WAL-MART "Promises" Greenhouse Gas Emissions CUTS! In Five Years! You Believe It?
OvarianTumor
deductible on top of unaffordably
high fees, and whose "401K" contributes a generous $5 per employee
biweekly. Wal-Mart, whose average worker doesn't make enough money to
support even half a family.
Wal-Mart can't lower gas emissions without the FULL cooperation of
its suppliers, without which Wal-Mart can't exist!
Who is Wal-Mart trying to kid?
----------------------
"Wal-Mart promises to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 2015"
By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 26, 2010; A19
Wal-Mart vowed on Thursday to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20
million metric tons across its vast network of suppliers and stores by
2015, part of the retailer's ongoing efforts to become more
environmentally friendly.
Wal-Mart said the reductions would more than offset the anticipated
growth in its carbon footprint over the same period and was equivalent
to taking 3.8 million cars off the road for a year. The cuts would be
made throughout its supply chain, from manufacturing to transportation
to the sales floor.
"We will be efficient," Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke said in a
news conference Thursday. "We will be the leader in retailing, because
we will be the first to look at the whole supply chain."
The announcement was the latest initiative in the retailer's quest to
transform itself into a more sustainable company. When Wal-Mart
promised five years ago to create zero waste, use only renewable
energy and sell more environmentally friendly products, the call to
action rippled across its 8,400 stores worldwide and more than 100,000
suppliers. Company executives said that they hoped this would have a
similar effect.
"I think this is real leadership," said Fred Krupp, president of the
Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization that worked with
Wal-Mart on the project. "Wal-Mart is looking at the big picture."
Wal-Mart said it would initially focus on several hundred suppliers
and products with the highest carbon footprints. Matt Kistler, senior
vice president of sustainability, said that includes reducing
transportation emissions and waste for fresh foods and could mean
developing new clothing materials that require less energy to clean.
The company also announced changes to DVD packages that used less
plastic and made them weigh less.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/25/AR2010022505453.html
Kyle Schwitters
================
"The green jobs myth"
By Sunil Sharan
Friday, February 26, 2010; A23
"Green jobs" have become a central underpinning of the Obama
administration's rationale to promote clean energy. But how valid is
the assumption that a "clean-energy" economy will generate enough jobs
to mitigate today's high level of unemployment -- new jobless claims
were up 22,000 this week -- and to meet the needs of future
generations? A green economy would have to spout jobs in the millions
to do both. The facts challenge the prevailing thinking among some
policymakers and officials that green jobs are a principal reason for
transforming the economy.
Let's consider just one clean-energy sector, the smart grid, for its
job-creation potential. The Obama administration allocated a little
more than $4 billion in funding from the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act to the smart grid, an unprecedented amount for a
hitherto-neglected but critical piece of our national infrastructure.
Much of this is to be spent installing close to 20 million "smart
meters" over the next five years. Smart meters are digital versions of
the spinning electric meters that are omnipresent nationwide. Whereas
spinning meters have changed little in more than a century and must be
read by workers, smart meters automatically transmit electricity
consumption data to a utility. Virtually eliminating human
intervention, smart meters promise more accurate measurement of
electricity usage as well as increasingly efficient management of
energy production resources.
Nearly 40 million smart meters have been deployed worldwide, mostly in
Europe. Jobs created in this industry can be broadly classified into
four categories: installation, manufacturing, research and
development, and IT services.
First, installation: It typically takes a team of two certified
electricians half an hour to replace the old, spinning meter. In one
day, two people can install about 15 new meters, or about 5,000 in a
year. Were a million smart meters to be installed in a year, 400
installation jobs would be created. It follows that the planned U.S.
deployment of 20 million smart meters over five years, or 4 million
per year, should create 1,600 installation jobs. Unless more meters
are added to the annual deployment schedule, this workforce of 1,600
should cover installation needs for the next five years.
Although a surge of new digital meters will be produced, the
manufacturing process is highly automated. And with much of it
accomplished overseas, net creation in domestic manufacturing jobs is
expected to be only in the hundreds. In R&D and IT services, high-
paying white-collar jobs are on the horizon, but as with
manufacturing, the number of jobs created is forecast to be in the
hundreds or low thousands.
Now let's consider job losses. It takes one worker today roughly 15
minutes to read a single meter. So in a day, a meter reader can scan
about 30 meters, or about 700 meters a month. Meters are typically
read once a month, making it the base period to calculate meter-
reading jobs. Reading a million meters every month engages about 1,400
personnel. In five years, 20 million manually read meters are expected
to disappear, taking with them some 28,000 meter-reading jobs.
In other words, instead of creating jobs, smart metering will probably
result in net job destruction. This should not be surprising because
the main method of making the electrical grid "smart" is by automating
its functions. Automation by definition obviates the need for people.
In other "clean-energy" sectors such as solar and wind energy, jobs
are predicted to emerge in the same broad categories of installation,
manufacturing, R&D and IT services, but the near-term expected levels
of investment in and adoption of these renewable sources of energy
mean that net job creation should top out in the tens of thousands, as
opposed to the desired hundreds of thousands or more. Electric
vehicles represent another promising green sector, but even if the
vehicles were rolled out in substantive quantities, jobs would be
created mainly in research and development and infrastructure support,
and there, too, only in the hundreds or maybe even thousands.
Manufacturing jobs would grow only incrementally since electric
vehicle production will for the most part cannibalize that of gasoline-
powered cars.
For the purpose of creating jobs, then, a "clean-energy economy" will
not offer a panacea. This does not necessarily mean that America
should not become green to alleviate climate change, to kick its
addiction to foreign oil or to use energy sources more efficiently.
