Why hasn't the environmental movement campaigned about train derailments?

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April 25, 2023

Earth Day 2023: Why hasn’t the environmental movement campaigned on train derailments?

by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers’ Voice

Excerpts:

April 22 was Earth Day. It came this year as greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase; climate disasters come faster and faster; and environmental pollution gets worse and worse.

What’s going on is that the rich bourgeois governments are taking some environmental measures. ... But they are simultaneously increasing carbon emissions, letting more and more plant and animal species die, blanketing both the land and oceans with plastic and more and more poisonous chemicals, and rubbing their hands with glee over the imminent disaster of an ice-free Arctic.

Meanwhile the international environmental movement has its own crisis. The large international demonstrations of past years, such as those inspired by the militant activist Greta Thunberg, demanding the governments do something, haven’t caused the governments to become more serious. True, activist groups have continued determined and valuable actions against particular environmental atrocities. A number of activists have even given their lives for the cause; this happens especially among, but is not restricted to, indigenous activists in Latin America. This is important, but overall the world movement has been marking time.

The struggle against global warming is facing a crisis of orientation. It can’t make progress simply by hoping to shock the bourgeoisie with bolder civil disobedience, however justified such actions are. It needs to increase its support among the working masses, who are the only force capable of consistently fighting the large capitalist interests, opposing the subsidies to the polluting capitalists, and backing strict regulation.

But the leadership of the establishment environmental groups stays aloof from the struggle of the working masses. It promises that green jobs will trickle down to the workers, but it is generally indifferent to the workers’ struggles for livelihood, and and doesn’t seek to influence and support them, not even those workplace struggle which are directly related to environmental issues. And there are such struggles. Some are concerned with toxic chemicals, pollution, and the constant violation of workplace rules about poisons by the capitalists. Others are on issues like opposing austerity and the cuts in subsidies for what people need to live; these have given rise to massive demonstrations in various parts of the world. These events raise delicate questions of how environmentalists should react when it is subsidies for peoples’ fuel that are being cut. The establishment groups has mainly looked away when this happens, rather than speaking loudly about how to support people’s livelihood and the environment.

Local activist groups and climate justice groups have a different record than the leadership of establishment groups. They take part in and organize important struggles including those to protect clean water or against the poisoning of minority localities with polluting industries. They are essential, but they are mainly limited to local issues.

One example of an issue that is taken too casually is the issue of train wrecks, which have occurred year after year. It has recently been highlighted by the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio on February 3rd, which was a major environmental catastrophe for nearby communities. ... This was an issue where mass anger spread among people who otherwise might not have been thinking about these things.

But for the major national environmental groups, it was just an occasion for business as usual — just a few statements for the press. They didn’t organize widespread actions or campaigns on the issue. They didn’t stress that the regulatory agencies will be nothing but fronts for industry so long as they rely on self-regulation and self-reporting by the train companies and other corporations. Nor did they seek to connect the issue of ensuring train safety with the struggle of railroad workers, ...

This nonchalence about what’s happening on the railroads isn’t due to train derailments being rare. On the contrary, train derailments take place all the time; it’s just that they aren’t reported very often. On the average more than three freight trains a day derail!

True, there has been a number of militant actions by activist groups that have sought to block particular stretches of rail lines in order to stop oil and hazardous shipments, or as part of a campaign to block some polluting project. These are important, but they have been local actions for which the railroads are just a subsidiary issue. They have not been part of a a general campaign about the situation of the railroads or in solidarity with railroad workers.

Yet such a campaign would be a way for the environmental movement to appeal to the mass of railroad workers. There is lots of talk about how to bring workers into environmental coalitions, but this will not amount to much unless the environmental movement connects closely to struggles of the working class. ... Dealing with such issues would not be an easy thing to do, because the American trade unions are largely led by a class-collaborationist leadership, while the establishment section of the environmentalists is concerned with making deals with the corporate leaderships. ... But failure to work effectively towards this aim is one part of the present crisis of the environmental movement.

Full text at https://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-230425.html.