July, 09 2021, 01:08pm EDT
REPORT: A Clean Jumpstart Approach to Infrastructure Will Create 26 Million Jobs
A new policy report from Data for Progress and Evergreen Action shows that keeping comprehensive climate investments in the infrastructure package will boost the economy
WASHINGTON
Today, Data for Progress and Evergreen Action released a new policy report providing a roadmap for how Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats can create 26 million jobs as part of a Clean Jumpstart investment in infrastructure and clean energy. This new report lays out exactly how our Clean Jumpstart plan with Evergreen Action would enable Biden to deliver on his campaign promise of investing $2 trillion in "modern, sustainable infrastructure and an equitable clean energy economy."
We find that investing $2.6 trillion in establishing a Clean Jumpstart through bold climate investments like those of the American Jobs Plan would create an average of 2.6 million jobs annually for 10 years, including more than 1 million jobs per year in employment working directly toward the Biden Administration's policy goals, and more than 1.5 million jobs along supply chains and in communities due to increased spending.
Some highlights from the report on the jobs a Clean Jumpstart would create:
363,000 jobs in clean energy deployment
1.3 million jobs in green infrastructure
311,000 jobs in clean and competitive manufacturing
232,000 jobs in agriculture and natural resources
161,000 jobs in technology innovation
262,000 jobs in workers and communities
"The strength of the June jobs report speaks to the outstanding success of Biden's American Rescue Plan -- now, he must build on that progress and secure a prosperous economic future by initiating a Clean Jumpstart," said Marcela Mulholland, Political Director at Data for Progress. "This bold, progressive plan would create a record 2.6 million jobs in the clean manufacturing and innovation jobs of the future, and it's why Congress must adapt a Clean Jumpstart into its version of the infrastructure package."
"This report makes it clear: Congress has the opportunity to create millions of good-paying jobs in the clean energy economy right now. With the right investments today, we can create up to 2.6 million jobs over the next decade, by prioritizing climate in the infrastructure package," said Sam Ricketts, Co-Founder and Senior Advisor for Evergreen Action. "The vision behind the Clean Jumpstart 2021 is the same vision that animates the American Job Plan: bold clean energy standards, robust public investments, and environmental justice. As this report shows, Biden's climate agenda is not only wildly popular, it would boldly transform our economy for the better. Congress must stand firm and go big on climate, jobs, and justice."
Data for Progress is a multidisciplinary group of experts using state-of-the-art techniques in data science to support progressive activists and causes.
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Take Back the Court, Revolving Door Project, and True North Research published the database at SupremeTransparency.org, which "shines a spotlight on the complex web connecting justices to powerbrokers and the organizations that those powerbrokers fund, lead, and are otherwise linked to."
The watchdogs found that nearly 1 in 7 amicus briefs filed during the 2023-24 Supreme Court term were lodged by at least one powerbroker-affiliated organization. This affects 32 different cases before the court.
"The current U.S. Supreme Court has gone rogue."
For example, in Moore v. United States—in which the Supreme Court could preemptively ban or limit wealth taxes—half of all amicus briefs were filed by groups affiliated with right-wing powerbrokers.
In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, groups funded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch want to scupper the Chevron deference, a 40-year precedent under which judges defer to the legal interpretations of federal agencies if Congress has not passed any laws on an issue. Powerbroker-affiliated organizations have filed more than one-third of the amicus briefs seeking to overturn the Chevron doctrine.
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According to SupremeTransparency.org:
The current U.S. Supreme Court has gone rogue. The right-wing justices that make up the court's supermajority frequently toy with precedent and the rule of law to issue opinions that not only defy the will of a majority of Americans, but also rewrite constitutional principles, overturn widely respected legal precedents, and gut longstanding rules that protect the public interest.
In just the 2021 and 2022 Supreme Court terms alone, the court overturned Roe v. Wadeafter 49 years; gutted both the decades-old Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act; overturned a 100+ year old gun safety law; eroded the National Labor Relations Act (adopted as part of New Deal reforms to protect workers); broke with their own procedures regarding standing to sue in order to block student debt relief; and reversed decades of precedent to end the decadeslong practice of race-conscious college admissions policies that promoted diversity and redressed discrimination. But this radically reactionary court and its radically reactionary justices aren't acting alone.
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The climate crisis will shrink the average global income 19% in the next 26 years compared to what it would have been without global heating caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, a study published in Nature Wednesday has found.
The researchers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), said that economic shrinkage was largely locked in by mid-century by existing climate change, but that actions taken to reduce emissions now could determine whether income losses hold steady at around 20% or triple through the second half of the century.
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"That seems like… a lot," writer and climate advocate Bill McKibben wrote in response to the findings. "The entire world economy at the moment is about $100 trillion a year; the federal budget is about $6 trillion a year."
This means that the costs of inaction have already exceeded the costs of limiting global heating to 2°C by six times, the study authors said. However, limiting warming to 2°C can still significantly reduce economic losses through 2100.
"This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering noneconomic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity," Wenz said.
The damages predicted by the study were more than twice those of similar analyses because the researchers looked beyond national temperature data to also incorporate the impacts of extreme weather and rainfall on more than 1,600 subnational regions over a 40-year period, The Guardian explained.
"Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected," PIK scientist and first author Maximilian Kotz said in a statement. "These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labor productivity, or infrastructure."
However, Wenz told the paper that the paper's projected reduction was likely a "lower bound" because the study still doesn't include climate impacts such as heatwaves, tropical storms, sea-level rise, and harms to human health.
Unlike previous studies, the research predicted economic losses for most wealthier countries in the Global North, with the U.S. and German economies shrinking by 11% by mid-century, France's by 13%, and the U.K.'s by 7%. However, the countries set to suffer the most are countries closer to the equator that have lower incomes already and have historically done much less to contribute to the climate crisis. Iraq, for example, could see incomes drop by 30%, Botswana 25%, and Brazil 21%.
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Wenz told The Guardian that the results were "devastating."
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Levermann said the paper presented society with a clear choice:
It is on us to decide: Structural change towards a renewable energy system is needed for our security and will save us money. Staying on the path we are currently on, will lead to catastrophic consequences. The temperature of the planet can only be stabilized if we stop burning oil, gas, and coal.
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