Antinuclear

Miners’ tunnel vision: profits before survival

Miners digging their own graves to preserve profits

Courier Mail John Connor

November 10, 2009

 

QUEENSLANDERS, particularly in the regions, have been pounded with ads from the mining industry talking about job losses and closures should coal mines and other industries shoulder their share of efforts to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution.

But you don’t need to scratch much below the surface to show the slipperiness and shortsightedness of such claims.

The reality is that tens of billions of dollars are pouring into the mining industry and more than a dozen new mines are slated for opening………….

What industry lobbyists are also not telling you is the CPRS and other clean-energy policies, if effectively implemented, could grow a million more clean-energy, clean-technology jobs across Australia by 2030.

Climate Institute research shows Queensland could triple the jobs in the renewable energy sector by 2020.

These industry lobbyists and some Queensland politicians are also remarkably silent when it comes to the job losses and economic impacts that will follow as climate change hits Queensland’s natural and economic assets such as the Great Barrier Reef, the Wet Tropics and coastal and regional communities.

What’s more, they were silent when research was released showing Australia was well behind all other developed countries, and indeed some developing countries, in its carbon competitiveness – the ability to prosper in a world already turning to clean energy and low-carbon economic growth……………………….

In 2008 alone, $167 billion was invested in new clean-energy sources, representing a four-fold increase since 2004 and, for the first time, outstripping investments in the fossil fuel technologies. Worldwide, the renewable energy sector already employs about 2.3 million people – more than the number employed directly by the oil and gas industry.

The pace of these changes needs to accelerate to avoid the worst impacts of climate change but only dinosaurs in business and politics can’t or don’t want to see these changes.

Miners digging their own graves to preserve profits | The Courier-Mail

November 10, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, business, Queensland