Changing the Climate: Ecoliberalism, Green New Dealism, and the Struggle over Green Jobs in Canada

Abstract

Labor-environmentalism has been a strategic response of Canadian unions to the dual manufacturing and climate-change crisis. Important ideological work led organized labor in Canada to endorse the Kyoto Protocol. But the deepening manufacturing crisis of the 2000s tested the resolve of unions to challenge the “jobs-versus-the-environment” dichotomy and to support stringent greenhouse gas emissions reductions. I explain contrasting responses of the Canadian Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers. I critique the dominant discourse of ecological modernization championed by the state-capital alliance for being neoliberal, and evaluate the degree to which this is challenged by the USW’s call for a Green New Deal.