Which is more important: Environment or Jobs?

Which is more important: Environment or Jobs?
We often hear about climate change and also about high unemployment, as things stand most of the effective methods of preserving the environment will result in fewer jobs.

So the simple question is are jobs more important than the environment and are people prepared to accept the consequences of infinite growth on a finite planet when we eventually reach the limits to growth and have a wrecked planet.

Or are people going to look at the wasteful ways that industry sponsored "planned obsolescence" speeds up the transfer of material from quarry to landfill and decide the environment is more important than the jobs created by the current business model.

I would like to see stuff that is built to last and Universal Basic Income which allows the freedom to work part time, thus eliminating the high unemployment problem while enabling people to earn a living.

Finance would also need to change from a "lent into existence" to a "spent into existence" method of money creation, as this would eliminate the requirement of infinite growth that is hard coded into the current economic model.

Such a system will significantly reduce the human stress on the planet.

Chestvalve

More council houses.

OldMrBrennan83

Jobs.

Most things are more important than environment.

jam_mac_jam

Jobs untill we are all fighting over clean water or all the bees are dead then we might care.

Until then it's just going to be selfishness and biger cars. It's difficult for us to think long term by nature.

Part of me thinks it's too late anyway and we are completely screwed.

Ash.J.Williams

OldMrBrennan83 wrote: »

Jobs.

Most things are more important than environment.

Idiotic statement of the day

murpho999

Environmentalism should be seen as a positive opportunity for jobs not the other way round.

OldMrBrennan83

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

Idiotic statement of the day

The non posturing statement. I know the environment is a great buzzword these days but at some stage just spare us the little pats on your own back. It's all just another way to gouge us in the pockets.

Atlantic Dawn

There needs to be fact checking of some of this green solution nonsense, you have people with cars doing 25mpg and costing them circa €2000 a year in running costs feeling like they have won the Lotto when they spend €40k on an electric car which costs them €1.99 a year in electricity but they seem blind to the fact that it's costing them circa €5k a year in depreciation.

murpho999

murpho999 wrote: »

Environmentalism should be seen as a positive opportunity for jobs not the other way round.

It can be, if you include the UBI into the equation and ban planned obsolescence and prohibit manufacturers from making their products unrepairable.

This would create a whole secondhand & refurbished market for quality products which can only be good for the environment.

The UBI will allow for more part time working, thus providing two jobs to replace all the full time ones.

strandroad

Deleted User wrote: »

as things stand most of the effective methods of preserving the environment will result in fewer jobs.

It's a false dichotomy; in an exponential growth economy anything that challenges these efforts might indeed costs jobs, but when you redirect the system towards sustainable economy it actually creates jobs. Example: if you want cleaner more sustainable farming and growing, you need more people as dropping factory technologies will naturally reduce output.

strandroad

strandroad wrote: »

It's a false dichotomy; in an exponential growth economy anything that challenges these efforts might indeed costs jobs, but when you redirect the system towards sustainable economy it actually creates jobs. Example: if you want cleaner more sustainable farming and growing, you need more people as dropping factory technologies will naturally reduce output.

I agree, but as I said most, not all changes will result in fewer jobs.
As it is the current race to automate all work (self driving vehicles for example) that will eliminate many jobs from the market, it is not supporting the environment that will lose us the most jobs.

Mad_maxx

murpho999 wrote: »

Environmentalism should be seen as a positive opportunity for jobs not the other way round.

It should be seen as ignoring at our peril, it probably won't produce net increase in employment but that's beside the point

vargoo

Great Barrier Reef: One million tonnes of sludge to be dumped

Canadian regulator backs oil pipeline expansion, urges whale protections

As dire as things are it's still same old story.

BeerWolf

Environment.

Create jobs helping towards that.

kneemos

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I agree, but as I said most, not all changes will result in fewer jobs.
As it is the current race to automate all work (self driving vehicles for example) that will eliminate many jobs from the market, it is not supporting the environment that will lose us the most jobs.

Been hearing about automation eliminating jobs since the first PC.
All it's done so far is create more jobs.

Atlantic Dawn

Getting something as basic as global warming wrong turned the cash cow that is carbon tax in to an absolute joke.

mickdw

Jobs because they are the here and now.
I believe in natural cycles on earth. I see the warming data but it doesn't cause me the same worry as some.
The time since records began is only a blip in terms of overall life of the planet so who is to say there is not a different cycle on the way in like a few hundred years. We had ice age previously. That went away over a term and it wasn't petrol cars that caused that change.
I firmly believe this is an excuse to tax the world's population.
The madness of basing our entire green taxes on co2 and ignoring the noxious substances is a whole other argument.
If this is critical to the future of the earth, let governments tackle it in revenue neutral manner across the world, not the cash cow they seem to be making of it.
Taking electric cars for example, it's all well and good giving grants but I don't believe the carbon taxes on fuel should be raised until electric cars are in everyones reach. As it stands, people who can afford new cars are getting grants and poorer people are paying more for fuel.
That is happening all over, across big business and small.

kneemos

Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong,but put simply global warming is 99% due to water vapour,greenhouse gases account for four or five percent of total gases in the atmosphere and we are responsible for two or three of one percent of those.

