The People’s Petition for a Million Climate Jobs

'I urge your readers to get behind this petition and not only sign it, but publicise it through the Trade Union, environmental and socialist movement.

On the back of the Climate Jobs pamphlet, this is a strategy for solving the environmental and economic crises. Creating the jobs that we need and reduce carbon emissions.

To do that will require a social movement that can wrest change from this government. The first step towards building that is signing up to this petition, getting everyone you know to sign up, and downloading the petition and taking it around your colleagues and union members.' says Martin Empson

About the petition
At its 2010 conference, the TUC called for the creation of one million green jobs to tackle unemployment and the environmental crisis. This follows the publication of the “Million Climate Jobs” report by the Campaign Against Climate Change, with the support of the PCS, UCU, TSSA & CWU unions. We can build a mass movement that stops the cuts, forces them to create jobs and solve the environmental crisis. The first step in this campaign is signing our petition for a million climate jobs.

The People's Petition for a Million Climate Jobs is endorsed by:

•John McDonnell MP
•Caroline Lucas MP
•Linda Riordan MP
•Kelvin Hopkins MP
•Sally Hunt, General Secretary UCU
Please note that personal contact details are kept confidential and will not be published.


The Petition
We the undersigned call on the Government to give urgent and serious consideration to the recommendations of the One Million Climate Jobs report including:

1.We face a global climate crisis. If we do not halt the increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 the “prospects for the people on the planet are looking pretty bleak” (The Secretary of State for the Environment, reported 24.11.10)

2.Britain faces a global economic crisis, with rising youth unemployment and the predicted loss of over a million jobs due to austerity measures.

3.We need the Government to take urgent steps to address both these crises through the creation of a million climate jobs aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing energy efficiency, developing renewable and environmentally friendly sources of energy, and training workers in the “green skills” necessary for a sustainable low carbon economy.

4.Given the urgency and enormity of this task, we want the Government to employ staff directly in secure jobs, to do the necessary work through a National Climate Service.

5.We call for an immediate, fully government-funded programme to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in existing and new buildings.

6.We call for Government funding for free or low fare public transport services and the expansion and integration of public transport networks to reduce the use of private cars; for major investment in extending the rail network and introducing faster and more efficient trains; and the phasing-out of domestic airline flights as soon as practicable

7.We call for direct intervention by the proposed Climate Service to create new industries, and convert existing and declining industries, to conduct the research, development, manufacture and installation of alternative technologies for generating electricity from renewable sources.

8.We call on the Government to finance free programmes of “Green Skills” training through Further Education.

9.Such proposals can be met at a net cost well within the scale of recent Government spending on the financial sector and would be far less costly than the possible alternative – catastrophic climate change.

10.By adopting such a programme Britain would set a standard for the rest of the world, especially the developed world responsible for the crisis, in taking the decisive action necessary to limit global warming and ensure that future generations are left an inhabitable planet.

SIGN HERE