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Growth & Climate
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Climate and Jobs: The Same Fight! |
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Go to Original Friday 26 February 2010 by: Alain Lipietz | Alternatives Economiques There are not many people left today who oppose the environment to jobs. Several recent studies confirm: the more invested in "green conversion," the more jobs can be created. The crisis of the free-market, productivist model that was "the sole policy possible" for a quarter century has come to pass. Even workers in the car and truck industry are convinced that the previous model is dead and only a conversion to new production lines may save their jobs. But, perhaps, we don't adequately gauge that every delay in "green conversion" is a delay in job creation. On that subject, one often hears established interests object: "Agreed, nothing will be as it was before; we will take off again in the direction of another model, but we need to take existing jobs into account and not go too fast." Take existing jobs into account? Agreed, if that means using existing competencies and even existing installations in the best way possible for green conversion, but the second phrase is absurd. Delaying green conversions and new green activities is delaying job creation. Without counting the strictly environmental aspect of the problem: any delay in the battle against climate change is irrevocable. This pressure of lost time, which plays not only against the climate, but also against employment, results from the dual nature of green conversion: as "conversion" and as "green." We know that we must redirect transportation toward public transportation, insulate all buildings (and especially older buildings) and re-establish short - and, if possible, organic - networks in agriculture and food. Now, the simple act of redirection involves work and the future - stabilized - regime will create more jobs on an ongoing basis. It's a bit like the ten first years of Fordism in France (1945-1955): on the one hand, we had to rebuild the country, and on the other, what we were rebuilding was an almost full-employment regime. The two effects are indistinguishable in the beginning, which made people fear a return of the Great Depression once the reconstruction was over. That didn't happen. |
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Tuesday 15 December 2009 by: Jacques Attali | L'Express The ever-more-fashionable idea that we should desire and organize shrinkage in the economy to fight against the destruction it generates may seem a priori totally idiotic: how can anyone want to institutionalize depression, the consequences of which the whole world is suffering today in terms of unemployment and poverty? How can anyone desire a drop in production, that is, in average income, while the most elementary needs of developed countries' populations have not been satisfied, let alone those of the billions of people who still live in extreme destitution? How can one desire negative growth when so much progress is heralded, creating hope for the possibility of ridding humanity of tiresome jobs, suffering, ignorance and pollution? Finally, how can anyone think that zero or negative growth would improve the environmental situation, while it's not growth that pollutes, but production, the content of which is not improved by its stagnation? Nonetheless, the idea makes sense: if one understands it as a desire to put an end to the vagaries of our model of production, to the insanities and fatigues of speed, "performance," waste, accumulation, the ill-considered replacement of gadgets with other gadgets; and, above all, if one understands it as the determination to reconsider the commercial definition of greater welfare, of being better off. In order to effect such a transformation, however, negative growth in the strict sense of the term is not what the world needs. Nor even is a different growth which would not change anything in the structure of production. But rather, a radical change in the very nature of the material goods produced and of their relationship to the times, to awareness and to feelings. |
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What the CBO Isn't Telling Congress: Climate Change Threatens Million of Jobs |
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Tuesday 10 November 2009 by: Joe Uehlein, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed While fewer and fewer people are willing to publicly deny the validity of global warming science, those who oppose action to protect the climate have taken up a new strategy: Denying that climate change will have a major impact on the US economy. This denial is rejected by most economists who have studied climate change. In a survey of 144 top climate economists released November 4, 2009, by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, 84 percent agreed that "the environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions, as described by leading scientific experts, create significant risks to important sectors of the United States and global economies." A majority stated that sectors that will be negatively affected include agriculture, fishing, forestry, insurance and health services. But the profound negative economic impact of climate change is being largely ignored or denied in the current public policy debate. This denial threatens to have a significant effect on public policy. For example, testimony October 14, 2009, by Douglas W. Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, states, "Most of the economy involves activities that are not likely to be directly affected by changes in climate." He claims that "a relatively pessimistic estimate for the loss in projected real gross domestic product is about 3 percent for warming of about 7 degrees Fahrenheit (F) by 2100." He cites only two studies, one published in 2004; the other, which he describes as "the most comprehensive published study," was published in 2000, a decade before current research on the impacts of climate change. |
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In Spite of Strong Growth, the Country at Present Remains a Model of Energy Sobriety |
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Go to original Monday 02 November 2009 by: Hervé Kempf And what if India were a model of energy efficiency? Received wisdom has it that developing countries waste their energy in the absence of adequate technologies, while developed countries supposedly use energy more efficiently. A study by the Indian firm Prayas, presented during the conference of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (FIJE) in Delhi on October 28, shows that's not the case at all. Entitled, "An Overview of Indian Energy Trends," it reveals that between 1990 and 2005 the country's GDP increased 2.3 times, but its energy consumption rose 1.9 times. Moreover, energy intensity (energy consumption related to production) is much less than China's, but also less than the United States' and comes close to the European level. A good part of this performance may be explained by the price of electricity to industry - among the highest in the world. In transportation also, India demonstrates great efficiency: India's totalconsumption of gas and diesel in 2005 was less than the simple increase in consumption in China and the United States between 1990 and 2005. The high price of fuel plays a significant role, but so does the density of Indian cities, which limits the length of trips. Vegetarian Diet For domestic energy uses, there is better energy intensity by income level than in the United States. That may be explained by the significant use of biomass, but also by the very widespread vegetarian diet, which limits cooking needs: on average, an Indian consumes one twenty-fifth as much meat as an American. |
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Unions Need to Sever All Ties With Anti-Climate Bill Groups |
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Go to Original Friday 09 October 2009 by: Brendan Smith, Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello Under escalating pressure from activists, Nike, the utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric Company, and others have publicly resigned from the US Chamber of Commerce over its opposition to climate protection policies. It's time for labor unions to follow suit by cutting all ties with groups opposing climate legislation like the Chamber-funded Energy Citizens. The AFL-CIO's newly elected president, Richard Trumka recently, told an audience at the "Jobs, Justice, and Climate" conference:"The AFL-CIO and all the unions in North America are strongly on board the global campaign to reduce carbon emissions and stabilize climate change. Working together with environmental organizations we hope to reverse practices that put our very survival at risk." So, why have some labor unions thrown their support behind the Energy Citizens, a nationwide front group lobbying against climate mitigation legislation and funded by the likes of the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute? According to the Energy Citizens' web site, the group's objective is to force "Congress to reject climate change policies that could raise energy costs and eliminate American jobs." They opposed the Waxman-Markey climate bill and are now furiously lobbying against the Senate version, claiming it will have "negative effects for families, small businesses, farmers and truckers - but the fact remains that all Americans that drive or fly will feel the impact." |
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