Climate and Jobs: The Same Fight!

The crisis of the free-market, productivist model that was "the sole policy possible" for a quarter century has come to pass. Even workers in the car and truck industry are convinced that the previous model is dead and only a conversion to new production lines may save their jobs.

But, perhaps, we don't adequately gauge that every delay in "green conversion" is a delay in job creation. On that subject, one often hears established interests object: "Agreed, nothing will be as it was before; we will take off again in the direction of another model, but we need to take existing jobs into account and not go too fast." Take existing jobs into account? Agreed, if that means using existing competencies and even existing installations in the best way possible for green conversion, but the second phrase is absurd. Delaying green conversions and new green activities is delaying job creation. Without counting the strictly environmental aspect of the problem: any delay in the battle against climate change is irrevocable.

This pressure of lost time, which plays not only against the climate, but also against employment, results from the dual nature of green conversion: as "conversion" and as "green." We know that we must redirect transportation toward public transportation, insulate all buildings (and especially older buildings) and re-establish short - and, if possible, organic - networks in agriculture and food. Now, the simple act of redirection involves work and the future - stabilized - regime will create more jobs on an ongoing basis. It's a bit like the ten first years of Fordism in France (1945-1955): on the one hand, we had to rebuild the country, and on the other, what we were rebuilding was an almost full-employment regime. The two effects are indistinguishable in the beginning, which made people fear a return of the Great Depression once the reconstruction was over. That didn't happen.