21 comments on The Bullroarer - Tuesday 15 July 2008
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21 comments on The Bullroarer - Tuesday 15 July 2008
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Yes. According to today's Age, our two aluminium smelters use 25% of the state's electricity. So, since 54.8% of our 121.87 Mt of emissions come from coal-burning, they'd be responsible for something like 13.7% or 16.7Mt of the state's greenhouse gas emissions. All that and they provide 2,000 jobs directly, and about another 20,000 jobs indirectly. Thus, about 1% of total employment for about 14% of emissions.
Pretty piss-poor. Not much bang for our carbon buck. Can't we do better?
Let's suppose that making polluters pay would cost jobs. I come from a Victorian town which was built around two industries - the weet-bix factory and logging. When those went away thanks to economic rationalism, there was no compensation, no reduced taxes, no extra benefits, no help, the town died - nobody cared. Then we came to the city, and with desktop computers coming into workplaces we lost phone operators, typists, typesetters, printers, secretaries, and so on. Nobody cared about them, either. And in the outer suburbs more economic rationalism sent manufacturing jobs overseas, supposedly Aussies couldn't make t-shirts and would have to become tour operators or something. Which of course didn't happen. But nobody cared.
Why are we suddenly so compassionate when it comes to coal miners and smelter workers?
Anyhow, all the smelters have to do is invest in renewable energy. Nowhere in the laws of physics or the land is it written that they must power themselves with coal. Alcoa could diversify, becoming an energy supply company as well as an aluminium company. Diversification strengthens a company, makes it resilient - important in these deregulated times. They could then sell the excess energy to the surrounding towns, this investment would create jobs, and so on.
As I've said before, I am puzzled as to why mining coal, building coal-fired plants and maintaining them is held to be an investment for the future and create jobs, but mining silicon, building solar and wind plants and maintaining them will be a heavy cost and destroy jobs. The truth is that in both cases it's a cost which is also an investment in the future, and some jobs are lost, others are gained - things change.
It's a change, and change creates opportunities for people who are creative and adaptable. And those who aren't get left behind. Again, we never cared before - so why now?
Peak fossil fuels are an issue because as oil depletes, absent any effective measures against global warming people are going to turn first to natural gas and then to coal. So whatever we're exporting and consuming now is going to be more and more in demand for different uses, all their current uses plus substituting for oil. Yeah, yeah, our gas and coal will last forever, sure - that's what everyone was saying about oil until about a year ago.
So, the stuff is going to run short, and climate change is going to come, and at some point coal mining and aluminium smelter jobs - if the stupid things are still powered by coal - are going to go. Kaput, gone. We can wait for the change to be forced on us, or we can plan for it now.
I don't care if you don't care about my region and it's 70 000 odd inhabitants Kiashu - I care.
While I don't work in the resource sector, many of my relatives and friends do and I would not be happy to watch their lives destroyed because some clown thinks he's on a mission to save them from themselves. Thank f**k you don't have power.
I would like to see the industries chip in for alternative energy - there's plenty of sunshine here and a pretty savage tidal race at the top of Gladstone harbour - but until that is actually up and running it means nothing. It would have to be mandated - maybe instead of making them buy carbon licsences, they could make them contribute towards carbon-free power generator construction. But the company that owns the aluminium smelter and part-owns one of the alumina plants spent a colossal sum on part-purchasing the local coal fired power station. The companies will naturally make threats to piss off to somewhere cheaper and they might just make good on those threats too.
If you have a method of making the worlds most used metal - steel - without carbon (coal), let me know.
You sound a little bitter that no-one cared about you and your community. Sorry to hear that (where was it BTW - I spent a couple of months travelling the southern states last year, nice place Vic). But rest assured I will not be inclined to sit back and let it happen to mine. Let's phase in alternatives and phase out fossil fuels STEADILY so as not to cause undue harm and grief.
Your smelter should sell its shares in the coal-fired station and invest in some renewable energy. If they don't then they're a short-sighted company which is doomed to fail anyway. I mean, I just heard on the news Qantas is going to knock off a few thousand jobs next week. Why? High cost of fuel. So there we go - peak oil is claiming jobs.
