Inside this issue:
Environment and sustainability
To fight against catastrophic climate change, Canada needs to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to near zero by mid-century at the latest. This amounts to a new, green industrial revolution that will have transformative impacts on the nature of work. In addition, there are important employment implications as to how we respond or adapt to climate change itself.
OTTAWA—Accelerated oil and gas extraction will boost profits but won't drive major employment gains, says a report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Instead, embracing a "green industrial revolution" will allow Canada to meet its climate change commitments while boosting a lacklustre economy.
The report, by CCPA Senior Economist Marc Lee and researcher Amanda Card, finds that less than 1% of Canadian workers are employed in fossil fuel extraction and production in Canada (oil, natural gas and coal).
CCPA-BC Director Seth Klein speaks at the annual meeting of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (an international gathering of leading economists) in Berlin. His 12-minute speech summarizes some of the key lessons to date from our Climate Justice Project.
Last October, two things happened that captured media attention. One was the run-up to the birth of the United Nations-selected seven billionth person on Earth. While this was a rather absurd exercise, given the impressive inaccuracy of demographic projections, it does have its symbolic and rhetorical uses. Indeed, there are a whole lot of us, the numbers are climbing rapidly, and the more of us there are, the more impact we’ll have on the planet.
We live on a different planet from the one our parents grew up on, says environmentalist Bill McKibben. Climate change from our rampant combustion of fossil fuels has pushed the world into a new era of bizarre weather anomalies.
In BC, warming has been greater that the global average, with costly consequences, including the pine beetle epidemic, downtime for ferries and highways, raging forest fires and flooding.
As more and more raw, unprocessed logs leave British Columbia’s coast in ocean freighters bound for the far side of the world, a common refrain from some in our forest industry is that we have no choice.
Because workers in mills in China are paid so little, log buyers there can afford to pay more for our logs than domestic buyers pay. The result, we’re told, is that we have no alternative but to sell our logs overseas.
But there’s much to suggest that such a defeatist argument doesn’t hold water, and that the real problem is a lack of investment in mills here at home.
(Vancouver) A new study reviews the economic case for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline (NGP) and casts serious doubt on claims that the pipeline will lead to substantial job creation and other economic benefits.
Enbridge claims that the NGP will create 63,000 person years of employment during the construction of the pipeline, and 1,146 full-time jobs once it’s completed.
Please feel free to use this video and the resources below for discussing sustainable jobs, carbon storage and conservation in BC forests. To order DVD's of Town at the End of the Road, or printed copies of any of our studies, contact our office at 604-801-5121 or ccpabc [at] policyalternatives.ca
Town at the End of the Road from CCPA on Vimeo.