Jobs and Climate Change

Maybe a month ago, I watched Who Killed the Electric Car. The major thing I learned in that movie is that electric cars exist. Or, more rightly put, they did exist. 100% electric. Not gas-electric hybrids. Electric.

They were on the roads, leased by real people, for a year or so. Then the automobile companies pulled them all. No one was allowed to buy, even people willing to pay way more than market value. The cars were then destroyed.

The easy answer as to why this happened was that, as part of an experiment to see what they could do, the auto industry had created a product that would put themselves out of business. It would also screw over their big oil buddies, but I'm not personally concerned with that so much. In an electric car, there is no combustible engine. When you pop your hood and look inside, no longer would you see all that mysterious metal junk. Instead, there are only batteries. That means that all that mysterious metal junk no longer needs to be manufactured, fixed, and replaced. That is a HUGE industry. And bam, with the advent of the electric car, it's gone.

Now we have gas-electric cars. They have combustible engines that need to be manufactured, fixed, and replaced. The industry will survive.

A really good argument against the electric car is this: If people are powering up their battery-operated cars every night, and we still use dirty energy to create our electricity, we're not really making the auto industry cleaner. And this is true.

But if the ultimate goal is to transform our dirty energy power plants into clean energy power plants, then this is not going to be an issue for much longer.

(By the way, the ultimate goal HAS TO BE to transform our dirty energy power plants into clean energy power plants. One other thing I've learned over the past year is that the "debate" over whether or not climate change is a real threat was settled over a decade ago in the scientific community. However, at that point, Exxon-Mobil (may it burn in Hell) (lower-level workers are excluded from this damnation) set out to create a "debate" on the legitimacy of climate change in the public eye. Why? Because they didn't want to lose all the money they were and are making. As long as the public was unconcerned, as though as they thought the science was still up in the air, there would be no outcry for change, and fast. Exxon Mobil didn't need to win the debate. They just needed to keep it going. Climate change is a fact, and we HAVE to reduce our carbon emissions or within 100 years, 95% of species on this planet will be extinct, and 50% of the land the human population lives on will be underwater. Poor populations of today will be no more, because they'll all be dead. Poor populations of tomorrow will spring up in new places-- places that are fairly temperate now, but which will be far less so once this gets going. We, the rich people in temperate climates, will be the last ones to be affected. Really rich people are already buying up land in Alaska. It's currently covered by permafrost, but in fifty years, it'll be nice. Exxon Mobil execs will live on, I'm sure.)

Back to my original conversation...

One of the things that bothered me most about the collapse of the auto industry due to the theoretical introduction of the electric car on a large scale is... the mechanics. Where the hell are they going to work? There are a lot of mechanics and a lot of factory workers who build combustible engines. They need jobs. And because I'm the sort of person who needs to look at all issues, I can't in good conscience advocate clean energy that is to the detriment of working class people the world over. I don't want a clean energy future where even still the rich get richer, and get to drive nice cars, but the poor get poorer because they all lose their jobs.

I've been chewing on this question for weeks. Where will the jobs be?

Right now I'm reading George Monbiot's "Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning." It's a great book. The premise is that very often, environmentalists (like myself) advocate massive change (cut carbon emissions) but then don't say how and don't say what the world will look like afterwards. The main reason for that, I'm learning, is because it's a scary freaking proposition. The simplest way to cut carbon emissions by 90% is to plunge us back into the stone age.

Most people don't want that to happen. George Monbiot is one of those.

He figures that the only way people are going to be willing to make the necessary changes is if they can remain basically the same, specifically, if they can maintain their modern comforts and lifestyle. So that's what he has set out to do. He looks at our industries, at our lives, at our energy consumption, and tries to figure out how to change everything in a cost-effective way so that everything basically stays the same, but cleaner. It is an optimistic book, because above all else it says that it can be done.

This morning I was reading the chapter on exactly how much energy renewables can supply, and that's when it hit me. This will be a huge freaking industry if we can get it going. And yes, it will be cost effective to governments, people, and the energy industry. But it will take a lot of work to get it going, and keep it going.

Jobs! Jobs everywhere! And good jobs that would help save the planet. And then rich people could have their electric cars.

So what we need is for the auto industry to convert... what half? some amount... of their factories toward producing solar panels and High Voltage Direct Current cables, and wind energy propellers and water energy harnessing equipment. And mechanics can shift their expertise from fixing cars to creating and maintaining various clean energy alternatives.

This is not a perfect answer. But it is an answer. Which means to me there are others as well.

Everyone go read "Heat" by George Monbiot. Now. Trust me, you won't regret the time spent on this book, and you'll walk away with a lot of useful knowledge.