So this is what I was saying, peak oil and climate change are going to destroy these fossil fuel-intensive jobs whether we like it or not. It's better to do it in a planned way, and at least get some revenue along the way, revenue we can invest in stuff like renewable energy - so your smelter mates have something to go to.
Tax/trade with revenue reinvested in renewables offers your smelter mates and the coal miners different jobs to go to. Peak oil and fossil fuels offers them nothing to go to. Don't rage against me, mate.
I care as much about your particular region as you care about any other particular region in the country - or the world, for that matter.
I'm interested in Australia having an economy which allows us to be well-off tomorrow as well as today. This business of digging stuff up and selling it overseas can only go on so long. What the Saudis are to oil we are to coal, iron, bauxite - and topsoil. One day we'll wake up and the stuff will have run short and we'll be rooted. Even the Saudis are figuring that out and building plastics factories - okay, still using their depleting resource, but stretching it out a bit, better money out of it than just burning it. We're too lazy for that.
We've had twenty years for the gradual, steady change you're asking for. Who was asking for it twenty years ago? I was, even in high school I could see that living by digging stuff up and selling it overseas couldn't go on forever. How about ten years ago? Five? Now that things are urgent suddenly everyone's talking about it, and they want it to be gradual and steady.
Unfortunately for Australia we're running short of time. We had twenty years' warning of climate change and peak oil and we pissed it away. We like to blame Sheriff Johnny but when it comes down to it he got re-elected because he kept telling us what we wanted to hear. "Naw, screw the boongs, screw the foreign darkies, too, screw those lazy poor people, and screw the climate, just keep diggin' stuff up it's the Strayin' way oh hello Uncle Sam let me just fetch the Crisco..."
We had two decades, maybe three decades if we'd been particularly switched-on. Now that oil is finally a sane price and cities are being wiped out by hurricanes we're saying, "oh bugger... well... can we have some more time, please?"
Pencils down, heads up, pass your papers to the front, time's up. It's time to get moving now.
Kiashu, I would like to see our smelter to sell it's share of the power station (probably at a loss if carbon emissions are targeted) and invest in renewables.
WHEN they are up and running you can proceed to start hitting them with carbon taxes as an incentive to completely phase them in. Do it before that and you will likely f**k things up.
Until I see some concrete proof to the contrary, I will have to assume that many renewable sources will not employ near as many people to run them. Efficient? Certainly, but you need to replace the jobs lost from the coal-fired generators. I visited a wind farm down your way, near Port Fairy. It was impressive but I did not see a single person working there - they were scarcely required. As far as I'm aware, no generator had previously existed there. So it hadn't replaced a fossil-fuel generator and knocked off a bunch of jobs like the closure of the power station here would.
So these things must be done slowly.
Hi Lefty,
While my own views tend to line up much more closely with those of Kiashu, I can offer you some specific reassurances about Gladstone.
If you read the summary of the Green Paper, (http://www.climatechange.gov.au/greenpaper/report/index.html), you'll see that Rudd will be bending over backwards to protect the export-competing industries of Gladstone. You shouldn't listen to scare campaigns to the contrary, they're just negotiating ploys from the companies - and they've worked!
For those with more Greenish opinions, Rudd's CPRS is already sounding like a very watered-down regime. On the plus side, it provides a National example to other countries and establishes the trading infrastructure to merge with future more effective global schemes. However, until such global schemes arise (and we're probably talking decades) I don't see the good citizens of Gladstone having anything to fear from carbon trading.
A bigger priority for you to focus on is how to help your family and friends cope with the near-term Peak Oil crisis in transport fuels and possible economic depression. (The keys are get out of debt, plant some veggies, buy a bike, and stay on good terms with your employer!) After that, why not stand for Gladstone Council and get all the local work-for-the-dole types slaving away on some dikes for all your infrastructure below 6 metres... just in case Global Warming doesn't work out as benignly as the Labor Party thinks!
;-)