I want to discuss a couple of questions I have had that have been bubbling away in my head for a long while. So, in no particular order, what are we going to do about coal?, and what are going to happen with jobs in a future low carbon emitting world?

See, you can get most anyone who will accept the scientific method to buy into the need to take action on anthropogenic climate change. And to fix the problem, I don’t see any way burning coal for fuel is going to work going forward, due to the huge rate of emissions in relation to the energy that can be produced. But when you talk about eliminating the vast majority of all the jobs in the industries of coal mining, shipping, and burning for fuel, you are talking about a lot of disruption. I see these as key issues that are locked together in the short and long-term. In achieving a low carbon future, we also need to attempt to limit damage to people’s current livelihood, while we at the same time entice them to a better one.

We need to have an answer for where we are going to employ people who leave the coal industry, and what sort of short-term safety net we will put in place to assist those effected, if Australia as a nation decide to make big cuts in our emissions rapidly, and at least start to satisfy the goals of the scientist greenies on the left. Because crap though they may be as a political party, their goals are closer to what are required than anyone on the right of politics, I suggest.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume we are to make cuts in CO2 emissions that are deeper than currently proposed, and more rapidly than currently proposed in the draft legislation in front of the Australian Parliament. We can save all the planet for our grandkids, great, but right now, the issue is jobs, and who is going to gain them and who is required to lose them in the near to mid-term.

Let’s first look at the losers. As I have said, there are going to have to be massive amounts of job losses in coal mining, some in shipping, and almost all those currently in coal burning. Below are some numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics from August 2009:

• 40,800 persons in Coal Mining (full and part time)
• 6,600 persons in Coal and Petroleum Product Manufacturing (full and part time)
• 31,400 persons in exploration and mining support services
• 10,706,500 persons employed in today (full and part time)

Also, just for later discussion:

• 2,200 persons in electricity, gas and water services
• 55,200 persons in electricity supply

If every one of the 47,400 persons in the coal mining and coal products manufacturing industries were to lose their job, we would need to re-employ 0.44% of working population in Australia. That is a conservative number, since we know that not all of them would lose their jobs, and some of them are actually employed in petroleum refineries and not coking coal plants. But that is the direct severity of how bad the problem could be. How many people involved in shipping coal to the ports and power plants, and shipping coal overseas, would lose their jobs? I am not sure, as the statistics I have are not broken down well enough. But lets say half of the 31,400 persons in the exploration and mining support services area were put out of work. This is probably a conservative estimate, since coal doesn’t make up half of the mass of the minerals that are explored for and mined in Australia.

In the power generation area, I don’t think that there is a good argument that any people will be put out of work, because the electricity demand will continue (and in fact grow), and the persons required to operate and maintain power generation facilities should be roughly similar, regardless of the type. But let’s assume that we do lose 80% of those jobs too, based on the coal usage fraction of our electricity generation. Yes, we are that addicted to burning the magic dirt.

So all up, we have just under 1% of the working population will lose their jobs. And if you told me that we were going to suffer an additional 1% unemployment in a year, or six months or even a month, it would be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one, for either our society or our economy. And the reality is, we couldn’t lose all those coal plants and replace them with anything else in less than about 10-15 years. We are talking about 80% of our generating capacity, after all.

Then, remember, all those people need not be out of work long, and they don’t all have to go take low paying jobs at McDonalds either. To replace 80% of our generating capacity is going to create so many jobs, it will make the stimulus effort last year look like a bake at a school fete. By my estimate, those jobs will include:

• R&D work for renewables that can be installed in the next 10-20 years;
• Energy efficiency equipment and materials manufacturing;
• Energy efficiency designers and installers;
• Designers of new plants and equipment to deliver power over the mid term (nuclear, gas, geothermal, wind, solar, etc.);
• Manufacturers of equipment to generate power; and
• Construction supervision and labour to build all this new infrastructure.

Of the above, I suggest that all but the semi-skilled installers of the energy efficiency equipment and some of the construction labourers will have jobs that are equally as valuable as the mining, trucking and shipping jobs that will be lost. However, having a job is not all, and we need to consider the disruption of the migrations that may be caused from places like Musswellbrook, NSW. It should be government policy to provide a safety net in the form of re-training, relocation and direct unemployment relief to workers displaced by the conversion away from coal burning.

That is, provided we don’t have to face any arguments based on the reasoning that just because a grandfather was a coal miner and a father was a coal miner, that somehow the son has some sort of mystical right to be a coal miner. There are many communities that have been built around the industries of salt, whale oil, steam engines and asbestos that are all relegated to history, and coal is going there too, whether you like it or not.

But let’s not dwell on the negative. The low carbon future has so many positives going for it, it should be a no-brainer to get society to go along, even those now working in coal. So, I challenge any real people out there working in the coal industry to call me on my facts if they are wrong, test my logic, and help refute or improve my argument. Because it is an argument I feel we must win, and now. And also recognise this: While people may face some uncertainty and disruption over the move away from coal, there are some legal persons (companies) that have a vested interest in using that disruption to real persons in an effort to thwart any attempts to reduce the activity of those companies, even though the change is in the best interest of all the real persons. We should expect that, as those legal persons are sociopathic by design.