The second article by Peter Smith published in Quadrant Online exposes the hype around Green Jobs…Green jobs that simply don’t and won’t eventuate in this country.
Introduction.
Aussie Pete submitted a post involving 2 detailed articles that really needed separate treatment…..
So I have attempted to do so …sorry for the problems of continuity….. the editor
These two articles need to be read together as they both deal with the same issue from different perspectives.
The first article by Mike Wilson posted at Jo Nova deals with energy economics and why it’s a myth that Australian is a high energy intensity nation.
The second article by Peter Smith published in Quadrant Online exposes the hype around Green Jobs…Green jobs that simply don’t and won’t eventuate in this country.
What a wonderful thing it is that Australians are waking up to the deceipt perpetrated by successive Labor Governments. The last paragraph in Peter Smith’s article says it all for me:
“In the past, old jobs were destroyed, and people left behind, as they were on Merseyside, because of the hard reality of economics. This is not the case now. Old jobs will be destroyed in the West and people left behind, and painful adjustments required, because of self-inflicted harm based on tendentious computer predictions of the weather. It is not believable, yet it is happening. The Chinese must be loving it. They even have people like Greg Combet complimenting them on their emission-saving efforts, while they pump ever increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and sell us, and everyone else, solar panels and windmill parts made using energy from coal that we supply. Go figure”
The problem for Gillard’s Green jobs bullshit is that we can’t export a mine, only the product it delivers!
Go green, go broke
by Peter Smith
June 3, 2011
When I was a child ships were still being built on Merseyside in England. Then it all disappeared and went to Japan. Robert Scott estimates that 2.4 million US jobs were lost to China between 2001 and 2008 (Economic Policy Institute, March 2010). What does all this mean? One thing it means is that that the production of any particular product tends to be concentrated; not evenly spread throughout the world. Way back in 1817, English economist, David Ricardo explained it by showing that products tend to be made where they can be made comparatively cheaply. For example, it turned out that ships could be built faster and more cheaply in Japan than on Merseyside. This represents a powerful economic force that in the end result simply can’t be resisted; except, apparently, when it comes to green jobs.
One difficulty in discussing green jobs is in knowing exactly what they are. Do I have a green job if I move as a maintenance engineer from a coal power station to a gas power station? I know that I have a green job if I work for a windmill power station but presumably not if I work for a nuclear power station, even though it produces no carbon dioxide emissions. Now a gas power station saves more emissions, when compared with coal, than an array of windmills because it produces so much more energy. So maybe gas is greener than windmills? Perhaps it depends on where I worked last. I have a green job if I move from brown to black coal but not a green job if I move from gas to black coal. I assume if I help produce solar panels and windmill parts or electric cars that I have a green job, but is this still the case if I use energy from brown coal to produce them?
What other green jobs are there? I don’t know; what I do know is that most countries see them providing a bountiful future. Cutting CO2 emissions, apparently, is the key to prosperity. If only we had thought of this earlier. It is worth thinking about what else might be cut, what other obstacles we can artificially place in the way of our competitive industries to create even more jobs and make us even richer still. But let’s leave that aside while enjoying the fruits of this obstacle.
According to David Cameron, an agreement forged with India to cut CO2 emissions will create million of jobs and moreover “we will position the UK [as] a leading player in the global low-carbon economy, creating significant new industries and jobs”. Not to be outdone by an old adversary, Mrs Merkel announced that we “can be the first major industrialised country that achieves the transition to renewable energy with all the opportunities – for exports, development, technology, jobs – it carries with it”.
But these two are Johnny-come-latelies. Barack Obama promised 5 million green jobs over ten years back in 2008. In fact, it is hard to find a government that isn’t spruiking green jobs. The Indian government said it was “laying enhanced focus on creation of green jobs”. French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recently predicted that France would generate 600,000 green jobs by 2020.
Even Scotland and Greenland are in on the act. According to the Scottish National Party government, Scotland’s future will be full of new jobs based on clean energy; 130,000 of them over the next nine years. The government of Greenland (appropriately I suppose) promises hydropower as a “good and green export commodity”; though, to the chagrin of Greenpeace, drilling for oil sort of blackens their outlook. I had nearly forgotten Ms Gillard who recently wrote that we “want to stay in step with the world so we can capitalise on the clean-energy jobs that come with this new future”.
None of these leaders and governments has seemingly heard of David Ricardo. Paul Howes put his finger on it in February of this year. He was reported as complaining about the Chinese – shades of Donald Trump – saying that China is emerging as the dominant supplier of certain green technologies, “from wind and solar energy products to advanced batteries and energy-efficient vehicles, costing otherwise efficient Australian companies and workers the green profits and high-skilled jobs of the future”.
He blamed this on the Chinese illegally protecting their industries, but that is mostly bosh. China and perhaps India and other emerging Asian countries are likely to monopolise the manufacture of green technology products because they will be able to do it more cheaply (including by using coal energy). There will be no bounty of green export jobs in the US or in Europe or in Australia We are being sold down the river by our own leaders and, worse, while being told condescendingly that it is for our own good.
In the past, old jobs were destroyed, and people left behind, as they were on Merseyside, because of the hard reality of economics. This is not the case now. Old jobs will be destroyed in the West and people left behind, and painful adjustments required, because of self-inflicted harm based on tendentious computer predictions of the weather. It is not believable, yet it is happening. The Chinese must be loving it. They even have people like Greg Combet complimenting them on their emission-saving efforts, while they pump ever increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and sell us, and everyone else, solar panels and windmill parts made using energy from coal that we supply. Go figure. I have tried but it gives me a headache.
