At a meeting with the deputy political director of the AFL-CIO during my campaign for Congress, she looked across her desk and told me that I could get major union support by coming out in favor of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

That was five years ago. Since then, the nation's biggest labor federation has continued to serve the fossil fuel industry. Call it union leadership for a dead planet.

Last week, the AFL-CIO put out a statement from its president, Richard Trumka, under the headline "Dakota Access Pipeline Provides High-Quality Jobs." The rhetoric was standard flackery for energy conglomerates, declaring "it is fundamentally unfair to hold union members' livelihoods and their families' financial security hostage to endless delay."

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is steadfast against the Dakota Access pipeline: "We will not rest until our lands, people, waters, and sacred sites are permanently protected from this destructive pipeline."

In sharp contrast to the AFL-CIO's top echelon, some unions really want to restrain climate change and are now vocally opposing the Dakota pipeline.

Communications Workers of America has expressed solidarity with members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe "as they fight to protect their community, their land and their water supply."

At National Nurses United, Co-President Jean Ross cites "an obligation to step up climate action to protect public health and the future for the generations to follow us."