Beyond Climate Change (as if people matter)

Someone at some time started caring about working people. Some trace it back to the disaster that was the Triangle Shirtwaist fire that trapped workers and ultimately led to the beginning of the Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA). I’m sure there were seeds before that, but as is too often in the U.S. it takes a crisis to create real change.

Now we continue to employ people in risky unsafe environments, not for cheap shirtwaist clothing but for our endless energy consumption habits. The recent disaster at Massey Coal Mine in West Virginia was a crisis – of the administration’s oversight (this, after “reform” of MSHA, the administrative agency), of business’s ability to protect its workers, and points to the powerlessness of workers who need to support their family and have few options.

Internationally we are certainly not alone. The Bhopal disaster in India, or the Russian disaster in Chernobyl point to the dangers of nuclear power and its impact. The effects are widespread. A woman on my floor at work called herself “a Chernobyl baby”, with continual thyroid problems, having been birthed in the region. She was only about 23 years old! Way too young to live with the effects of her country’s negligence of its energy industry.

Alternatives are out there. Germany’s economy is totally oriented towards solar. Their production and distribution systems, as well as domestic reliance on solar energy, both allow families to have “net zero” homes which generate income for them by selling power back to the grid, and allow Germany to have a robust export economy with manufactured solar panels to sell. Here in Hillsboro we have a slice of Bonn and are quite fortunate that SolarWorld is here creating jobs, for the new energy economy.

New energy economy is starting to sound trite since it is getting overused. But please think about the consequences to people in your neighborhood, and neighborhoods in communities 3000 miles away, our working friends in West Virginia. We all deserve better. We deserve family wage jobs. We deserve clean energy. And mostly we deserve to make a living that contributes in a positive way to the world.

Other growing “sectors” of the Hillsboro economy include call centers. Lets talk about how sustainable that is. Any time I have ever placed a call (Toshiba, Comcast, etc) I am talking with a very polite technician in India. They even admit it these days and don’t try to masquerade, which is ok with me. I have even adopted some of their customer service habits in my communications at work – their politeness is what we should all strive for in customer service.

However Hillsboro workers cannot compete for call center jobs. It is lucky we have some to keep those parking lots full and keep people off unemployment till we figure out how to run an economy that works for everyone.

The other option that seems to excite people these days is Genentech. Even the Governor and other high level politicians showed up at an expansion of their gleaming new plant. Rhetoric about moving “up the food chain” from packaging to production to R&D. Visions of another Intel danced through their heads.. Now I see the underside of economic development (and I am generally the most optimistic person I know). Just rhetoric. The dignitaries at Genentech were unwilling to utter the words “R&D”. No dearies this is not the next Intel. Right now its just repackaging those bulk pills shipped up from Cali. Soon it will be real production – clean rooms, bunny suits, etc. But that is where the similarity to Intel ends. It will not bring family wage high tech requirements for engineering talent.

A random fact – position announcement for a “photocopy tech” in state government, that required a bachelor’s degree. How is this possible? Is this the best a university degree can get you??

The short view is we need to protect our economy, drill baby drill, build more nukes, even Obama is getting into the act and it really depresses me (and I told him so). Please get out of the political short term. People matter. This economy matters and I’m stuck here so I want it to work out.

The long view is about clean energy. The people who almost (almost) bought this house were planning to install a solar panel on the garage roof (oh, he did work for SolarWorld).

Footnotes:

[1] Thank you Wendy, for making Portland City Club read “Strange as this Weather has Been” by Ann Pancake, which sensitized me to the plight of workers caught up in mountain top removal in West Virginia.

[2] Thank you La Leche League for teaching me “people before things” which I have always tried to live by.