Lifestyle | A better economy | Saving water
Jobs for the future
The NSW coal mining industry clings desperately to its employment statistics as the primary justification for its ongoing existence. In reality, jobs in the coal industry continue to fall, while production continues to rise. From 1991 to 2000, jobs in the Hunter Valley coal industry declined by 29%, while coal production rose by 53%.Not only are there more jobs in renewable energy than in coal[1], but those jobs create a much higher value commodity that doesn't threaten the global climate: wind turbines, solar panels and energy efficiency technologies. Renewable energy manufacturing promotes a strong local economy. And strong local economies mean ongoing employment for our kids and our kids' kids.
Coal will run out one day, and we will have to stop digging it up. When that day comes, we will have to find something else to do (presuming we can still survive in the rapidly changing global climate). So are we going to wait until then before we move away from coal? Or are we going to move now, while there's still a chance to stabilise the global climate and to build a strong renewable energy industry?
The reality is that we can have jobs without coal, and we can have energy without coal, but we cannot have a coal industry without climate change. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell something, probably coal.
- For example wind turbines provide 4 to 6 times as many jobs per unit of energy produced compared to coal (A Clean Energy Future for Australia, p71, Energy Strategies for the Clean Energy Future Group, 2004)
