Just, wondering, who is going to be the ones to force them?
Save the Climate by Improving Jobs
The most recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change experts have made two things clear: One, any hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change requires dramatically reducing the use of fossil fuels. And two, doing this is a political challenge, not a scientific one. Technologies that can reduce emissions exist now; what is absent is the political will to do so. The deep political opposition to reducing fossil-fuel reliance is the direct result of decades of efforts by the fuel industry to sow climate denial, feed misinformation to the public, influence elected officials and “greenwash” its efforts.
Political, huh? Surprise?
But opposition to an energy transition also comes from workers in the fossil-fuel economy and communities that depend on it. They realize that moving away from such fuel use could end their jobs and remove the industry base that pays for crucial local needs such as public education. If society can understand and mitigate these consequences, a strategy called a “just transition” by labor researchers, it can reduce worker opposition to change while also providing needed support to workers and regions that have relied on fossil-fuel dollars.
What if they don’t want to change jobs, to learn to do something different? What if they like what they do? And, the answer to force means the Government will force them. Which is interesting, since the same leftists call everyone else Fascists and authoritarians.
Yet in the face of all this opposition, we are making progress. At the state level, Illinois and New York legislators recently passed laws that require higher wages on every renewable energy project over a certain size. The laws tie general wage standards to renewable energy development. This ensures the jobs created can provide family-sustaining wages and economic security, and it breaks a pattern of low-wage work in the renewable energy sector.
Which raises costs to the consumers. Econ 101.
Why can’t these people just mind their own f’ing business?
