Those who lobby for the fossil fuel industry claim that millions of Canadian jobs depend on the oil. Jim Stanford writes that the notion that Canada's economy is deeply dependent on oil is simply misinformation:
It is now undeniable: fossil fuels will disappear from most uses in the foreseeable future. And fossil-fuel industries will never again be an engine of economic growth and job creation in Canada.
Conventional wisdom portrays Canada as fundamentally dependent on extraction and export of natural resources – and fossil fuels are presently the biggest of these “staple” products. In hopes of delaying the inevitable, fossil-fuel lobbyists make exaggerated claims of their importance to the labour market, and predict economic disaster if their businesses are not protected and subsidized.
The statistical reality, however, is very different: fossil-fuel jobs constitute a very small portion of overall employment in Canada – less than 1 per cent. Their importance was already fading rapidly before COVID-19 hit. From 2014 through 2019, fossil-fuel industries lost 33,000 jobs, and their already-small share of total employment fell by one-quarter. Yet over the same period, Canada’s overall labour market strengthened steadily – achieving a record-low unemployment rate in 2019.
We are in a period of transition. But we have time to transition from an oil economy to a green energy economy:
The phase-out of fossil fuels will occur over decades, and that gives us time to plan for effective and fair employment transitions. We can enlist the normal mechanisms of change and adjustment that occur all the time in Canada’s diverse, fluid labour market, including retirements, voluntary entries and exits, interregional mobility, and job creation in growing industries.
The sooner we start planning for this transition, the easier it will be. For example, most existing fossil-fuel workers will retire over the next two decades, because they are older, on average, than the typical worker. By planning ahead, that natural turnover can take care of most of the gradual downsizing required. Senior workers in various locations can be encouraged to retire with incentives. Younger employees can keep working as the industry downsizes. Experience in other jurisdictions (such as Germany’s 20-year shutdown of black-coal mining) proves this can occur without a single involuntary layoff.
The hard part is accepting the notion that the fossil fuel industry is itself an economic fossil.
Image: The Guardian
8 comments:
I see with the imminent cancellation by Biden of the Keystone XL project, Kenney is doing a full court press to reverse his decision. I guess the Alberts premier will never get the memo about fossil fuel's decline and ultimate demise, Owen.
That's because Kenney's always looking backward, Lorne, -- to the past, not to the future.
Stanford may be right that it's possible for Canada to wind down the tar sands without layoffs over 20 years, like Germany did with coal mining. But, there are a couple of things that make this unlikely. 1) Canadian governments and companies are very poor at planning beyond the next election or the next couple of years. 2) The scientific consensus is that we no longer have the luxury of killing off Big Oil over the next 20 years. That was something we could have done when we signed the Kyoto Protocol back in 1992. Now, we need to act much more quickly if we are to avoid the worst climate change scenarios. A truly responsible government would be shutting down the tar sands by the end of its current mandate, job losses and investor concerns be damned.
Cap
That's the problem, in a nutshell, Cap. We're running out of time.
.. At some point in the distant future.. Canadians will comprehend that 97 % of 'all that wealth on the ground' .. the 'vast Canadian Oil Reserves' are actually buried Bitumen.. that is not extracted via the classic oil field pump jack - nodding horse
Its steamed mainly.. not strip mined. Regardless, it results in vast toxic tailings ponds that leach into The Athabaska watershed and are flushed to the Canadian Arctic. A subsequent upgrade process gets the Bitumen to a stage where refined diluent can be added and the slurry when heated can be pipeline shipped and be defined as 'dilbit'.. Few refineries can process diluent.. mainly in Washington State, California.. and certainly The Gulf Coast - Houston area.
There it will compete with Venezuelan Bitumen of lower sulphur, shipped across the Caribbean to deep water superports.. that can unload and load the largest supertankers.. ie those that simply cannot pass 2nd Narrows, Vancouver. This is navigational fact
Overall, this is known contemporary FACT & SCIENCE.. not wishful thinking or vote gathering nonsense.. not 'Nation Building' fantasy. The 'ethical oil' fantasy is just that.. and ignores regional reality re home heating or fueling a Lincoln Navigator.. Its just lazy Mainstream Media noyz - 'oil patch' legend on oxygen or helium
I defy a single Canadian to step up to call & prove my simplistic summary wrong.. none have so far. The Alberta and Canada Government websites verify this.. easy to find
We have been reminded by the chaos in Washington that we live in a world that cheerfully ignores facts, sal. And we have seen the end results of that willful ignorance.
What prevents us from accepting the inevitable? It's fear. It is said there is roughly 27 trillion dollars of known fossil energy reserves subscribed on the world's stock exchanges and bourses. The smart money unloaded their dirty energy holdings over the past decade. That leaves major banks, investment houses, and pension funds holding the bag when the Carbon Bubble is pricked.
Mark Carney and his predecessor at the Bank of England repeatedly warned the London market that it was overloaded with what would soon become stranded assets. The warnings went largely ignored, perhaps through outright denialism or fear of crashing the markets. Some have concluded that, as the price of fossil fuels retreats, it will be offset by an increase in demand, the old Economics 101 theory of supply and demand.
CEOs and corporate directors are left holding the bag to angry shareholders if company values tank. There are serious personal liability issues in the offing. Some are counting on being safely gone before the music stops.
27 trillion lost overnight. That's enough to trigger a tsunami through the markets that probably won't stop with fossil fuels. An enormous amount of wealth could be wiped out.
Nobody wants to say the emperor has no clothes.
Nobody wants to say what's coming, Mound. But the evidence is out in the open. Today GM and Unifor signed a deal to produce electric vehicles in Ingersoll, Ontario. Ford will be producing EV's in Oakville. The writing's on the wall.
Post a Comment