What Green Jobs Look Like:
Stephen:Just a reminder: only 39% of the electorate voted Reform-a-Tory. 60% repudiated you, your party and your platform. It’s time to actually to listen to what the majority of Canadians want.Start with ‘Green’ jobs. If you want to look like you know what you’re doing, take a tip from Nobel Laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz, below. At the moment, your economic plan is inept and not working. For example, it makes no sense to cut government jobs when unemployment is so high. It also makes no sense to cut Food Inspection jobs when the safety of Canadians is at stake (ask Jim Flaherty if he remembers Walkerton).Wake up, Stephen. You’re in the 21st Century now and your continued use of fossil fuels is only going guarantee that your children and my daughter won’t have a future.“The good news is that addressing these long-term problems [climate change, environmental degradation, increasing equality, high unemployment] would actually help to solve the short-term problems. Increased investment to retrofit the economy for global warming would help to stimulate economic activity, growth and job creation. More progressive taxation, in effect redistributing income from the top to the middle and bottom, would simulaneously reduce inequality and increase employment by boosting total demand. Higher taxes at the top could generate revenues to finance needed public investment, and to provide some social protectin for those at the bottom, including the unemployed.” — Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in economics
What Green Jobs Look Like:
Sustainable Food Industry Jobs:
In a ‘green’ Ontario, for example, we would need to ensure that our fresh food sources are at close proximity to our cities. The unsustainable produce system currently in place (the cost of transporting lettuce from Mexico or California to Ontario is roughly 70¢ on the $1.00) is wasteful and ecologically unsound. Giant factory farms (chickens, pigs, etc.) are not only an environmental minefield but are fundamentally a health risk. The emphasis must be on local, small (organic?) farms to supply our food needs for most of the year. We will need to subsidize, encourage and assist:
1. farmers to grow food;
2. fieldworkers to harvest and move the produce.
3. urban planners to plot the most efficient access of farms to population centres (while restricting rampant unintelligent residential development).
4. processors to preserve the produce for winter (just like our grandmothers);
5. boilermakers to maintain the canning apparatus and materials (recyclable glass jars?);
6. glaziers to manufacture canning units;
7. engineers to design the preservation systems (using‘green’ energy), put them in place and run them;
8. botanists and biologists to advise on the ecology of the land and what is grown (e.g. hemp for paper and other products);
9. hydraulic engineers to manage irrigation;
10. transport workers and engineers to maintain and run sustainable transport systems (e.g. trains, rapid transit systems, electric trucks) to move the produce from farms to cities and towns.
11. instructorsto teach sustainable growing techniques (e.g. Permaculture, etc.)
Sustainable jobs in the energy sector:
In a photo of a yurt in the middle of a vast Mongolian plain, the only indication of the modern world is the small solar panel on its outside wall.Solar energy is now ubiquitous and represents our first step forward in acknowledging the power of the Sun. We will need to put intelligent, creative engineers to work finding other methods of harnessing its energy.
Wind is not a new technology. In Holland, Britain and many parts of the world, wind has been a source of energy for hundreds of years. During the 1930’s, half the farms in America had small windmills. In building new energy systems, we must not discard tried and true methods.
21st Century sustainable energy will come from many sources—especially conservation—each contributing to the whole, which is why we need to de-centralize our power systems. “Nuclear power plants, like coal-burning power plants, are about retaining the big infrastructure of centralized power production and, often, the habits of obscene consumption that rely on big power.” We need many sources of power to fill our energy needs: wind, solar, water (whatever became of all those small mills on Ontario streams and rivers?).
Some of the solar jobs we will create include:
1. electricians to make, install and maintain photovoltaic panels.
2. technicians to assist householders in providing excess power to the government.
3. electrical and hydraulic engineers to install and maintain small wind turbines, solar panels, small dams on small creeks and rivers.
4. R&D engineers to invent new sources of energy (i.e. tiny turbines inside our water pipes, high efficiency solar heat collectors, tidal wave energy collectors. etc.);
5. boilermakersto fabricate solar devices to collect the heat and energy;
6. instructors to teach energy producing and conservation practices;
Sustainable Building Industry Jobs:
50% or more of CO² emissions come from buildings. “Green’ jobs in the building trade will include:
1. architects, electrical / mechanical / structural engineers to design zero-carbon, low cost housing and commercial buildings;
2. contractors, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, puttiers, roofers, steam fitters, founders, glazers, machinists, coopers, bricklayers, stonecutters, stonemasons, upholsters, reclaimers, braziers, lathers—all trained in sustainable building practices—to erect zero-carbon, sustainable buildings;
3. a re-made manufacturing sector to supply sustainable building materials to service this new ‘green’ building industry will be necessary, allowing for a mix of ‘green’ technologies (e.g. straw bale, rammed earth, recycled concrete etc.) and for new and rebuilt (upgraded) standing building stock. This sector will provide thousands of manufacturing jobs, all sustainable: product engineers, ceramic engineers, construction engineers, geological engineers, hydraulic engineers, power engineers, railroad engineers, research engineers, textile engineers, transporation engineers, ventilation engineers, water-supply engineers, plus manufacturing tradespeople—all trained in ‘green’ building practices;
4. landscape architects, reclamation engineers, civil engineers, sanitary engineers—all trained in sustainable building practices—to restore brownfield land (industrial sites) on which to rebuild our cities’ infrastructures;
5. gardeners and farmers to create park and farm land in every available corner of our cities and suburbs to grow produce, connecting our urban centres to nature;
6. instructors to teach sustainable building techniques;
7. And above all, thousands of tree planters to plant billions of trees to re-cover Canada. The greater the number of trees, the more we can modify our climate.
A new ‘green’ economy will create jobs, and be benefical—potentially lowering the cost of health care.
Yes, it will be expensive, but as Malcolm Wells (Recovering America), the granddaddy of green roofs once observed, “going green is expense, but not as expensive as not doing it.”
Barry Healey
Toronto ON
