Lethal Heating: 07/22/20

22/07/2020

(AU) Climate Council Unveils Plan To Create 76,000 Jobs In Three Years

The New Daily - Cait Kelly

The government could create 76,000 jobs if it focused on 12 policy areas. Photo: Getty

The federal government could create 76,000 jobs within three years if it invests more in renewables, a new report has found.

After a second wave of infections dashed hopes of a rapid economic recovery, the Climate Council has urged the government to invest in sustainable projects that rebuild employment.

In conjunction with economic consultants AlphaBeta, the Climate Council has released a 12-point plan to create 76,000 jobs while slashing emissions – recommending everything from restoring ecosystems to retrofitting public buildings.

“The opportunities identified in our modelling work are shovel ready,” AlphaBeta director Andrew Charlton said.

“One-third of the jobs would require less than 12 months of retraining, meaning that workers who lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 crisis could be rapidly employed.

“The job creation could start immediately and continue over three years. Federal, state and territory governments all have the opportunity to put these measures in train.”

Dr Charlton added: “Australia has seen steep job losses throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But with the right policy measures, thousands of jobs could be created in large-scale renewable energy, ecosystem restoration and the collection and processing of organic waste.”

By targeting 12 policy areas, state and federal governments could create employment for communities hit hardest by the COVID-19 economic crisis.

The 12 areas include large-scale projects such as installing wind and solar and investing in pilot-scale green hydrogen, as well as more localised initiatives such as accelerating construction of public transport and increasing the amount of tree canopy cover in urban areas.

“Proposed policy opportunities build on existing capabilities in Australia’s renewable energy, agricultural services, construction and professional services sectors,” the report said.

“The 12 policy opportunities could generate 76,000 job openings over three years. Large-scale infrastructure projects are expected to create the most jobs.

“These include utility-scale renewable energy, public transport and organic (food and garden) waste management.

“Smaller-scale options, such as research, training and select community-scale projects, will create jobs rapidly while also meeting long-term objectives of reducing emissions and developing new industries.

“Job creation would begin immediately and continue throughout the three-year period.”

Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said the report is designed to act as a blueprint for all governments.

“This is a guide for governments of all levels to say here is 12 high-priority opportunities to get people into jobs. We have identified in the report the opportunities for each state and territory,” she told The New Daily.

“We hope it’s a clear and easy-to-use plan that can be taken off the shelf and put in practice.”

Ms McKenzie said the plan would create jobs, cut energy bills and reduce Australia’s emissions.

And she said taxpayers wouldn’t have to foot the entire bill, as private investors have a big appetite for investment in renewables.

“We know renewable energy is the cheapest source of power. It can attract the most private investment,” Ms McKenzie said.

“Where there’s a delay it’s because of ideology or old assumptions and we need to sweep those away.

“We’ve just gone through an experience where Australians worked together and trusted the science and experts. If we listen to the experts on this, it will have huge potential benefits. We can get people into jobs.”

Greg Bourne, Climate Councillor and former president of BP Australasia, said Australia needed to take urgent action.

“The latest modelling shows worse case, by 2100, we could be seven degrees hotter,” he said.

“The urgency of the moment is tackling COVID-19, and we must tackle it for our families and friends, but it will pass.

“With climate change, we have been sewing the seeds over the last 30 years. In doing very little, we must accelerate like mad if we want to avoid the [damage that] we’ve sewn.

“We have this opportunity to spur our investment in a future that will help us anyway, but will also lower emissions.”

Links

Monsoon Floods, Landslides Kill At Least 221 In India, Nepal And Bangladesh

ABC News - Associated Press

Vast tracts of land are still underwater in India.(AP: Anupam Nath)

Key Points

The floods inundated most of India's Kaziranga National Park, home to thousands of rare rhinos

Nepal's Home Ministry said 117 people have died in monsoon-related incidents

More than 1 million people have been marooned since floods hit Bangladesh late last month

Floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains have killed at least 221 people across South Asia over the past month, officials say.

More than 1 million people have been marooned in Nepal, Bangladesh and India and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes for higher ground.

Indian officials said floods and mudslides killed another 16 people in the northeast and eight people were killed in building collapses in Mumbai, raising the death toll in the country to 101.

Nepal reported at least 117 deaths over the past month and Bangladesh reported three.

Rains caused the Brahmaputra River, which flows through Tibet, India and Bangladesh, to burst its banks in India's Assam state late last month, inundating large swathes of the state, triggering mudslides and displacing about 3.6 million people, officials said.

Vast tracts of land are still underwater, with 26 of the state's 33 districts badly affected.

Authorities rescued about 4,000 people trapped by the surging flood waters in various parts of Assam, India's Disaster Management Authority said.

About 36,000 people whose homes were destroyed or submerged have taken shelter in nearly 300 government-run relief camps.

The floods also inundated most of India's Kaziranga National Park, home to an estimated 2,500 rare one-horned rhinos, authorities said.

