At Work: Climate destroys, and creates, jobs

[Tobias Fox]

When reading the article below please keep this in mind:

Andrew Lo, Professor and Director for MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, stated in the award winning documentary Inside Job directed by Charles Ferguson that “neuroscientists have done experiments where they’ve taken individuals and put them into an MRI machine. And they have them play a game where the prize is money. And they noticed that when these subjects earn money, the part of the brain that gets stimulated is the same part that cocaine stimulates.”

Dina Rodrigues wrote:

"This is interesting. Because when I think of climate change, I think of mass disaster not potential profit."

From USA TODAY: At Work: Climate destroys, and creates, jobs

As is the case with almost any change, the shift in weather is affecting jobs two ways: taking them away and leading to new ones. See the draft National Climate Assessment report that Congress requested, recently released for public comment.

Here's one example of how climate change takes jobs away.

Earlier this month, Cargill Beef said it's closing one of its Texas plants because of a prolonged drought in the state that thinned cattle herds to their lowest level in 60 years. As a result, 2,000 workers had to relocate to another plant or find new jobs.

No, we're not an agriculture-based economy anymore. But this sector still employs up to 250,000 workers, making agriculture one of the biggest victims of changing weather patterns, says John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas outplacement services.

According to a recent New York Times article by Andrew Revkin in which he references the federal report, "climate-change effects on agriculture will have consequences for food security" and food processing, storage, transportation and retailing. And that can affect jobs.

Tourism is another industry affected by the weather.

With ski resorts seeing less snow, skiers are headed further north and resorts are making more artificial snow, Challenger says.

Companies in transportation and travel will be affected as people travel more to climates that stay warmer longer. Again, some jobs will go away; others will increase.

More work will come about as a result of climate change in places where the weather has been more temperate. In Chicago, which has had little snow this year, Challenger points out that construction workers have continued to do their jobs without weather-related stoppages.

And in the aftermath of major storms, "there does tend to be increased economic activity and job creation in the areas impacted as cities and states clean up and rebuild," he says.

Climate change threatens human health and well-being — wildfires; decreased air quality; diseases transmitted by insects, food and water, according to the draft report. So public health actions such as preparedness and prevention become paramount.

Strategies to do both can create jobs.

The biggest and most positive effect on employment will come from "initiatives to address and reverse climate change," Challenger says. These include "the development of new renewable energy sources and the manufacture of more energy-efficient transportation."

The latest green job statistics from 2010 show the United States has produced 3.1 million green jobs.

The construction industry "is rife for green jobs," Challenger says. And utilities and manufacturing have high potential "since equipment to harness and distribute energy more efficiently is being built nationwide."

When it comes to looking at this trend and your career, think of it like this:

• What jobs are being created — or will be created — to respond to climate change?
• What jobs will help combat climate change?
• And what jobs might help reverse climate change?

[Publisher CG Gazette]

It is ironic that greed could be a contributing factor to this this epic and long awaited change in our society's priorities.  

However, let us not ignore that change is constant and necessary part of life. 

Indeed it keeps us alive as a species, because (barring any drastic evolution of the human brain)  most humans do and will not cooperate with change (no matter how necessary) until it effects them directly or causes them pain in some way. Right or wrong- thats just the way people are.

Until we can offer a replacement (exciting thing) for money, this will always be the case.  When there is no more money, we will still need emotional motivators or "competetive carrots" that keep much of  the human race getting out of bed each day- wanting to survive. Why is this so? I think this is worth taking a serious look at and discussing further...

Anywho, This means that today some people inevitably will need to lose their jobs, food, water, whatever in order for them to sit up and take notice of what is happening to our planet. Others need to perceive financial gain to get excited and motivated to solve the problems. If this is what it takes, I say, by all means, lets make climate change the new "cocaine high."

I choose to perceive it is a benefit to everyone that climate change is a "draw" for whatever reason and I'd much prefer that people pay more attention (even if they just want to provide for their families or "be greedy") to the climate than wasting time and resources trying to convince others to buy more mind-numbing crap, while our world is crumbling around us. 

We need all the help we can get. 

If every advertising agency and multi-national spent all their time and resources fixing climate change- then we could spend our time working toward other pressing issues- like creating true Happiness, eradicating Hunger, Greed and Rascism, Education, I'm sure your could think of a lot of things to add to the list...

Who cares if they think they are a bunch of smarty pants- if it gets them to do a lot of good and clean up the mess they created in the first place!

Hopefully this is not too little too late.

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[ellen]

If we (the world) were to stop using cars today, and eliminate factory farms - foremost producer of methane gas - today...the changes in the earth's climate would continue  because of the feed-back loop effect.

What people do not understand is that solving climate change is a different kind of problem than even the biggest problems we've ever solved. It is PHYSICS and other sciences, which do not care about small human's policies or plans. It continues and follows its path.

"our societies are built to move slowly. Human institutions tend to work better when they have years or even decades to make gradual course corrections, when time smooths out the conflicts between people.

And that’s always been the difficulty with climate change — the greatest problem we’ve ever faced. It’s not a fight, like education reform or abortion or gay marriage, between conflicting groups with conflicting opinions. It couldn’t be more different at a fundamental level.

We’re talking about a fight between human beings and physics. And physics is entirely uninterested in human timetables. Physics couldn’t care less if precipitous action raises gas prices, or damages the coal industry in swing states. It could care less whether putting a price on carbon slowed the pace of development in China, or made agribusiness less profitable."

http://grist.org/climate-energy/obama-vs-physics-why-climate-change-wont-wait-for-the-president/

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