Making BC a Green Jobs Machine

Making BC a Green Jobs Machine

What's wrong with this picture? In B.C., taxpayers spend millions to subsidize mining, oil and gas industries, which create a third of all our climate-wrecking green house gases but only 1.2 per cent of provincial employment. Add in the manufacturing sector and the freight and transportation sector, and the imbalance is equally striking. Creating 81 per cent of B.C. emissions, these sectors only employ 15.5 per cent of B.C. workers.

These are signs, argues a new paper from a Vancouver think tank, of a malfunctioning economy in dire need of greening in a way that creates opportunities for those struggling to make it in this province.

"Air pollution is the smell of money," flamboyant B.C. politician "Flying" Phil Gaglardi once responded to complaints about the lung-searing stink from a pulp mill in the interior. But telling people they must decide between having an intact environment or a thriving economy is a false choice, say authors of "Climate Justice, Green Jobs and Sustainable Production in BC," published by the progressive Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as part of a larger effort, the Climate Justice Project, led by the CCPA and UBC.

CCPA economist Marc Lee and UBC associate professor of economics Ken Carlaw offer a bracing set of steps they say we'll need to take on our way down the green jobs path. By road's end, B.C. would be a very different place in three or four decades -- a province where each citizen uses virtually no fossil fuels or generates any greenhouse emissions.

And they say there is no reason to hold back, given that the current approach -- massively subsidizing polluting industries -- is producing relatively few jobs.

Here's their road map to creating a B.C. economy rich in green pay cheques...