Sustainable job opportunies abound
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One of the interesting things about the move to sustainability in life and industry has been the question of “green” jobs, and whether the move/shift will cost jobs. Ecogeek has a great article on this here.
Climate progress highlights the huge job (and financial) opportunities inherent in sustainable industries like solar power, here.
One thing the Climate Progress article above does highlight, is the number of jobs that can be lost from a country if that country does not act to support that industry.
For instance, one of the serious players in solar innovation and production – Suntech Power – asked the Australian government for some help to get started. For whatever reason this was rejected, so the owner took the business to China (where he was given capital/subsidies to get started) where he now employs a lot of people and generates a lot of revenue. That intellectual property and job creation opportunity was lost from Australia probably forever.
A similar story occured with First Solar who, through lack of investment certainty in the US, went to Germany, where they are now huge. More jobs lost from one country due to its short-sightedness.
The solar and wind industries are increasing year on year, with solar installations nearing 6GW of capacity (standard coal power station output varies, but an approximate range is around 500MW) last year, so clearly the job opportunities are going to increase.
I recently read an interesting report in a magazine where a plumber in Melbourne, Australia was basically saying there were loads of jobs in “green” plumbing; installing water tanks, grey water systems, solar panels, new efficient hot water systems and so on. He was saying he could not keep up with demand. What does that tell you?
One of the arguments from various groups (protectionists, coal/oil industry, GW and CC denialists) about shutting coal stations down, or implementing carbon dioxide taxes, is that going “green” will cost jobs.
It’s a similar argument to logging workers saying that stopping logging will cost jobs. Well, yes, but what happens when you run out of trees? What about when you run out of coal and oil? Don’t you lose the jobs then anyway? Read this article about Exxon Mobil and it’s resistence to the fundamental shift around the globe. They’re locking themselves into some fabulous short-term profits, but what happens when the oil wells go dry? Shell seems to have lost the plot. Climate Progress has a good piece on Shell’s decision here.
Seems to me that about right now is a smart time to start investing in retraining programs to retrain those in fossil fuel industries who’d like to move to sustainable jobs, where the energy is there foreever. Doesn’t that make sense? Obama has put a lot of money on the table for this, so at least the US is starting to think about this seriously.
It doesn’t have to happen overnight, but can be done in a controlled fashion to minimise job losses.
It’s pretty hard to see any downside in that.
So remember, if you’re talking about “green” jobs or making the planet more sustainable, or shutting down coal stations, and someone starts arguing it will all “cost jobs”, then you can use these points as a starting point in your response.
What do you think?
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