...Canada's auto worker's union learns that it doesn't own the company, that jobs for life aren't guaranteed and that maybe they shouldn't have jumped on the Kyoto bandwagon. 

Enter the law of unintended consequences:

from the CAW site :

By Jim Stanford (CAW Economist)

Canadian business leaders are sounding more like anti-globalization protesters every day. They're overflowing with angst about an international treaty that they say will erode Canadian sovereignty and destroy our economy. Stolid old free-trader Perrin Beatty, now head of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, is railing on about the power of global bureaucrats and threats to Canadian jobs. Next he'll be throwing stink bombs over the security fence at meetings of environment ministers. Meanwhile the environmental community is trying to adopt the air of assured and capable technocrats. The Kyoto Protocol is a modest, logical, careful first step, they keep repeating. It's quite the role-reversal.

 

[...]

 

Most of the models don't include the positive spin-off impacts of new environmental spending on purchasing power in the broader economy. If Kyoto commitments lead Canadian companies, consumers, and governments to spend billions of dollars on cleaner technologies, public transit systems, methane collectors at landfill sites, and more efficient vehicles, this will create swads of new jobs. There's no reason why big-ticket investments in environmental infrastructure and technology couldn't power a lasting economic expansion--just like waves of investment in railways (1850s), automotive infrastructure (1950s), and computers (1990s) did. Forecasts that consider these demand-side effects (like a study by Dale Marshall of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, ""Making Kyoto Work,"") come to very different, and more optimistic, conclusions regarding Kyoto's economic impacts.

 

[...] 

 

Responding to the unwelcome effects of climate change could be clearly beneficial for the economy--despite the plaintive wails of those who are required to do the spending. In this sense, the chances of ratifying Kyoto (as a first step toward a greener economy) will be better if we can describe it as requiring more work to be done in our economy, not less.

The success of some previous attempts to link environmental and labour goals--like the Toronto Atmospheric Fund, which subsidizes energy-saving insulation retrofits, and supports thousands of construction jobs--shows that workers will jump on the green bandwagon if they believe it will create jobs.

This same approach should apply to implementing Kyoto. For example, not all environmentalists are thrilled with them, but hybrid vehicles seem to hold considerable potential for reducing greenhouse emissions, while respecting North Americans' apparently god-given right to drive. A hybrid vehicle contains two engines: a conventional gasoline engine for high-efficiency cruising, and an electric engine (charged by the movement of the vehicle itself) to help with starts, stops, and hills.

From this morning's news reports :

Automaking is the country's largest export industry. And it is arguably under siege like never before. When GM lays off 2,600 workers in Oshawa next year, it will also wipe out an estimated three times that many jobs at companies that supply the plant, such as Lear Corp. in Ajax.

"This is a big deal. But get used to it. We're only in the first inning," said Jeff Rubin, chief economist for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. "The kind of vehicles that are going to be on the road are not the kind of vehicles that right now GM and Ford are producing. We're going to be talking about hybrid vehicles, small vehicles … In the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, the Japanese [automakers] came to the fore. And once again they are. I think Toyota and Honda will become the mainstays of our industry. And what's left of Ford and GM will be re-engineered to produce very different vehicles than they're producing now."

That re-engineering has already begun. GM is boosting production of any car that is scoring with buyers, like its Malibu and G6. It said yesterday its board of directors has given the go-ahead to spend money to build the Volt extended-range electric car. The centrepiece of GM's strategy to make vehicles that run on gas alternatives is to be in showrooms by the end of 2010.

What's that old saying about reaping what you sow? 

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written by Merle, June 04, 2008

Yes and Jim Stanford is a former member of the Young Communistb League of Canada. Apple does not fall far from the tree now does it?

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