But those who take great pains to tout the "job-creation potential" of
the green space might just end up inducing labor pains all around.
[The writer, a director of the Smart Grid Initiative at GE from 2008
to 2009, has worked in the clean-energy industry for a decade. The
views expressed are his own. He can be reached at
sunil_...@yahoo.com.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/25/AR2010022503945.html
Ken Marino
Such a typical response from an AGW whacko. Even when a company decides
it is going to do all it can to reduce it's carbon footprint, all you can
do is complain.
Brian Elfert
>Now let's consider job losses. It takes one worker today roughly 15
>minutes to read a single meter. So in a day, a meter reader can scan
>about 30 meters, or about 700 meters a month. Meters are typically
>read once a month, making it the base period to calculate meter-
>reading jobs. Reading a million meters every month engages about 1,400
>personnel. In five years, 20 million manually read meters are expected
>to disappear, taking with them some 28,000 meter-reading jobs.
Many non-smart meters are already radio read and don't need a meter
reader. The meter reader's job is alreay gone.
My gas meter, water meter, and electric meter are all read by radio
already, but none of them are a so-called "smart" meter. They have all
been radio read for a decade now. The city just installed new radio read
water meters because not everyone had one and because they wanted to use
the same model for everyone.
Cindy Hamilton
> Yeah, Wal-Mart, whose employee health plan carries a $1,500 annual
> deductible on top of unaffordably
> high fees, and whose "401K" contributes a generous $5 per employee
> biweekly. Wal-Mart, whose average worker doesn't make enough money to
> support even half a family.
This obviously comes as news to you, but not every job can support a
family.
An employer who pays more than the job earns in revenue will be out of
business.
> Wal-Mart can't lower gas emissions without the FULL cooperation of
> its suppliers, without which Wal-Mart can't exist!
Wal-Mart is famous for beating up on its suppliers until they give WM
exactly what it wants at the price it wants to pay. That is but one
of
the many, many reasons that I don't shop there.
> Who is Wal-Mart trying to kid?
I don't know who they're trying to kid, but you're certainly
delusional.
Brian Elfert
>Wal-Mart is famous for beating up on its suppliers until they give WM
>exactly what it wants at the price it wants to pay. That is but one
>of
>the many, many reasons that I don't shop there.
You must not shop at any big box stores because they all beat up suppliers
for the best price.
Michael Coburn
> On Feb 26, 4:59 pm, OvarianTumor <slipuva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Yeah, Wal-Mart, whose employee health plan carries a $1,500 annual
>> deductible on top of unaffordably
>> high fees, and whose "401K" contributes a generous $5 per employee
>> biweekly. Wal-Mart, whose average worker doesn't make enough money to
>> support even half a family.
>
> This obviously comes as news to you, but not every job can support a
> family.
> An employer who pays more than the job earns in revenue will be out of
> business.
And I should care about this exactly why???? Tell us the bad things that
will happen to the middle class if Wally World comes to an end.
>> Wal-Mart can't lower gas emissions without the FULL cooperation of its
>> suppliers, without which Wal-Mart can't exist!
>
> Wal-Mart is famous for beating up on its suppliers until they give WM
> exactly what it wants at the price it wants to pay. That is but one of
> the many, many reasons that I don't shop there.
This is especially true for the suppliers of labor.
>> Who is Wal-Mart trying to kid?
>
> I don't know who they're trying to kid, but you're certainly delusional.
When the unemployment rate is as high as it is labor is a slave.
--
"Senate rules don't trump the Constitution" -- http://GreaterVoice.org/60
Cindy Hamilton
> On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:10:46 -0800, Cindy Hamilton wrote:
> > On Feb 26, 4:59 pm, OvarianTumor <slipuva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Yeah, Wal-Mart, whose employee health plan carries a $1,500 annual
> >> deductible on top of unaffordably
> >> high fees, and whose "401K" contributes a generous $5 per employee
> >> biweekly. Wal-Mart, whose average worker doesn't make enough money to
> >> support even half a family.
>
> > This obviously comes as news to you, but not every job can support a
> > family.
> > An employer who pays more than the job earns in revenue will be out of
> > business.
>
> And I should care about this exactly why???? Tell us the bad things that
> will happen to the middle class if Wally World comes to an end.
It doesn't matter whether you care or not. It's simple arithmetic.
Can
you please explain how a business could stay in business while paying
their
employees MORE than the value of their labor?
Rod Speed
> Michael Coburn <mik...@verizon.net> wrote
>> Cindy Hamilton wrote
>>> OvarianTumor <slipuva...@yahoo.com> wrote
>>>> Yeah, Wal-Mart, whose employee health plan carries a $1,500
>>>> annual deductible on top of unaffordably high fees, and whose
>>>> "401K" contributes a generous $5 per employee biweekly.
>>>> Wal-Mart, whose average worker doesn't make enough
>>>> money to support even half a family.
>>> This obviously comes as news to you, but not every job can support a family.
>>> An employer who pays more than the job earns in revenue will be out of business.
>> And I should care about this exactly why???? Tell us the bad things
>> that will happen to the middle class if Wally World comes to an end.
> It doesn't matter whether you care or not. It's simple arithmetic.
> Can you please explain how a business could stay in business
> while paying their employees MORE than the value of their labor?
By making more than that on what they sell with a retailler like Walmart.
Michael Coburn
Being a moron you have missed the point.
Why do I care if Wally World goes out of business????? I do not need to
"explain" jack shit to the likes of you. If Wally can't pay its
employees then Wally should be replaced by a business that _CAN_. Like
all the retailers that Wally crushed in the first place.