The Guardian 28 February, 2007
Environment vs. jobs
Peter Mac
The recent report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has now established with virtual certainty that human activity, i.e. the emission of greenhouse gases by power stations, heavy industry and vehicles, has caused extremely dangerous changes to the world’s climate.
The report’s findings are crucial because certain organisations are still arguing that global warming is a fiction. One is the Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has now blatantly offered scientists and economists US$10,000 each to write articles contradicting the report.
Within Australia, global warming has resulted in arguably the worst drought in 1000 years. Unfortunately, the Howard Government is focused on preserving the interests of the major irrigating companies, which guzzle a huge proportion of the vital water flow of the Murray-Darling river system.
Last week Malcolm Turnbull, Federal Minister for Water and the Environment, defended the production of ultra-irrigated cotton and rice crop, describing them as important crops, which need only be planted in a good year, unlike permanent plantings such as grapes, fruit and nut trees.
Turnbull ignored the fact that permanent crops can be watered with minimum drip irrigation, and that the cotton and rice farms, which hold vast flood storage areas, simply grab the majority of the storm water in good years or bad.
Other farmers now face the imminent prospect of being forced off the land by the drought. Turnbull’s support for he big irrigators would almost certainly eliminate water-efficient farming, leaving the water guzzlers ruling the roost.
Australian of the Year, Professor Tim Flannery has accused the Howard Government of delaying action on climate change. In reply, Howard claimed, with a barely concealed sneer, that he would not be "bowled over by some of the doomsday scenarios".
At a meeting with coal miners organised by the Australian Workers Union, Flannery explained that coal combustion was the major cause of carbon dioxide emissions, which if unchecked would cause savage job losses in other industries, food shortages and major social upheaval.
The phasing out coal mining, advocated by Flannery and Greens leader Bob Brown, has aroused the wrath of mining interests and conservative economists. Andy Stoekel, director of the Centre for International Economics, snarled that this recommendation would actually hinder the battle against global warming, because "Ultimately … you want to stay very rich because it’s only that which gives you the resources to address this issue".
He was obviously referring to the mine owners, not the miners themselves, whose struggles for batter wages have always been bitterly resisted by the owners. The jobs of the miners are certainly under threat because of global warming. However, miners could be given training for new jobs in geothermal mining, which, as Professor Flannery noted, could be established in South Australia, western Victoria, Queensland and the NSW Hunter Valley, and which could supply all of Australia’s power requirements for a hundred years. BHP-Billiton is already planning to utilise geothermal energy for its industrial purposes.
In contrast, although investors have derived immense wealth from coal mining to date, their holdings will lose value and finally become almost worthless if the industry is phased out. That’s why the real opposition to that proposal will come from the shareholders, not from those who produce all that wealth with their sweated labour at the coalface.