Positive side of climate change: More jobs

NEW YORK: Climate change may have several life-threatening effects on environment but it has one sliver lining — to combat it, industries could generate millions of new jobs, head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has contended. “Millions of new jobs are among the many silver, if not indeed gold-plated , linings on the cloud of climate change,” Achim Steiner said.

Delhi is introducing new ecofriendly compressed natural gas buses that will create 18,000 new jobs while Brazil’s ethanol programme has lead to half a million new jobs, he said quoting a new study. The United States environmental industry in 2005 generated over 5.3 million jobs, 10 times the number in the country’s pharmaceutical industry.

The study showed that these are not just green collar jobs targeted at the middle classes, but that opportunities abound for workers in areas ranging from construction, sustainable forestry and agriculture, engineering and transportation.

The study is part of a draft report entitled Green Jobs: Can the Transition to Environmental Sustainability Spur New Kinds and Higher Levels of Employment? that was commissioned by UNEP. “Talk of environmental sustainability and climate change often emphasises the costs, but downplays the significant employment opportunities from the transition to a global economy that is not only resource efficient and without the huge emissions of greenhouse gases, but one that also restores