Best regards
Aussie Pete
Well said Aussie Pete, I concur with you on the effect. My Chinese relatives just shake their heads & give me one of those grins that say’s it all.
It would be great to know what the workers on the floor at say “One steel” have been feed by the Union.
Its these card holding Union workers who are more able to stop this C02 tax. If they let this go through they are signing their own unemployment ticket. Maybe they think the “Transition to Green Jobs” will look after them ? E.U ratio was 3 jobs lost to every 1 new green one made. Driving mining trucks or tending to trees is not to close to the Gong.
The Unions ( ILO ) has been there from the beginning with the U.N. Pushing the Green Agenda 21. They helped draft the Copenhagen Accord and the ITUC have been one of the main players for the past 20 years. Our own Sharon Burrows is the head of the ITUC & was in the ACTU with Juliar. There very close friends.
To me there still doing this because they never like to loose face. They will do a premeditated lie but they can never bring themselves to adopt a better policy if the Liberals have suggested it. Just look at the illegal boat people farce.
Destroy a country/bankrupt it before adopting someone else’s idea. Obviously never worked in a real job or run a business. I hope the Union brothers wake up! The ones running the Labor Gov at the moment need a hiding & it needs to come from their own members. Aren’t they meant to represent all Australian’s?
Macker
Had to add a bit so we can all see that a couple of hundred thousand loosing their jobs in Australia may not be that important in their eyes.
The ITUC represents 175 million workers in 151 countries and territories and has 305 national affiliates.
http://www.ituc-csi.org/sharan-burrow-acceptance-speech.html?lang=en
When your on a topic of interest:
Environment Ministers & Civil Society attentive to union messages
Union Roles Conveyed At UNEP Global Environment Meeting
Friday 9 February, Nairobi Kenya
A message delivered by Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) drew accolades from many world environmental leaders attending a high-level meeting of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi Kenya this week.
Guy Ryder’s speech is available: http://www.global- unions.org/pdf/ohsewpC_6g.EN.pdf
UNEP launches new labour & environment publication
UNEP utilised a special “Environment in the Workplace” side event during its meeting to launch a new publication, “Labour and Environment: A natural synergy”, which contains chapters contributed by trade unionists from ITUC, TUAC, ETUC, Sustainlabour, as well as by experts from the ILO, UNEP and WHO. These are reinforced with a number of case studies and illustrations. The document is currently being translated in other languages and will soon be posted at http://earthprint.com.
In the side event chaired by UNEP’s Olivier Deleuze, messages were delivered by ITUC’s Guy Ryder, Jim Baker of ILO-ACTRAV and Maria Neira of the WHO Department of Public Health and Environment. Nearly 150 UNEP delegates heard the speakers outline the barriers to worker and trade union involvement at the workplace in addressing climate change and in implementing measures to enhance their participation.
Both the side event and the trade union positions grew out of a “Labour & Environment Assembly” held a year ago in Nairobi, during which the same actors pledged to work together for change. Amongst other positive outcomes, the Assembly produced a “The Workbook” to serve as a tool for trade union action on environment and sustainable development. The Workbook and UNEP’s new publication can be made to complement each together. The Workbook is available http://www.global- unions.org/pdf/ohsewpO_6h.EN.pdf.
Global Civil Society Forum embraces trade union issues
Civil society representatives from business, indigenous peoples, local authorities, NGO’s, scientists, workers & trade unions, women and youth assembled prior to the formal meeting of government ministries to discuss collaborative strategies for input to UNEP. As well, they discussed frameworks for future involvement in the UN organization, through its annual and regional meetings and within its structures, offices and programmes.
Wiki UNEP if your not sure.
Read the words slowly & think about the network of lobbyists they have built to push the cause.
Macker
We’re being pushed into a single centralized world government run by the United Nations, and its Socialist ideology it’s even crept into my sons primary disguised as UNESCO’s 5 pillars of learning it’s indoctrination as well as the corrupt WWF door knocking to raise funds to wipe out and replace indigenous peoples and native forests with crops for bio fuel production. Lord Monckton made the case against AGW with empirical facts and pointed out the UN’s agenda 21 as he washed the floor with the media and Richard Dennis a Dr of economics who thinks we should move jobs to China as well as the coal to produce the Bull Sh….t green energy equipment, as we hand any wealth to the UN, excuse me! how can reducing a ‘green house gas’ CO2 that increases plant growth as proven by many market gardeners who for decades raise CO2 levels in hot houses up to 1000ppm to double plant growth be a green job? Reducing CO2 will reduce crop production, the real agenda is population reduction and eugenics a Socialist ideology so loved by Hitler.
We are living in dangerous times and while many are asleep or busy trying to keep up with the ever increasing taxes imposed by out of control government, exploding in size as it seems each week sees another department of bureaucrats to invent more control through regulation as they consume like a cancer the wealth created by miners, primary producers and manufacturers, while at the same time crushing them with red tape, regulation and fines for any none compliance,it’s easy to loose sight of the rug being pulled out from under us as we’re pushed into Socialism with the USA’s Obama a Marxist forcing his ideology down the throats of Americans as unilaterally signs into law marshal law and replaces the military with civilian soldiers controlled by the State dep. not the Pentagon. The Party of European Socialists are watching as their great experiment crumbles, and we have Gillard establishing her own Fabian Socialism and ordering us to follow obediently. Wayne Swan showed his true disdain for the Free Market and Ozzie battlers like Andrew Forrest who started from nothing and achieved great success, and now employs hundreds of indigenous Australians and gives millions to charity and plans to employ 50,000 indigenous Australians to help end dependency, and is a major impediment to Swan’s Socialist agenda of all Australians being totally dependent on them, so we can be their slaves as they milk us for all we’re worth.