As many as 900,000 new jobs in France

If we do nothing (or nothing serious), we are headed towards climate chaos. But it’s not too late to act; it is still possible to make up for lost time. It is still possible, in Europe and all over the planet, to go for the Factor 4: divide our 2050 greenhouse gas emissions by 4.

To get there, we must both significantly decrease our  energy consumption (reduction & efficiency) and break from fossil fuels (oil, coal, etc.) through the development of renewable energy.

900,000 new jobs in France. More than 6 million in Europe.

Divide our emissions  by 4 by 2050 at the latest? The project is huge, but investing heavily in energy savings and renewable energy could lead to « 900,000 new jobs in France », according to the latest forecasts from the ADEME, and more than 6 million jobs for all of Europe… This is a good way to significantly reduce unemployment and job insecurity. A good way, therefore, to reconcile Europe with its citizens.

No one can doubt the medium-term profitability of the project because the multiplication of extreme climate events has already caused thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, and each year, an increasing amount of high spending. Global warming causes not only natural disasters (droughts, heat waves, floods,…) but also famines and displacement of hurt populations.

What will happen in 20, 30 or 40 years if hundreds of millions of men and women have to leave their homelands, after having become uninhabitable? In the medium term, we all know it’s world peace that is at stake, if we are not able to reduce- drastically and quickly- our greenhouse gas emissions.

Nothing is inevitable. In all of our regions, citizens, elected representatives, associations, and companies have already been innovating and demonstrating that it is possible to act against global warming.

For renewable energy, the solutions will not be the same everywhere (here we will develop biomass, there solar energy, elsewhere, geothermal energy) but everywhere the impact on employment will be evident. Local studies (such as the study by BIZI in Basque Country) confirm the very high level of employment which were announced by more global studies (CNRS and ADEME).

To finance this colossal project, the work of Nicholas Stern and other experts converge to show that, in addition to already existing investments, we need to clear, each year, some 2% of GDP in each of our countries for new private and public investments.

Certainly, these investments will be profitable in the long term, but how to « prime the pump »? The climate transition poses a formidable problem to our public finances. In Germany we saw how the coalition between the CDU, the Greens, and the Liberals failed to fund the release of coal.

How can we finance the energy transition in Europe and countries of the South? There is no single solution, but it is necessary to start two fundamental debates. The first involves a possible financing by money creation. The second, creating a Climate Contribution on non-reinvested profits.