An Open Letter to the Climate Movement

Now, as gas prices go sky high…….. it is widely predicted that hundreds of thousands of families will be driven into poverty for the first time. Leaving the vulnerable and poorest in the cold, or hungry, or both.……Many people will have no option but to not pay the increases. The rest of us will have to decide whether we sit in our expensively warmed homes and watch them freeze. Either that or we’ll have to be part of a struggle that the poor can’t avoid. Is this the moment the struggles of climate movement meet up with the struggle of masses of people?…”

ScotE3 (Employment, Energy and Environment) was initiated by a small group of rank and file trade unionists (mainly working in construction and defence) and climate activists keen to find a way of taking climate action into workplaces and working class communities. They were inspired by the Million Climate Jobs programme for a transition to a sustainable economy and by the struggles for just transition taking place in working class and indigenous communities in the US and elsewhere.

They are committed to building the case for a worker led transition away from fossil fuels. One of their current projects has involved working with other activists to establish a website and discussion forum for workers in the oil and gas sector: North Sea Oil and Gas.

Now, in the wake of COP26 and in the context of the war in Ukraine and the massive hikes in energy prices, ScotE3 have circulated an open letter to the ‘climate movement’.

ScotE3 are campaigning for a ‘just transition’ for oil and gas workers and are inviting the wider climate movement to join them in discussion. 

There needs to be the widest cooperation if we’re going to constantly update the strategy that’ll take this existential struggle forward. We do have ideas. We need them to be challenged, amended, scrapped – whatever.”

Action

ScotE3 would love it if your organisation could discuss this letter and they would like to publish your reactions on the Scot.E3 blog:https://scote3.net 

You can get in touch with them here.

They are holding a workshop on the North Sea at the Global Climate Jobs Network’s International conference taking place from 3-5th June and invite you to join then in working out the plan for the workshop.