Global warming jobs loss uncool for business

Big business reports that business-as-usual will cost an averge 12,500 Australian jobs per year over the next 20. That's 250,000 jobs. The message is to no longer disregard global warming.

At an average income of say, $80k per year that is a cool one billions dollars worth of hard wrought Aussie income for our esteemed government to tax annualy. I guess it is because of our government has amongst the highest tax takes in the OECD that they are now backflipping on their previous hands-washing.

From the SMH:

But Environment Minister Ian Campbell said few countries were on target to reach that figure and what the federal government was doing was the right approach.

"One of the reasons we've taken early action as a government is we would rather be ahead of the climate change game than behind, I think for the very good reasons we've identified," he said.

"We're spending upwards of $2 billion on what we would consider early actions and it's incredibly important that we do engage business."

What are they spending the $2 billion on anyway? All I have seen is the further killing off of prospects of Australian participation in the Kyoto Protocol with the set-up of the AP6 group.

The researchwas commissioned by companies such as BP Australia, Insurance Australia Group, Origin Energy, Swiss Re, Visy Industries and Westpac, and by the Australian Conservation Foundation. It was undertaken by the CSIRO and the Allen Consulting Group.

You can't accuse this as being the fringe green scene and I assume the job losses extrapolated from the research were from these companies and industries, as they were paying for the research. We have oil represented (well, peak oil theory would have them being gone sometime soonish anyway), insurance companies (I was hoping they would have to put more people on to process more weather devastation claims), reinsurance companies (ditto), packaging and banking.

These companies now calculate that we not only can reduce our emissions by the magic 60% of 1990 levels within 44 years, but we can do it maintaining economic growth.

"That number, while it sounds large, is the number that's needed to push the world on a path to ultimately stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations.

"Having said that, all the modelling done by Allen Consulting shows that, even with early action to set us on a path to 60 per cent reduction, we'll still have a very strong economy, with real GDP averaging around 2.1 per cent and creating an additional 3.5 million jobs."

A bit different to Howard's claims of emissions' reductions harming the economy but I had always believed that was a dead duck in carnard's clothing waiting for the hunting season to begin. Indeed, we have kicked CFC addiction, stabilised the ozone hole, yet still enjoyed growth, refrigeration and underarm deodourant. But, thankfully, there is less hairspray around as it has slowly dawned that the sixties beehive was an environmental disaster as much as a fashion one.

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