Perspective

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, June 16th, 2009 - 71 comments
Categories: employment, national/act government - Tags:

National’s line is that they are doing ‘everything possible save jobs and keep people in employment’. Are they living up to the promise?

Not even close.

The other week Paula Bennett was asked in the House how many jobs had been saved by initatives from John Key’s ‘Jobs Summit’. She proudly replied ‘223’, then corrected herself ‘303!’.  303 in three months. Meanwhile, at least 1000 extra people a week are joining the dole queue. In fact, the government has fired at least five times as many people as the number of jobs as it claims to have saved. The economy lost 26,000 jobs in the March quarter and probably lost at least that many in the last quarter.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective.
comparison

Over-promise and under-deliver, that seems to be this government’s motto.
-Marty G

71 comments on “Perspective ”

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  1. Redbaiter 1
    16 June 2009 at 12:05 pm

    Well, the whole point of course that the government can only ever generate real jobs by reducing the number of pretend jobs.

    In other words, making itself smaller. I guess in that case you could say the Nats are on the right track. Eventually, the jobs will come.

    Maybe what Marty is really pissed off about is that he wants everyone to work for the gummint.

    That’s right isn’t it Marty?

    BTW, what’s that called again, and can you tell me where that has ever led to prosperity??

  2. Redbaiter 2
    16 June 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Comment deleted by Redbaiter.

    ( I promise I won’t use gum*int any more)

    But why why why “gum*int”???

    What’s wrong with that????

    [lprent: nothing in itself, except it got over-used by trolls and therefore became a signature of trolls.
    Once something becomes a spam signature then it is there forever protecting you against the old spam engines.]

  3. jarbury 3
    16 June 2009 at 12:13 pm

    What’s interesting is that many overseas countries are starting to see signs of “green shoots”, with government stimulus packages kick-starting manufacturing and creating a bit of demand.

    Meanwhile, our gently gently policies are leading to no signs of recovery and things looking like they’re getting worse and worse.

  4. Zaphod Beeblebrox 4
    16 June 2009 at 12:21 pm

    Now that interest rates have shown that they can’t go any lower, stimulus packages are the only means of countering the money that was sucked away by the GFC.

    Cutting government spending is the last thing we should be doing.

  5. Liam 5
    16 June 2009 at 12:27 pm

    If the national government werent cutting jobs and increasing poverty in new zealand they wouldnt be much of a national government would they

  6. jarbury 6
    16 June 2009 at 12:28 pm

    It must be recognised that New Zealand has taken a very different approach to combating this recession than most other developed world economies around the world. Australia, the USA and the UK (to a lesser extent) have all embarked heavily on a borrow and spend economic stimulus approach to getting demand going again. New Zealand has approached things quite differently, with the budget doing everything it can to minimise increasing debt.

    Now we can argue the pros and cons of the different approaches from an ideological point of view until we’re all blue in the face, but the reality is that we don’t yet know which approach is going to be more successful. However, TIME WILL TELL.

    I just wonder whether the fact that other economies do seem to have having “green shoots” whereas things are still looking pretty shit for NZ is the first sign that perhaps we were wrong and the rest of the world was right.

    In my opinion this will be the key political issue for the next couple of years: National deciding to take quite a different approach to getting us out of the recession to the approach of overseas countries, and whether that has worked or not. Personally, I’m not confident that it will work.

    • Walt 6.1
      16 June 2009 at 1:18 pm

      Recent figures from Australia show that their unemployment fell and their economy grew.

      • jarbury 6.1.1
        16 June 2009 at 1:19 pm

        I think the Australian unemployment figures were seen as a bit of a blip, or perhaps they are a sign that Aussie’s stimulus is working.

      • Merlin 6.1.2
        16 June 2009 at 1:28 pm

        Actually, Aussie unemployment fell from in March 5.7% to April 5.3% then went up to 5.7% again in May

      • GC Martin 6.1.3
        16 June 2009 at 7:37 pm

        no surprises whatsoever in the services-egocentric swap economies… wot a jolly chap you are..

  7. Pat 7
    16 June 2009 at 12:42 pm

    The question of what the Govt has done to create jobs – off the top of my head:

    – Roading projects including Waterview
    – Home insulation.
    – Cycleway.
    – Waterfront redevelopment.
    – Increased police numbers.

    Even small projects like juvenile military style programs create jobs for someone.

    It will be hard to measure the precise numbers of “jobs saved” but if unemployment rate stays significantly under Treasury forecasts, then you can credit the government with doing well.

    • Merlin 7.1
      16 June 2009 at 1:30 pm

      cycleway – lol.

      In case you missed it Pat, not one of those programmes you mention have started yet (even the additional police currently being recruited are funded out of the 2008 Budget). Meanwhile, the jobs keep on being lost.

