Quick Hits: Green Unionism, Solar Panels, and Malaria Cure

Green Unionism
Today is Labor Day, and any environmental blog would be in deriliction of duty if it did not take the occasion to examine the relationship of the Earth to those who work it. One compelling labor-environmental concept is Green Unionism, a form of community unionism that seeks to link the demands of labor with the environmental concerns of their communities, seeking industrial practices that avoid harm to the planet and environmental policies that avoid harm to the working class. In this way, workers demand not only better conditions on the job, but better conditions in their community, and work in the green movement towards environmental justice. As I wrote for the IWW:

"The needs of the people of Appalachia do not factor into the mining company’s decisions, nor do the needs of the people of Manchuria factor into the decisions of the manufacturing bosses or the State’s party bosses- so the absentee bosses can shift the ecological burden to the working classes, and ignore the costs of production, making a false efficiency from willfully blind industrialism. To the people who live and work in Appalachia or Manchuria, however, the pollution of their air and water, the loss of habitat and wildlife, the losses to public health, are all pressing concerns."

Solar Panels
IBM has developed a new model of high-efficiency thin-film solar panels made with abundant metals. The CZTS panels, made of copper, zinc, and tin, are able to achieve conversion rates of 11.1 percent, a new record in CZTS panel efficiency. The most common thin-film solar panels, CIGS, require 'hitchhiker metals'- indium, gallium, and selenium- that are in limited supply because they are only produced as a byproduct of other mining operations. The CZTS cells, relying on more abundant material, can benefit from mass production and economies of scale more easily. In addition, the metal itself is cheaper, and the production technique itself is simpler than the etching required for silicon cells. With these advantages and further projected increases in efficiency, CZTS cells may pave the way to cheaper solar energy in the future.

Malaria Cure
Researchers in South Africa have found a cure to malaria, in the form of a single pill. While malaria parasites have developed resistance to current multi-drug treatments, this new drug kills the parasite instantly. Says researcher Kelly Chibale, "This is the first ever clinical molecule that’s been discovered out of Africa, by Africans, from a modern pharmaceutical industry drug discovery programme." The World Health Organization estimates that malaria, caused 708,000 - 1,003,000 deaths in 2008. The disease is responsible for 24 percent of child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa.