DIALOGUE SESSION

1,000,000 Climate / Green Jobs

David Allen (Brighton FOE, proposer), Elaine Gilligan (chair), Dave Powell (staff rep), many participants!

David’s proposal is that Friends of the Earth should launch a campaign on one million green / climate jobs. This session discussed how such a campaign could work and what appetite there might be amongst participants.

Issues discussed:

  • what would the actual campaign be for? Campaigns for green jobs can look like at least four distinct things:
  • Campaigns for something like (eg) heavy state investment in renewables.
  • This is what is behind the CACC campaign for a million climate jobs. So here, a million green jobs would result from a bigger campaign win. The campaign is for investment, not for jobs per se.
  • These campaigns may employ green jobs as a powerful argument. Many Friends of the Earth campaigns do this.
  • Discussion of the various employment-rich policies that we advocate – ie home insulation, renewables, circular economy.
  • Need to be wary - the Treasury / neoclassical economic response to green jobs arguments is unimpressed; assumption that they come at the cost of employment elsewhere in the economy (which they often might) – either directly (oil jobs become green jobs) or indirectly (higher energy bills as a result of green policies may cost jobs at the margin)
  • Rallying calls that are ultimately about movement building. Ie, bringing together unions, employers and NGOs in a common call for more action on climate investment - perhaps detached from any particular campaign ask.
  • Could build strong links with educational establishments ie FE colleges.
  • A way to reorientate existing policies or initiatives. For example, calling for existing industrial / skills strategies to continue but with new, greener priorities.
  • Campaigns about particular localities / cities / places. So – 100,000 green jobs in Manchester or whatever. Some combination of the above.
  • Perhaps most likely to have traction particularly inplaces struggling for employment. A green alliance / WRAP report made strong arguments here.

There was a lot of discussion about the last of these, which has a lot of potential – particularly in a climate of Westminster being difficult to get many new political initiatives passed. Cities (Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol etc) or nations (Wales, NI, Scotland) are ripe for branded ‘local jobs’ campaigns. Could help situate local groups in local networks and also tap into local decision making / election processes.

Points noted in discussion (Henry’s notes)

Changing to a green economy threatens jobs, for example in Aberdeen.

Is this something that we’d do as a stand-alone campaign or is it something that we’d use as part of other campaigns? E.g. recycling jobs coming from circular economy package. Is it a narrative to use throughout campaigning, talking about the jobs that would be created?

Does this need to be a national campaign, or would it work just as well locally?

This was a policy that Ed Miliband came up with, so may have baggage associated.

Massive renewables projects would create jobs – and we do need massive renewables projects.

Home insulation would be great for jobs.

We could also ask for a major educational change to teach sustainability.

Problem: Renewables jobs tend to go to white men, as they dominate the construction and engineering professions.

Homes are important. Local community level campaigning is good. Could FoE work for legislation to get communities together more, though stuff like community energy?

We could help people learn to form a community energy scheme. Training conferences, apprentices, and making use of existing schemes like the DWP’s welfare to work scheme.

Make sure that further educational colleges train people to install renewables.

Legislate for energy ratings for rentals and home sales, to drive investment in home insulation and create jobs.

These 1m jobs would create a step change in energy generation and conservation.

On devolving from London

We could do a smaller campaign, say in Wales, to test the water for a national one. Welsh Energiewende is already being talked about.

One example of this happening is in Greater Manchester, where they’ve decided to stick solar panels on 8,000 roofs. They will borrow to finance this, and councils can do this for little cost.

We could also play on the surge inScottish politics.