Foundations for Writing

The controversy over the Enbridge Line 3 Project, mentioned in our discussion of the pipeline twitter feed the other day, has hit the St. Cloud Times with its reprint today of the Kansas City Star article “Minnesota labor unions divided over Green New Deal plan.” Here are  the lead paragraphs of the article:

Two national leaders of the Service Employees International Union recently came to St. Paul to talk about the union’s latest initiative to fight climate change: the Green New Deal.

Earlier this summer, the SEIU executive board passed a resolution endorsing the sweeping measure proposed by Democrats in Congress, and the union has since worked to educate its 2 million members about the effort to slow global warming.

The endorsement is notable. Despite the Green New Deal’s popularity with progressive leaders and several Democratic presidential candidates, the SEIU is by far the largest union to support the proposal, which includes a broad set of climate, energy and economic promises. Many unions — especially those representing workers in construction, manufacturing and trades — have been hesitant to back such a massive change to the nation’s energy grid and economy, worrying it’s a political impossibility or that it will lead to unnecessary job losses in industries that employ a lot of union workers.
(https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/national-international/article235037247.html)

This controversy over the Green New Deal and its effect on how Democratic presidential candidates might fare with Minnesota voters was also covered in a September 9th article in the St. Cloud Times, “How the Minnesota oil pipeline fight divides Democratic candidates.” Here’s the lead for that article:

A divisive fight over the future of a crude-oil pipeline across Minnesota is pinning presidential candidates between environmentalists and trade unions in a 2020 battleground state, testing their campaign promises to ease away from fossil fuels.

Progressive candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have condemned a Canadian company’s plan to replace its old and deteriorating Line 3 pipeline, which carries Canadian crude across the forests and wetlands of northern Minnesota and into northern Wisconsin. They’ve sided with environmental and tribal groups that have been trying to stop the project for years, arguing that the oil should stay in the ground.

Others candidates — including home-state Sen. Amy Klobuchar and front-runner Joe Biden — have remained largely silent, mindful that such projects are viewed as job creators for some of the working-class voters they may need to win the state next year. (https://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local/2019/09/09/how-minnesota-oil-pipeline-fight-divides-democratic-candidates/2262416001/)