Environmental groups and AFL release groundbreaking Green Jobs report

The report, Green Jobs: It’s Time to Build Alberta’s Future, was released at a news conference in Edmonton by the three groups. The report suggests that transitioning to a green economy will breathe new life into Alberta’s economy and help improve its environmental track record, which has recently been criticized internationally.

The three groups joined forces to encourage the province to turn away from unproven, expensive technologies like Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Instead of investing $2 billion in taxpayer’s money in a false solution like CCS, the Stelmach government should be focussing on putting Albertan’s to work.

A new way forward

The report shows a new way forward. It outlines what a green economy should look like and how the province could begin the transition from dirty, dwindling tar sands oil toward the clean energy economy of the future.

The green jobs strategy is needed now at a time when Alberta has record job losses and its first deficit in over a decade. Alberta has slipped from having the lowest unemployment levels in Canada to third. Since August 2008, employers have cut over 135,000 full-time positions.

Green jobs are good jobs

Green jobs are high-quality jobs that are saved or created by policies that will shift our economy toward greater sustainability. Green jobs include familiar jobs with a new twist, like construction workers retrofitting homes to make them more energy efficient. And green jobs include new jobs to create and implement technologies to preserve our environment. Green jobs are good jobs that let workers support their families and communities.

What kind of jobs?

The green jobs of the future include electricians, computer software engineers, iron and steel workers, electrical engineers, electrical equipment assemblers, welders, metal fabricators, electrical equipment technicians, construction workers, machinists, construction labourers, operating engineers, and electrical power line installers and repairers, and sheet metal workers — truly “green collar” sectors.

Other green jobs could be created in providing water treatment for First Nations communities, improving wastewater treatment systems, reforestation, and cleaning up contaminated sites.  These opportunities can create many more good green jobs in rural and urban areas.

Three easy steps

Building Alberta’s energy efficiency offers an immediate opportunity to put between 10,000 and 22,000 thousand Albertans back to work this year! To get building, the Alberta government must:

• Provide grant financing for efficiency upgrades for home energy retrofit grants that would enable insulation, weather-sealing and other efficiency improvements for every Alberta household that needs them.
• Loan financing for efficiency upgrades to provide the up-front costs for households with high incomes and for commercial buildings.
• Greening building code standards to improve the standards for new buildings so those buildings will be adequate to our energy efficiency needs 20 to 40 years into the future, and not just today.

Green the economy

Green jobs will reduce pollution, improve the environment and help build the new, green economy. They will make our economy more stable and less vulnerable to oil markets, reduce our energy consumption and pollution, clean our air and rivers, and diversify our economy — all while building a sustainable, stable future for our children.

Read the news release