    • Maynard J 7.2
      16 June 2009 at 1:41 pm

      Home insulation production and installation is going full-tilt at the moment, you are right there. In fact, you could say you are onto something.

      For a relatively small investment, the government has stumulated demand in an area that provides social, economic and environmental benefits worth many times the initial input.

      Why would the government do more like this? New Zealand chose a brighter future, but failing to pick up on opportunities like this looks positively…dim.

  8. jarbury 8
    16 June 2009 at 12:48 pm

    – Roading projects including Waterview

    Spending on roads is one of the lowest “jobs-per dollar” returns you can get for economic stimulus.

    – Home insulation.

    The government wanted to cancel this. Basically a Green Party initiative

    – Cycleway.

    LOL. How many jobs has this saved?

    – Waterfront redevelopment.

    The government spent $20m on buying a half-share of the Queens Wharf. I dont’ see how that has generated any jobs. If any jobs will be generated it will be through council spending on actually doing something with the wharf.

    – Increased police numbers

    Surely off-set by huge cuts in other public sector employment.

    Compare this to the Greens New Deal, which calculated that the policies in that document (in particular the housing policies) would save around 40,000 or so jobs. 28,000 jobs saved in the construction of a few thousand state houses ALONE.

  9. Pat 9
    16 June 2009 at 12:51 pm

    Jarbury – the point is, all those projects will create jobs. Unless you can somehow explain to me that they won’t.

    The offsets will come from job losses in the public sector and the Auckland council amalgations etc.

    In the wash-up, the measurement will be unemployment actuals vs treasury forecasts.

    • jarbury 9.1
      16 June 2009 at 12:59 pm

      I’m a big fan of the Cycleway, a big fan of the Insulation package, a big fan of the government buying half of Queens Wharf and so forth.

      However, it seems like a bit of a drop in the bucket. One has to ask “are we really doing all we can?” and “what more could we do?”

      I think there is more the government could be doing to protect jobs, and the Greens New Deal pretty much nails it (I wish Labour would come up with some sort of equivalent).

      Our conservative calculations are that this package would save or create almost 18,000 jobs (FTE for 1 year) directly and almost 43,000 in all. These calculations exclude the 40% extra jobs from investing in transport efficiency instead of motorways. Other benefits are indicated here, but we have not included the very substantial saving on unemployment benefit almost half a billion dollars in relation to 42,602 jobs.

      Yes there’s a cost, but it seems relatively small:

      The measures suggested in this stimulus package are a first bite at the Green New Deal apple. They represent a range of measures totalling $3.3 billion over 3 years, along with a shift in the direction of committed transport funding. This is about 0.5% of GDP and small compared with the stimulus packages of other countries.

    • Zaphod Beeblebrox 9.2
      16 June 2009 at 1:02 pm

      Pat,
      These jobs are off in the never never. The cycleway funds won’t be committed until later in the year, the home insulation funds are still two months away and who knows when Waterview will get going.
      Whilst I applaud all these initiatives and lets see more (all of them have some merit), the time for action is now, not next year.
      By then 1/2 our skilled workforce will be over the ditch where they have come up with ideas to try and do something about the money that was sucked up by Citigroup, AIG, BoA and the rest.

  10. Pat 10
    16 June 2009 at 1:10 pm

    With respect “the time for action is now” is just a slogan. Any initiative to create jobs requires some degree of planning etc before they can start. Otherwise you are suggesting that there is a whole lot of things the government can do today (Tuesday) that will create jobs tomorrow (Wednesday).

    Heck, even the “planning” stage creates or maintains jobs (even public sector jobs) surely!

    • Merlin 10.1
      16 June 2009 at 1:34 pm

      They’ve had six months Pat and there’s only one signficant job creating programme even in the pipeline, the housing insulation package which might create a couple of thousand jobs (better than nothing) and is good sense, and they had to get the Greens to come up with that.

  11. jarbury 11
    16 June 2009 at 1:14 pm

    Pat, as a planning consultant worried about my future employment, I can assure you there are plenty of jobs in the planning of projects too!

    Edit: Just to elaborate, it seems like I’m agreeing with you on this rather than disagreeing.

  12. Pat 12
    16 June 2009 at 1:28 pm

    Surely what happens in a global recession like this one, is that it causes sea-change shifts in employment. Jobs in some areas become obsolete e.g. manufacturing of large cars, and new jobs open up in other areas.

    In my background of banking/finance (once one of the safest jobs of all) staff numbers are reduced/capped and few new jobs are available.

    The reality is that in the current climate having a job is better that waiting for the dream job. Our grand-parents survived the depression by doing whatever it takes to get their family through. That is the lesson for our generation right now, although we can be thankful that we won’t even get close to their levels of hardship.

