Climate, technology and chaos Blog

9th July 2019 version

People frequently say something like we should not stop fossil fuel mining and export in Australia, because we would go ‘bankrupt’ without income from mining.

This is a response which will be updated as I do more research.

Australia does not earn much in royalties or income from mining, as we tend to give away minerals (when compared to other countries), profits are transferred overseas to tax havens and so on….

Wikipedia states: “At the height of the mining boom in 2009–10, the *total* value-added of the [entire] mining industry was 8.4% of GDP.” That is not the same as useful income to the country….

Adani predicted in court that the full coal mine would produce less than 1500 direct and indirect *job years* (not jobs) over the life of the mine, which is basically nothing (given a life of 25 years that is an average total employment of 60 jobs per year).

The Labor market information portal states that mining employs less than 2% of the total workforce. And that is from all the mines (iron, copper, lithium, uranium etc), not simply the fossil fuel mines. According to a parliamentary website mining employs much less than any of ‘Retail Trade’, “Wholesale trade’, ‘Professional, Scientific and Technical Services’, ‘Construction’, ‘Manufacturing’, ‘Accommodation and Food Services’, ‘Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing’, ‘Transport, Postal and Warehousing’, ‘Financial and Insurance Services’ and so on.

Some old surveys suggest that Australians think that mining employs about 8-9 times more people than it does. Increasing, automation, means employment in mining is decreasing all the time.

I have no idea how many mining workers are here on temporary visas, ready to take their wages back home either. The mining industry is always complaining there are not enough locals with the skills – which is odd given that there used to be, and less people are working in mining. However, overseas based workers are probably not unionized so they can earn less.

If climate change goes ahead uncontrollably, then there will be massive job losses in tourism (no barrier reef) agriculture (Adani taking all the water and poisoning the artesian basin). People will loose their homes, and so on – but that will be a boost to building.

So while Australia may go bankrupt (or at least face financial stress in the future), it will probably not be from stopping fossil fuel mines or refusing to help the world be destabilised.

Tags: Disinformation, economics, technology

This entry was posted on July 8, 2019 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.