April 23rd, 2009
Green Jobs for Alberta
Anil Kanji
© Greenpeace / Dean Sewell
Although Alberta’s oil and gas industry is very capital intensive, it’s the province’s least labour intensive industry. There’s a misconception that oil and gas is a huge job creator, and that you can either have jobs or a clean environment, but not both.
To counter this, we joined forces with our friends at the Alberta Federation of Labour and the Sierra Club Prairie Chapter to release Green Jobs: It’s Time to Build Alberta’s Future. It came out yesterday, and is full of solutions and concrete strategies to pull Albertans out of their current predicament. Currently, Alberta is being hit by record job losses and its first deficit in over a decade. They’ve slipped from having the lowest unemployment in Canada to third: Since August 2008, employers have cut over 135,000 full-time positions. As well, Alberta has the dishonour of having the highest CO2 emissions in Canada, and the worst air quality. Most Albertans do believe that it’s possible to have a strong provincial economy while protecting the environment. Green Jobs provides the framework for change, and includes strategies for investing in three key sectors: Energy Efficiency, Transit and High Speed Rail, and Renewable Energy.
Premier Ed Stelmach sent a letter [PDF] to Prime Minister Harper this month, urging him to take Alberta’s economy into consideration before signing any international climate change agreement. “Our conversations need to be honest and inclusive and our actions must be bold” he said. “Our future prosperity and quality of life depend on it.”
We couldn’t agree with this statement more. Premier Stelmach, we urge you to take bold action, and invest in green jobs for Alberta. Fire the $40,000 per month lobbyist you’ve put in Washington to greenwash the tar sands. Drop your plans to build more dirty bitumen-upgrading facilities on Albertan soil. Divert the $2 Billion you’re investing in futile Carbon Capture and Storage schemes to some of the initiatives we’ve outlined in our report.
Even Stephen Harper has said that global warming is “perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today.” The time has come for Alberta to take a leadership role in creating good green jobs.
Green Jobs for Alberta
Categories: Energy and Climate, KYOTOplus, Tar Sands
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May 19th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Thank you for the great web site - a true resource, and one that many people clearly enjoy. Keep up the good work.