    • jarbury 12.1
      16 June 2009 at 1:31 pm

      Yes, and that’s what the Greens New Deal is all about. Investing, and creating jobs, in green parts of the economy that will come into their own in the next few decades, that can respond to peak oil and climate change and so forth. In some cases it’s not even about spending more money, but rather shifting money from investing in outdated areas (motorway building) to areas that have a mind to the future (public transport investment).

  13. Pat 13
    16 June 2009 at 1:39 pm

    “…outdated areas (motorway building)…”

    We have talked about this before, but this is where I think the Greens create a disconnect. I fully expect to be driving a car for the rest of my life. I don’t expect that it will always run on petrol.

    The Greens (seem to) create a vision of us all living in a modern day Middle Ages village. The true message might be good, but it gets lost somewhere on the way to the masses.

    • jarbury 13.1
      16 June 2009 at 1:59 pm

      I agree Pat. Often I hear Russel Norman simply saying “we should spend more on public transport” and I cringe a bit. Not because what he’s saying doesn’t make sense, but he should be suggesting actual alternatives.

      If he says the $1.4 billion that will be spent on the Waterview Connection should instead be spent on “public transport” people just think of a few more buses and some new bus stops, and really nothing much at all. If he says “for that same price you could get a CBD rail loop!” then the message is better.

      A choice between a road tunnel and rail tunnel. I’m sure there are costs and benefits each way for both options, but in my opinion it’s a no brainer the CBD rail loop would be a better option.

      I am trying my hardest to improve “the message” with regards to transportation through my blog: http://www.transportblog.co.nz

  14. Ianmac 14
    16 June 2009 at 1:46 pm

    National have apparently created few jobs and yet we are surviving (deeply concerned for those who have lost their jobs though) Is there any evidence that the Nats could get away with this BECAUSE the Labour Govt left us in a very strong position?

  15. Zaphod Beeblebrox 15
    16 June 2009 at 2:06 pm

    Remember the first thing Nats did once elected was to legislate tax cuts. If they had sunk that money into more of the projects such as those listed maybe we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

    I know conservatives argue about how good tax cuts are to the economy. If properly thought through, I would argue that this money ends up in the economy anyway after being directed to much more socially and economically beneficial purposes.

    • cocamc 15.1
      16 June 2009 at 2:15 pm

      but didn’t the National tax cuts get fully funded from changes to Kiwisaver. so that money would not be available unless the same Kiwisaver changes were made

      • Zaphod Beeblebrox 15.1.1
        16 June 2009 at 2:33 pm

        Good point. It shows that there are lots of ways of funding projects, reductions in super benefits, taxation or cutting other areas. In the current climate, there are good arguments for spending on projects like home insulation where the benfits outweigh the costs.

        • jarbury 15.1.1.1
          16 June 2009 at 2:37 pm

          In the same way that the money went from KiwiSaver to tax cuts, it could have also gone from Kiwisaver to Economic Stimulus package.

          Which one would have been more effective in combating the recession?

          Was that question even asked, or are tax cuts more ideological than practical?

  16. Shona 16
    16 June 2009 at 2:16 pm

    Pat,
    Would please explain why you fully expect to be driving a car for the rest of your life? And give us your approximate age group ?Why you think the average NZ wage earner will be able to afford and maintain technology not created in NZ?And what mode of transport you expect your offspring or future generations will use?
    The only disconnect in regards to the Greens message is the failure of the seriously uninformed NZ masses to grasp the reality of the enormity of change we are experiencing.
    Believe me it will still be happening when you turn up ya toes.

    • Galeandra 16.1
      16 June 2009 at 10:26 pm

      ‘The only disconnect in regards to the Greens message is the failure of the seriously uninformed NZ masses to grasp the reality of the enormity of change we are experiencing.
      Believe me it will still be happening when you turn up ya toes.’
      Hooray and atta girl.
      The paradigm has shifted. There’s a lot more to be done about this so- called ‘recession’ than to think we can spend aka consume our way out of it. (Of course, Labour might like this recession- it’s been referred to as an L shaped one)
      Remember the zero-growth ideal of the old Values Party days?
      The same discourse is now current in a lot of mainstream blogs and is well embedded in academia also. Have a look at Oil Drum for example. Why oh why did Labour buckle so easily? Nine wasted years.

  17. Pat 17
    16 June 2009 at 2:29 pm

    Shona I am 42. I expect to be still driving at 85.

    One of the benefits of globalisation is that when the collective focus goes on addressing certain issues, technological changes can happen very fast. The chinese have developed a low cost electric car with can run 100km on the battery. GM have developed a hydrogen car. I’m not sure why people think old inventions like trains and bicycles will be the future of transport.

