue this would be a good idea but think about how that code would be worded in different places, and what technologies and materials would be required, and what research would be required.

For more information about the conference, possible topics, how to participate and the deadline for submitting abstracts please download the full call for papers.

Support Alexander Dennis – Green Buses for Just Transition

Thanks to Friends of the Earth Scotland for sharing this information.  The skills of the workforce at Alexander Dennis and the production facilities are vital for the transition to a zero carbon economy.

Background 
Despite the Scottish Government’s fine rhetoric on climate action and just transition, hundreds of workers are currently at risk of redundancy at Alexander Dennis (ADL), the Falkirk-based manufacturer of high-performance hybrid buses. Unite the Union has found evidence that despite the claims of ADL, these job cuts were planned before the health crisis as part of a restructure strategy. Like the still under threat BiFab offshore platform fabrication yards in Fife, Alexander Dennis should be at the forefront of the just transition to a zero carbon economy, not struggling for survival. 

Why your help is needed
Environmentalists and climate change campaigners can stand in solidarity with workers fighting to save their jobs – jobs that are vital to the green economy and protecting livelihoods.  


Please support the @UniteScotland and @UniteADL campaign on social media, and call for MSPs to sign motion S5M-22467 in the Scottish Parliament. The text of the motion is below, along with links to suggested tweets to share and tweets to send directly to MSPs. 

A demonstration of solidarity like this from environmentalists and climate change campaigners with workers and trade unionists will help build stronger alliances and a broader movement for climate action. Please take action today! 

Scottish Parliament Motion

Motion S5M-22467: Richard Leonard, Central Scotland, Scottish Labour, Date Lodged: 19/08/2020 R

Importance of Engineering and Manufacturing to the Scottish Economy

That the Parliament recognises and affirms its support for the importance of engineering and manufacturing to the Scottish economy; considers that the sector will play a crucial role in a just transition to a cleaner and greener economy; expresses its concern at the announcement by Alexander Dennis Limited, a world leading bus manufacturer, that a significant number of jobs throughout its UK operations are at risk, including at sites in Falkirk and Larbert; recognises the serious impact that this would have on thousands of workers, and calls on the Scottish Government to offer every assistance to support the company and its skilled workforce and to work with it and the trade unions to ensure that it has an important future in supporting the development of a clean and green public transport infrastructure for communities across Scotland and further afield.

Tweets to retweet 
If you’re short on time, please retweet these focused at UK & Scot Govs

If @NicolaSturgeon wants a cleaner, greener future then jobs like @ADLbus will be crucial to making this a success. 

Time for @scotgov to support these key manufacturing jobs in Falkirk.
https://twitter.com/UniteADL/status/1303762702616190976 

We’re still waiting on action from @BorisJohnson and @GOVUK. 4,000 green buses were promised. Our members at @ADLbus are ready to build them.

Suggested text to tweet @ your MSPs

If you want to engage your MSP, share this tweet with them. Find out who is your MSP

We call on MSPs to support @ScotParl Motion https://bit.ly/2D5cVOH 

@ADLbus workers want to be part of a cleaner greener future. @UniteScotland @unitetheunion

If you want to ask your MSP to sign the motion

Hi

@XXXXXMSP

Bus manufacturing is essential to the green economy – Alexander Dennis should be thriving & at forefront of#JustTransition to zero carbon, not struggling for survival.

As my MSP, please support the motion bit.ly/2D5cVOH 

@UniteADL

@UniteScotland

If you want to thank your MSP for signing the motion (we should remember to praise MSPs when they do good stuff!)

Hi

@XXXXXMSP

Bus manufacturing is essential to the green economy – Alexander Dennis should be thriving & at forefront of#JustTransition to zero carbon, not struggling for survival. 

Nuclear weapons, the climate and our environment

Don’t Bank on the Bomb Scotland has produced an excellent new report that looks at the links between nuclear weapons, tackling the climate crisis and degradation of the environment.  Written by Linda Pearson the report collects together a wealth of useful links for anti-war and climate campaigners alike.  The aim of the report is ‘to highlight the connections between climate change, nuclear weapons, militarism, environmental destruction, racism, gender inequalities and social injustice in order to build a broad-based movement that can challenge existing power structures and bring about systemic change’.

