Good Jobs, Green Jobs! (And other UN- and economy-related things)

In the last year so, I have morphed into a total UN nut, so its only appropriate for me to do a post or two about them (the true "global community")! :)
Today's post will cover the economics, so to speak, of our current situation versus a 'green economy'.


The United Nations Environment Program's (UNEP) director, Achim Steiner, gave a great speech at the "Good jobs, Green jobs" conference that took place just a couple days ago. You can find the full text of it here:

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=563&ArticleID=6065&l=en&t=long

Some of the highlights for me were:

"Sir Nicholas Stern, on behalf of the UK Government has estimated that global GDP could be cut annually by five per cent and perhaps as much as 20 per cent unless the world deals with rising greenhouse gas emissions."

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation, estimates that somewhere around 0.1 percent of GDP spent annually until 2030 can lift the threat of climate change."

"If we are to deal with the immediate crises and the ones just around the corner, then every dollar, Euro, peso and yuan is going to have to work smarter and harder.
The investments being made now in order to counter the various "crunches" need to set the stage for a resource efficient, innovation-led, economic renaissance.
One that tackles the fundamentals, rather than papers over the cracks: one that sets the stage for Green Economic growth."

"President Obama has called this the era of responsibility. I share his sentiments.
[...]
The era of responsibility is generational but also inter-generational - in bailing out the banks and rescuing jobs we cannot transfer the costs and the debts to our children - we cannot compromise their right to decent work and livelihoods; to a healthy and functioning planet."

"[L]et us not forget that the President who signed the UN Charter in San Francisco 64 years ago, and who saw the value in multilateralism as a force for good in the world was none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt - the architect of the New Deal that powered America out of recession and inspired the Green New Deal being taken forward in the White House and elsewhere today"

In addition, I'd like to call attention to some numbers that Norm gave us in our Environmental Management course last term:

By Barry Ritholtz - November 25th, 2008, 7:19AM

I found that whenever I discussed the current bailout situation, people had a hard time comprehending the actual numbers involved. In doing the research for the Bailout Nation book, that was a problem. I needed a way to put this into proper historical perspective.

If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars. People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay in American history.

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

(data courtesy of Bianco Research)

That is $686 billion less than the cost of the credit crisis thus far.

The only single American event in history that even comes close to matching the cost of the credit crisis is World War II: Original Cost: $288 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost:$3.6 trillion

The $4.6165 trillion dollars committed so far is about a trillion dollars ($979 billion dollars) greater than the entire cost of World War II borne by the United States: $3.6 trillion, adjusted for inflation (original cost was $288 billion).
Go figure: WWII was a relative bargain.

I estimate that by the time we get through 2010, the final bill may scale up to as much as $10 trillion dollars…

So what does all this mean? Put quite simply, our current economic system has failed us. These trillions of dollars of debt that we are creating are a result of mismanagement, a vested interest in the status quo, and a lack of foresight by leaders and policy-makers. But this is why I like the UN so much - they have the inspirational ideas - like those that Steiner mentioned - and institutional agency to bring about positive change.

Recently, as Steiner mentioned, UNEP launched its "Global Green New Deal" initiative, which would see a heavy investment in clean energy and other green technology in order to create jobs and set the stage for our future economy. Consensus from all the top minds, whether it be Sir Nicholas Stern, R.K. Pachauri, Yvo de Boer, or Al Gore, have concluded that this green economy is the only way to go. I get particular hope from that fact that only 0.1 % of our GDP spent annually until 2030 could lift the threat of climate change. We have all the necessary technology and intellect to solve these problems, all we need is leadership! This is why I have become such a firm believer in the top-down approach - unless we have knowledgeable, competent, and gutsy leaders to adopt these proposals, no amount of grassroots community activism will matter (especially since, these days, an entire forest can be eradicated with the stroke of a pen).

So how does this relate to communities? Well, the UN is the biggest community of all - the global community, and while we often don't see its effects in our daily lives, it and all the other multinational partnerships and groups (e.g. World Bank, WHO, WMO, etc.) are the spiders on the intricate web of smaller communities. For example, I wouldn't be doing a major project for BCHC on training local governments to respond to climate change and implement the Climate Action Charter if the B.C. government hadn't passed that bill, and the B.C. government wouldn't have passed that bill if the Canadian government hadn't ratified the Kyoto Protocol, amongst other conventions it is a party to. And so we see that effective top-down leadership correspondingly leads to effective local and community action.

Everything is interrelated!