This resource is based on the Pamphlet "One Million Climate Jobs" by the Campaign Against Climate Change which
can be read in full here. The report describes how the authors believe a million climate jobs could be created in the UK.
Can you write a million in figures?
[?] (don't insert any commas)
To make it easy to read big numbers we often write a comma every 3 0's. So the commas go where we say the words "million" and "thousand."
Write the number million using commas.
[?] In January 2012 the official number of people unemployed in the UK was 2.67 million. Write this number in figures using commas to make it reasier to read.
Round this number to the nearest million.
Roughly what fraction of the total number of unemployed people do the authors believe could be given a job?
The report itemises how the UK produces greenhouse gases. One of the figures is missing. Can you work it out?
Sources of greenhouse gas emissions per person in the UK
What sort of graph would be best to display this data? Use excel to draw a graph of this data. Don't forget to make sure the graph has a good title and that everything is labelled.
The report wants the Government to create a million jobs in one year. How many would this be each month? (Round your answer to the nearest thousand)
[?] The report thinks that if one million climate jobs were created, these people would spend more money on other goods and services that would lead to the creation of another third of a million jobs. How many jobs is this altogether? (Round your answer to the nearest thousand)
How much will it cost to create these jobs? Add up the figures to find out. ( a billion is a
million = 1,000,000,000)
However these new jobs will also produce savings. Here are some of them.
So this means the Government only has to find £52 billion-£34 billion = £
billion to fund a million climate jobs.
This is a lot of money, but when compared with the £850 billion the Government used to bail out the banks or the further £200 billion of "quantitative easing" (printing money) it is not quite so significant.
Why do we need to act on such a large scale?
The report says "The global climate is warming because humanity has been burning more coal, oil and natural gas over the last 200 years. Coal, oil and gas all contain a lot of carbon. When they burn, the carbon joins with oxygen in the air to make carbon dioxide (CO2). The more CO2 in the air, the more it traps heat and stops it escaping into space. There are also two other greenhouse gases – methane and nitrous oxide....But CO2 has the most effect, and has been increasing most rapidly."
The amount of CO2 and heat in the atmosphere naturally goes up and down in cycles that last for up to 100,000 years, giving us ice ages and warm periods. During the ice ages there were about 180 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the air. During the warm periods the level of carbon was about 280, which is 100ppm more. It is now 385 ppm–another
[?] ppm. Of that increase, 70 has happened in the last 50 years. Scientists fear that these increases in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere could cause catastrpohic climate change- in other words very sudden massive changes to our climate leading to extreme weather events which would threaten civilisation as we know it. Already many parts of the world are suffering. "There has been a drought in Sahel – the part of Africa just below the Sahara – for forty years. There is also serious drought in Central Asia and Australia. Forest fires in Australia and Greece, serious tropical storm damage in Bangladesh, Haiti, Costa Rica, and the USA, and the recent floods in Pakistan are all part of this pattern.
This is the first in a series of resources on "A million climate jobs". The next part will look at jobs in energy production and how these could reduce our emissions.