Scot.E3 from its formation has argued that defence divestment needs to be part of the transition to a sustainable zero carbon economy.  We agree with Don’t Bank on the Bomb that ‘… any Green New Deal plans should include a transition away from military production, as well as a transition away from fossil fuels’. 

The new report highlights the expenditure of huge sums of money on ‘modernising’ nuclear arsenals around the world.  The nuclear industry (military and civilian) is perhaps the most centralised and authoritarian manifestation of the military-industrial complex.  We would argue that it’s not simply that the money spent on nukes should be spent on developing a new sustainable economy; the nuclear industry and arms manufacture more generally distorts economic and social choices and constrains civil liberties.  The skills of engineers and scientists that could be devoted to productive, environmentally useful activity are instead harnessed to a system that produces waste, trashes the environment and risks all our lives.  The report highlights the interconnections between the drive for profit, the impact of climate change and increased military tensions.  One example of this is the race for commercial and military dominance of the Arctic.

Nuclear Weapons, the Climate and Our Environment – screen shot

Further Reading:

Scot.E3 Briefing Scotland Deindustrialisation and Diversification

Phasing Out Oil and Gas

One of the workshop streams at the Scot.E3 conference in November focused on Oil and Gas and Just Transition for workers involved with the North Sea.   Stephen McMurray summarises the discussion that took place.  

The oil and gas group included Simon Pirani, author of Burning Up: a global history of fossil fuel consumption, and a retired oil worker now campaigning with XR and ScotE3. The initial discussions included how we start to phase out oil and gas extraction. The main policy suggestions included ending subsidies to the oil and gas industries and ending licences for oil and gas exploration.

There was an interesting debate about whether the government should set a date to end oil and gas, for example in 2030. On a positive note, it may stop companies exploring for oil and gas well before 2030. On a more negative note, it may encourage companies to seek to maximise output and increase carbon emissions before 2030.

Earlier in the conference, we had watched a series of short films by REEL News. One of the films illustrated that companies were increasingly turning to automation and subsequently reducing their workforce. This led to a discussion considering that research should be undertaken into the impact of automation into the oil and gas industries. Furthermore, it would be useful for REEL News to make a film of the North Sea and show their films on the impacts of oil and gas to oil workers.

There was a general feeling that there was a lack of information for oil and gas workers in relation to training for new industries, and that a just transition conference should be held in Aberdeen for oil and gas workers. There was also a discussion on how we engage with suppliers to the oil and gas industries so they are included in a just transition. Additionally, it was not clear that the Scottish Government had produced a post-oil industrial strategy, and there was a need to give presentations at universities for the need to move to careers post carbon.

Finally, there was an agreement that we need to bring the rebellion to the oil and gas industries and that we need a massive confrontation with big oil in Aberdeen during COP26 when it comes to Glasgow next year.

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Upcoming events

Saturday 26th October: Scot.E3 will have a stall at the Radical Independence Conference, which takes place at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Glasgow – you can browse and pick up copies of briefings.

Saturday 2nd November:  Scot.E3 will have a stall at the Edinburgh EcoFair – which takes place at Out of the Blue (Drill Hall) in Dalmeny Street.  We still need people to help with the stall on the day – if you’re free for an hour or two your help would be much appreciated.

Tuesday 12th November:  We are co hosting a meeting on Public Transport in Glasgow and the 2020 COP with Glasgow CACC and FOE. Speakers are Rebecca Menzies from ‘Get Glasgow Moving’ and Stuart Graham (Glasgow CACC). 7pm at the Unison offices, 84 Bell Street G1 1LQ

And of course Saturday 16th November is the Scot.E3 conference. Bookings can be made on Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/just-transition-employment-energy-and-environment-2019-tickets-68768192515  and there’s also a Facebook Event at  https://www.facebook.com/events/1133891030332559/  If you are in position to share the event it would be really helpful.

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