That seems like a sweeping assumption. I suspect that no one can truly know either way.
However, there will many jobs required in green energy (installation, maintenance, replacement), insulation & green building schemes, green transportation (installation & maintenance of EV charging networks being a good example), the possibility of better/healthier farming practices needing more labour than mono-crop agribusiness, decommissioning of fossil fuel infrastructure; the list goes on.
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Going to need some evidence to back that up.
Also explain the alternative?
We have to change.
You’re focusing on the UK/the West, this is going to be a global problem.
Is a global problem and the west are way less tenacious than the east.
By less tenacious I of course mean something far stronger.
Indeed. I worked for 25 years at Salts Mill in Saltaire near Bradford in West Yorkshire. This is an old woollen mill like many in and around Bradford. It was built by Titus Salt, who built not just the factory, but houses for his workers, a hospital for the use of his workers, and a retirement home for his workers when they retired. The whole thing is now a large part of the village of Saltaire and is a World Heritage site. He got filthy rich from his business, but believed very firmly in looking after his workers, and did so.
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Sounds like the west needs to push apprenticeships and re-open the technical colleges as a degree in Gender Studies isn’t going to cut it.
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Why ever not?
Most such basic infrastructure is in state ownership in many countries anyway. This is something often missed by those that think in the old ‘cold war’ terms. In France, about 55% of the whole economy is effectively state-owned and run, and more than another 10% is in other forms of social ownership (co-ops, mutuals, etc) - and this non-capitalist two-thirds of the economy indeed includes much of the basic infrastructure and financial system.
I used to find it very amusing in the brexit debates to hear Tory politicians talk about Singapore as a model ‘open’ economy, apparently completely unaware that almost all the land in Singapore is government-owned, 85% of all housing is government-owned, nearly a quarter of output is from state-owned industries, and the country’s biggest retail chain is a co-op!
As Billy commented earlier, there are no ‘pure’ economic systems, nor would they be acceptable to anybody. I don’t think anybody has a worked-out blueprint for an ecological society - but we do know a lot of the characteristics it must have - many already mentioned by contributors to this excellent discussion.
There’s a place for Gender Studies. How impoverished would our lives be if we understood only techniques, and not people?
Next year, always next year! When will they actually wake up?
The big challenge is get people in the west to change their habits and expectations. Since 1945 the developed world has been built round mobility, out of town shopping, consumerism and easy cheap leisure travel with basic necessities taking an ever decreasing % of disposable income. We have all become used to that, reversing this for the majority of the population is never going to be a vote winner no matter how much people accept and worry about climate change.
And third world countries quite understandably object to not now being able to achieve the comforts of the West.
Big circle to be squared!
I agree John. I’m not as optimistic as those here who see a relatively smooth transition, with ‘green’ jobs seamlessly replacing those in wasteful industries. In the long term, I see this - but to get there I think we have to be prepared for a very disruptive transition.
However, I also think the way we anticipate and experience this turns on what we understand by ‘the comforts of the west’. If we mean our basic comforts - homes, sufficient heat and light, hot and cold running water, decent education, health care, public transport, etc - then I think we can keep these and extend them to everybody in the world (and in doing so ensure the world’s population will fall); if we mean eating meat and avocados every day, flying somewhere every month, and buying new clothes every season, then no, all that has to stop for everybody.
It’s back to where I began this thread: Monbiot’s advocacy of ‘private sufficiency, public luxury’.
We should change our ways?
Was it us that destroyed the high street in favour of out of town shopping centres?
Did old people wonder how they could reach these out of town areas when they gave up driving?
The superrich arranged it and so it it they who should change.
We must get rid of the sense of entitlement which doesn’t exist in the east and why they can transform easier and will dominate.
Most of the above is so simplistic and ‘West’ focused. Globalisation has created billionaires in every part of the world who have invested heavily in Europe and Africa, without their cooperation on combating climate change anything the West does simply won’t be enough.
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True, there are multiple paths to use but better start on some than sitting on hands waiting for the golden solution that will never arrive. Mount Everest is conquered one step at a time.
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100%, those countries that are willingly to do something should without hesitation as we all should.
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What if?
It’s very striking how these conspiracy theorists all seem to use the same playbook (see Steve Koonin earlier in this thread, and assorted covid/vaccine-deniers).
It seems to go something like:
- Garner lots of money from particularly irresponsible big business and it’s super-rich self-interested apologists.
- Find some obscure part-time ‘scientist’, almost always trained and having worked mainly in some other field, but more interested in status positions and earning lots of money than in actually doing science.
- Self-publish some stuff propagating the paid-for viewpoint (generally immediately rebutted by all the scientists actually working in the relevant field).
- Nevertheless, keep broadcasting the ideas via videoed speeches at dirty-industry-funded but credible-sounding ‘institutes’ - almost always linked with extreme right American ‘libertarian’ politicians - and of course on the media channels they also control.
In this case, there are so many unsavory details it’s hard to know where to begin. Just a couple of examples:
- The ‘Independent Institute’ has a long history of producing ‘research’ funded by dirty industries, then lying about it.
- Willie Soon was actually paid (over $1.2 million over 10 years) by the fossil fuel industry for his ‘research’, but failed to disclose the conflict of interest. (I found his comparison of himself with Einstein as a ‘lone voice’ particularly egregious here, since Einstein was not being paid huge sums by propagandists - and once published, although revolutionary, Einstein’s work was in fact pretty quickly accepted by the scientific community; Soon’s was comprehensively rebutted).
Absolutely agree…I’m no member of the extreme left but I think this kind of activity should attract a consumption tax…and I would add on the larger SUVs that in general require a disproportionate amount of resource to manufacture and use…direct the money raised to increased NHS and social care funding…particularly in the UK.
I rang our old NHS practice about an administrative matter yesterday and after 4 minutes of recorded messages was told…“we now deliver the majority of services over the phone, messages, texts and zoom…but if you do want to see a doctor please hold the line for an experiences receptionist who will decide the best course of action!” …and then I was number seven in the queue. I then called our local practice here, and had to wait a week for a specific doctor only because he is on a training course for part of next week.