Atlantic Dawn

The farmers in this country certainly won't be asked to pay their way.

kneemos

kneemos wrote: »

Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong,but put simply global warming is 99% due to water vapour,greenhouse gases account for four or five percent of total gases in the atmosphere and we are responsible for two or three of one percent of those.

I believe you're correct, but to be honest, the whole global warming debate is a huge distraction from the real damage that is happening to the planet in general.

The real issues are loss of natural habitat, biodiversity & pollution.
These three things if not addressed will eventually make the planet almost uninhabitable for future generations (in a worst case scenario).

No wild animals, no natural forests, global levels of pollution, waste plastics etc killing sea-life, monoculture crops and the chemicals that suppress all others could succumb to disease in the future that wipes out our food chain.

So called "green initiatives" help, but we do need to look at ways to reduce the damaging affects of how we live and work.

kildare lad

Id have jobs first, but why cant they be more environment type jobs, eco-tourism, solar panels, electric cars etc. I was on the National Geographic page on facebook the other day, there was an article about climate change has led to this animals extinction. I decided to read the comments and most of the comments were about climate change being a hoax and scaremongering,liberal propaganda , not surprisingly most of them comments were from yanks , who were more than likely republican. Theres some amount of dumb and ignorant people on this planet.

The thing is climate change will affect jobs down the road, hot weather and less rain leads to more drought and famine , which will lead to mass immigration from poorer countries , resulting in cheap labour and with the advances in technology like robotics and an influx migrants , there'll be more people fighting for fewer jobs down the road.

We're killing this planet and unless we change are ways there'll be serious consequences in 100 or 200 years time, There was 1.6 billion people on earth in 1900 , theres 7.7 billion now, how much more pollution and over population can it take before it all comes crashing down.

super_furry

The environment is the more pressing and more important issue, jobs is what will get more votes. Guess which one politicians prioritise.

professore

kneemos wrote: »

Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong,but put simply global warming is 99% due to water vapour,greenhouse gases account for four or five percent of total gases in the atmosphere and we are responsible for two or three of one percent of those.

You are wrong. We need a certain amount of greenhouse gases, otherwise the heat from the sun would escape into space and we'd all freeze.

It's adding the extra that turns up the thermostat. Look at Venus ... it is roughly the same size as Earth and not that much closer to the sun ... if it had the same atmosphere as Earth it would be a slightly warmer but habitable version of it ... however ....

The atmosphere of Venus is 90 times more dense than that on Earth and it is made of 96.5% of CO2 and a 3% of nitrogen. This means that both planets have the same amount of Nitrogen on their atmospheres. Surprisingly the CO2 on Earth is stored on calcite type rocks and if we would convert the CO2 on these rocks into atmospheric CO2 it would amount to the same amount of CO2 that there is on Venus' atmosphere.

http://www.ajax.ehu.es/VEX/Venus.Earth/Venus.Earth.html

As a contrast, Earth's CO2 concentration is roughly 0.04%. You want to keep upping it and see what happens?

Of course there are other greenhouse gases that are far worse than CO2 - Methane in the form of natural gas and cows farting .... even small leaks from gas supplies contribute hugely to global warming.

The only safe economically viable future is NUCLEAR POWER. The sooner people cop on to this the better.

megaten

Use environmental concerns as an excuse to create jobs.

seamus

What's the point in creating jobs when your grandkids won't have a planet to live on ?

Dumbest question I've seen this decade.

Ash.J.Williams

OldMrBrennan83 wrote: »

The non posturing statement. I know the environment is a great buzzword these days but at some stage just spare us the little pats on your own back. It's all just another way to gouge us in the pockets.

have a good long long look at what you typed and come back to me, my retort had nothing to do with money gouging or buzzwords or even the human race, i simply stated that the words you typed were that of an idiot.

Cina

Jobs won't mean a thing in 30 or 40 years at this rate.

We're in February and it's 17 degrees out. We're completely screwed.

Deebles McBeebles

Cina wrote: »

Jobs won't mean a thing in 30 or 40 years at this rate.

We're in February and it's 17 degrees out. We're completely screwed.

Do you reckon if I go empty all the Lynx bottles in Tesco we can cut that down to 1 or 2 years? Desperate for an end-of-days induced early retirement.