A one-horned rhinoceros and calf wade through flood water at a wildlife sanctuary. (AP: Anupam Nath)

In the eastern state of Bihar, at least nine rivers swollen by heavy downpours in Nepal rose beyond their danger levels and inundated many villages.

One of them, the Gandak River, swept away the connecting roads of a newly built multimillion-dollar bridge in Bihar's Gopalganj district, disrupting transportation in the area.

The Meteorological Centre in the state capital, Patna, forecast heavy rain over the next 48 hours.

Nepal's Home Ministry said 117 people have died in monsoon-related incidents, including landslides in mountainous areas and flooding in the southern plains.

At least 47 people were reported missing and 126 have been injured in the past month, it said.

Rains caused the Brahmaputra River, which flows through Tibet, India and Bangladesh, to burst its banks in India's Assam state. (AP: Anupam Nath)

In Bangladesh, the Ministry of Disaster and Relief said at least three people have died and more than 1 million people have been marooned since floods hit the country late last month.

Officials said heavy rainfall and the onrush of river waters from upstream India were creating havoc in Bangladesh, a delta nation of 160 million people that is crisscrossed by 230 rivers.

Bangladesh's Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said that flooding could worsen at the beginning of next week because of growing devastation in the vast region along the Brahmaputra and Teesta rivers.

It said the situation would remain unstable over the next two weeks, causing further suffering for affected people.

Annual monsoon rains hit the region in June-September. The rains are crucial for rain-fed crops planted during the season, but often cause extensive damage.

Links

(US) Editorial: Trump’s Continued Disregard For The Environment And Climate Change Poses A Mortal Threat

Los Angeles Times - LA Times Editorial Board

President Trump’s persistent efforts to undermine environmental protections places us all at grave risk. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

It’s fitting that President Trump invoked an interstate highway expansion in Atlanta last week to announce final rules that, if they survive the inevitable legal challenges, will undermine one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act.

American voters face a fork in their own road this November — stay on the Trump expressway to environmental degradation and catastrophic climate change, or shift to the road, bumpy as it may be, to a cleaner environment and more sustainable future of wind, solar and other energy sources that do not involve burning fossil fuels.

The COVID-19 pandemic understandably has seized the nation’s attention, but that hasn’t lessened the risk we all face from air and water pollution and carbon-fed global warming. Trump has unabashedly sought to dismantle federal regulatory structures to speed up construction projects while forging a national energy plan based on producing and burning fossil fuels.

His embrace of the oil, gas and coal industries defies the global scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases that make the Earth less habitable by warming the atmosphere, feeding stronger and more frequent storms, triggering devastating droughts that propel human migration, and pushing up sea levels so that they encroach on cities and other human settlements.

In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week that unusually high tides led to record flooding among one-quarter of Atlantic and Gulf Coast communities where the agency maintains tide gauges. Climate change is no dystopian vision of the future; it is here.

Trump’s efforts to eviscerate regulatory oversight of the environment is rooted in his belief that regulations are for the most part unnecessary hurdles to economic progress. He bewails the amount of time it takes for projects to clear environmental reviews and related court challenges, adding what, in his mind, are unnecessary costs and delays.

To be honest, he may have something there. NEPA came into being five decades ago — signed into law by President Nixon — and it’s not out of line to suspect that there are places where the law and the regulations that arose from it could use some reasonable revising. But Trump and his industry-connected advisors are not the ones to trust with such a task.

These new rules are not reasoned updates. By requiring environmental impact analyses to be completed within two years (now they often take twice that), the administration seeks to cut short the consideration of those most affected by major projects — often people of color and low-income households — and disarm the environmental activists fighting to ensure that necessary environmental protections are respected.

The rules also would require regulators to no longer weigh the cumulative effects of a proposed project and limit their review to effects “that are reasonably foreseeable” and “have a close causal relationship” to the work being done. So, for example, a proposed project’s emissions could not be added to those of other nearby emitters to determine whether their cumulative impact creates an excessive burden on a specific community.

Separately, the Government Accountability Office reported last week that the administration tweaked the formula for measuring the “social cost of carbon” so that estimates of the potential harm from emissions are seven times lower than they used to be. It’s foolhardy — and dangerous — to look at environmental impacts through such a narrow lens.

Meanwhile, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, after lengthy negotiations with progressive environmentalists who had backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), released a $2-trillion plan for quickly shifting the nation from its reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources.

It’s not the controversial “Green New Deal” that progressives have been pushing, but it’s in the neighborhood. Getting such a measure through Congress even if both chambers were controlled by Democrats would be no easy task, but Biden’s proposal at least recognizes the dire future we all face if the nation — and the world — do not fundamentally alter how we produce and consume energy.

The world cannot afford to backslide on environmental protections and the all-important fight to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Yes, jobs are important, but survival more so. The errors and consequences of the past are crystal clear. The question is, will we heed those lessons?

Links - Editorials