Pope Francis and the Coal Miners
A couple days ago in the New York Times there was an interesting letter to the editor from Maciej Grabowski, Poland’s Minister for the Environment. He is responding to an article about Pope Francis’ forthcoming encyclical on the environment, which promises to include a strongly-worded statement about global warming and a discussion of the links between environmental degradation and poverty. In the United States, politicians and business leaders on the right are very concerned about the impact this document will have, and it adds to their overall dissatisfaction with the Pope’s outspoken comments about inequality and social injustice. Though Mr. Grabowski’s party, Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform), is typically described as “center-right,” he wants to make it clear that he welcomes the prospect that the Pope will take a strong stance on the issue of climate change. He writes, “[The Pope’s] new approach and highly anticipated environmental encyclical could play an important role in the coming Paris climate negotiations, especially in countries like Poland, where there exists a strong relationship among tradition, history, and Christian values. As Poland’s minister of the environment, I find that my job has been made easier.”
Why did Mr. Grabowski write this letter? Let’s accept that in part this is simply an expression of his own concern about global warming—I like to believe that even politicians are sometimes capable of sincerity. But government ministers in Poland don’t routinely write letters to the New York Times, so why did this article (which wasn’t even about Poland) elicit a reply? I think that this short text offers us a fascinating window into the complexities of Poland’s domestic and international politics. Externally, this letter serves to counter the bad press that Poland has received because of the country’s resistance to constraints on coal emissions. Over the past few years in particular, the Polish government has tried to water down EU climate control standards because Poles rely so heavily on the mines of Silesia and the power plants those mines supply. Though understandable on a political level, this stance has given Poland a reputation internationally for defending pollution. Grabowski is therefore trying to ride the coattails of the Vatican towards a greener respectability.
More interesting to me, though, are the domestic politics of this issue. Poland’s main coal mining regions in the southwestern part of the country vote solidly for Platforma overall. The only two powiaty (local administrative districts) in all of western Poland to vote for Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice, or PiS) in 2011 were Lubin and Polkowice (near Legnice), and both Upper and Lower Silesia are Platforma strongholds. On the other hand, among miners themselves support for PiS is very strong, and the head of the PiS-affiliated trade union, Solidarity, is a miner named Piotr Duda. In a country with a unionization rate almost as low as the United States, the mines remain a rare bastion of labor militancy. Over the past few years they have used that strength to push the government hard, winning concessions both for the miners directly and for the coal industry more generally. Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz would like nothing more than to see this source of opposition weakened, but a direct assault has proven difficult.
It is a peculiarity of Polish politics that the Solidarity trade union is very close to the Roman Catholic Church. If the Pope’s environmental message is as strongly worded as most expect it to be, it’s going to put the Polish clergy and Solidarity in an awkward position. In an election year, that’s going to be a valuable gift to Platforma, but more importantly it is going to help Kopacz isolate the mineworkers going forward. Surveys have shown that Poles are inclined to support the demands of unionized miners in the abstract, but (with familiar inconsistency) oppose any concessions that would increase utility costs. With the Vatican pushing Catholics towards more environmental sensitivity, it will further undermine one of the last unionized industries in Poland. In that sense, it will indeed make Minister Grabowski’s job a lot easier.