Climate action can put over 100,000 Albertans back to work

It’s no secret that the drop in the price of oil has hit Alberta’s fossil fuel economy hard and hit Albertan families even harder. Our province lost over 51,000 oil-related jobs in 2015 and there’s no sign of them coming back any time soon.

The good news is that with increased provincial leadership and with the right policies and investments in the green economy we can put people back to work and create jobs in a province that desperately needs them.

A report released today by Greenpeace, the Alberta Green Economy Network and Gridworks Energy Group shows that Alberta can create more than 100,000 jobs (in fact over 145,000 of them) with government policies that encourage and invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency and public transportation.

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We’re releasing this report as representatives from over 150 countries gather in New York to sign the climate agreement forged in Paris last December. That agreement represents the beginning of the end for fossil fuels, and this report highlights how Alberta can answer the call creating jobs in the type of economy the world needs to see.

The choice we face today isn’t between ‘economy’ and ‘environment’: it’s between building a safe, renewable energy economy and climate destruction.

Decades of resource mismanagement and failures to diversify our economy by former governments have left the province and its new government without much of a fiscal safety net. Acting on climate change, however, can replace the boom and bust cycle of fossil fuels with sustainable, green jobs.

We have the technology and the skills in our province to implement these solutions. 

It’s time we speed their uptake.

Download the report