Sustainable Transport and the Environment Guide - Unite the Union

The Transport Sector of this union accepts the scientific consensus that we have to
reduce our fossil fuel use to protect life on the planet. The question is, how can
people and products get where they need to go, whilst still taking care of our planet?
What does that mean for our way of life, our jobs? Who has the responsibility for
making these changes? The T&G Section of Unite the Union has already expressed
strong concern 4 that climate change will have devastating impacts, particularly on the
poorest people both at home and abroad, if we do not take action where we can, both
pushing for government action and taking action at the workplaces where we are
organised. This report and this conference will look at some solutions that have been
suggested and begin to weigh up which are the most likely to benefit both the
environment, and the workers that our union represents. There is an opportunity for
trade unions to make a genuine difference, and also for us to organise, as workers
generally say they want their employers to go green and are frustrated that they are
slow to do so.
Finally, in the short term, climate change is already happening with an increase in
extreme weather events, so we need to adapt as well as stopping it getting worse. For
the transport sector there are particular risks. The network can be disrupted by floods
and storms, and summer heat waves lead to dangerously high temperatures affecting
drivers and passengers. Solutions could include better design of vehicles and
infrastructure, as well as different shift patterns (to avoid overcrowding and
congestion) and even small things like relaxed uniform requirements. There should
be a statutory upper limit on workplace temperature which applies to all workplaces
including mobile ones.
2.4 Scientific concerns worsening 5
Recent research suggested that even greater reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
than previously thought are necessary to keep within the crucial 2 degree limit,
because the planet’s ‘carbon sinks’ (oceans, trees, and soil, which absorb climate
change) are already damaged. To have a reasonable chance of staying within two
degrees, we need to stabilise CO 2 in the atmosphere at 400 parts per million (ppm) 6 .
Since the IPPC report in 2007 which fed into the report produced by the T&Gs Civil
Air Transport Group, many of their scientists have expressed concerns that their
conclusions were too conservative and their targets not tough enough. CO 2 is
growing faster than anyone thought it would, and some have become even more
worried about the ‘tipping point’ where we reach ‘unstoppable climate change’ 7 . The
government’s chief economist Nicholas Stern has also publicly said in the last year
that his 2007 report ‘didn’t go far enough’.
Other air pollutants
4 T&G BDC 2005, 2007
5 These figures are all drawn from the IPCC’s fourth assessment reports, available at www.ipcc.ch
6 Sometimes expressed as ‘Carbon Dioxide equivalent ‘ or CO2e, which includes other gases – the
corresponding figure if that measure is used, is 450ppm CO2e.
7 See for example a recent paper published by the Royal Society
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/journal_papers/fulltext.pdf
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