In the midst of a recession and global financial crisis any piece of good news, you would have thought, would be welcomed.
Not so from the Minerals Council who in recent days have been trying desperately to find dark linings to paint on some otherwise quite silver clouds.
Here is the good news they don’t want to you hear. The coal mining sector will grow strongly with or without an emissions trading scheme in place.
According the workers’ own Union the CFMEU, there will be 52,500 jobs in Queensland mining in 2030 under the Rudd Government ETS, an increase of over 120% from the jobs number in 2006 to 07.
There will be no actual jobs losses — there will be jobs growth.
But wait there’s more unpalatable good news — addressing climate is actually good for the economy and can create tens of thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars of investments.
Research we commissioned from energy sector consultants MMA, shows that there are $32 billion worth of investments set to create more than 26,000 jobs — on the table now from business.
These figures are not a result of modelling, but actual proposals that have been announced and are underway now or are in the pipeline. No smoke and mirrors here. Locations and details can be viewed on our website using an interactive map.
The emissions trading scheme is one of the policy levers in the toolkit which will allow regional communities to capitalise on their comparative advantages and grow local industries and jobs.
If climate change and renewable energy legislation passes through Federal Parliament without being weakened it will help drive the industrial shift that can put Australia at the front of a global renewable energy boom which already employs more people worldwide than those directly employed in oil and gas.
The MMA report also shows that measures such as a requirement that 20% of energy comes from renewable sources by 2020, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the Budget’s Clean Energy Initiative can also build almost five times the energy capacity of the iconic Snowy Hydro scheme.
These clean energy jobs are just the beginning. As we put in place stronger policies and as Australian industry invests more in clean energy and low carbon industries these will become the real growth areas for the global economy in the coming months, years and decades.
That’s as nice a bit of satire as I’ve ever read. Still laughing!
What’s with the Firefox/Mozilla graphics?
And if Australian Governments of all persuasions embrace a Natural Fibre Industry especially industrial hemp – there will be thousands of more jobs as well. The NFI will save the forestry, paper and textiles industries across this country. All we need is the political will from Governments and unions.
Obscure how energy sector consultants ignore the best interests of the client by failing to advise:
(a) that the key drivers of climatic variation are for all intents and purposes beyond the control of ‘joe average’,
(b) that carbon dioxide is a relatively very minor player in this game relative to water vapour,
(c) that the impact of increased carbon dioxide from present levels decreases logarithmically with increasing concentration,
(d)that unless atmospheric carbon concentrations are reduced to very low levels, say below 100ppm which is arguably near impossible, there will no significant measurable impact on ‘climate’ distinguishable from the effects of much larger scale processes, and finally,
(e) that carbon per se is NOT a poison (if it was we would all be dead because we are made of it!), so therfore,
(f) the best thing to do is discard the whole ETS as proposed and concentrate on the REAL pollutants that are readily locatable on most Dangerous and Hazardous Goods listings.
The “clean” description is a bit of a misnomer. The two (2) existing Clean Green jobs in Hobart are at tips! (and they stink, I know, I live near one).
Anyway on with the rant:
Within 1 hour drive of Hobart (where I live, any further to drive and you may as well move to Melbourne or Sydney and get the benefits of a big city) there are three (3) existing landfill gas plants and one (1) wood biomass gas plant.
They currently employ two (2) people. (And it must be a shit job, I live near one of those plants and the alarm is always going off at 3am in the morning, so up gets the worker in the freezing Hobart cold to go reset it at the tip)
So that’s two (2) existing clean green jobs in Hobart both working at a tip. That’s it. There are two clean jobs in Hobart… There is another planned landfill biomass plant at Glenorchy tip, so one (1) more job there.
Down south, in Huonville (50 min drive) there’s a planned native forest fed biomass plant that will employ 21 people. When Gunns wanted to set up some wood fed biomass plants like the one in Huonville the Greens here in Tasmania dismissed it as “ridiculous” (that’s from memory). They said “Gunns should leave the conservation to people who really care about the forests and planet”, so a nice bit of hypocrisy there from the Greens.
Basically, I’m underwhelmed, three clean green jobs in the greater Hobart area, all at stinking landfills. Typical bl**dy green b*llshit.