    I don’t know what sort of car I will be driving at 85. But when I was born there wasn’t a mobile phone, the internet, a home PC, a CD or even a microwave oven. If I could have predicted what technological changes were going to happen, I would be a very rich man.

    • jarbury 17.1
      16 June 2009 at 2:34 pm

      Pat, just because we will still be driving in 40 years time doesn’t necessarily mean we will need MORE roads. It does mean we will need to keep our roads, but surely we will only need MORE roads if we have more cars on them.

      Traffic levels on state highways around NZ fell last year by around 5%, largely due to rising oil prices (most of the decline was in June-September when the prices were really really high). The government is planning to spend $10.7 BILLION on building more state highways in he next decade, even though use of them is declining (and looks like it will decline further).

      How sensible is that? Surely that $10.7 billion could be spent in a more “forwards looking” manner?

    • Zaphod Beeblebrox 17.2
      16 June 2009 at 2:36 pm

      No matter what technology you choose in the foreseebale future. it will still be a lot more expensive than $1.75/litre oil.
      New technology is still at least 15 years away.
      You may be right though by the time you are 85 if may well be cheap to drive.

      • jarbury 17.2.1
        16 June 2009 at 2:42 pm

        That’s an excellent point. There is simply no replacement for oil in terms of “bang for your buck”. Electric cars are one option, but there are issues relating to the scarcity of some of the metals that go into the batteries, and also that you need to generate a lot of additional electricity to fuel the car fleet.

        In any case, fully electric cars are unlikely to become particularly affordable to your average person for another 10-20 years. What do we do in the meanwhile?

        • Pat 17.2.1.1
          16 June 2009 at 2:47 pm

          “New technology is still at least 15 years away.”

          I disagree, but we will have to wait and see. With the pace of technological change, 5 years is a long time. Compare your mobile phone to the one you had 3 years ago and the one you had 3 years before that.

    • Shona 17.3
      16 June 2009 at 4:14 pm

      How many 85 year olds do you know who drive?
      The techno fix fairy is not going to sprinkle her fairy dust in NZ. The Chinese electric car is not suitable for the NZ environment. We do not have any policies or planning or infrastructure to support the techno fix fantasy. Chinese engineering is not that great. They have alot of catching up to do and are not noted for their competence or honesty. Better to look to India and the compressed air vehicle. We have no policies for hydrogen development, biofuel or the infrastructure to support the electric car. The car and battery the Chinese have they bought from California when it was destroyed there. We are in a state of chaos the economic system is in tatters and we have visionless incompetent leadership in this country. How many semi-trailers run on hybrid engines in NZ ?and this is all going to happen in 15 years. Get a grip.! You didn’t answer my question . How is the average NZ wage earner going to pay for this imported technology.?
      None of the supposed technological marvels you have listed have ever seemed remarkable to me and I am a lot older than you. I have always read science fiction tho’. CD players were first marketed in Aussie in 1977.That’s 30 years ago.By way of comparison and are fast becoming obsolete.We do no research into new technology in NZ that benefits the public at large and have not done so for nearly 30 years. Our best and brightest leave the country. There is no government investment in Rand D large enough to help us catch up. You are pissing in the wind.!

      • Pat 17.3.1
        16 June 2009 at 4:21 pm

        You asked a lot of questions. I answered many of them, and honestly. May I suggest that if you want someone to answer your questions or generally converse on the blogosphere, you should refrain from using remarks like

        “Get a grip!”
        “You are pissing in the wind!”

        • Pat 17.3.1.1
          16 June 2009 at 4:39 pm

          Bugger it, I’m gonna answer your questions:

          “How many 85 year olds do you know who drive?”

          3 (of my direct relatives). When I’m 85 I expect there will be a lot more, since we will be generally fitter and healthier and working longer.

          “How is the average NZ wage earner going to pay for this imported technology.?”

          I suspect this question leads onto some sort of doomsday scenario I’m not aware of. But like all technology, once it is massed produced economies of scale kick in, and the price will be set relative for its biggest target market i.e. middle class income earners around the world.

      • Zaphod Beeblebrox 17.3.2
        16 June 2009 at 4:27 pm

        We did make some steps toward biofuels but they seemed to disappear for some reason at the end of last year. Thats right, it was about the same time we decided we needed an inquiry into whether global warming is man made.

      • GC Martin 17.3.3
        16 June 2009 at 7:55 pm

        shona,

        not that I would disagree with much of the tenor and tone of what you are saying, it is worth pointing out how sustainable 8-gauge and DIY mentality is.

        on a future front I know for certain of the solar-powered airplane.. a present flyer has 200’+ wingspan to accomodate 11,000+ PV cells.. it goes.. and well from all the latest accounts, albeit requiring wide runways..

        a large R&D expenditure – government or private, or both – will achieve little without the necessary will to succeed.. and in my own experience recognition of one’s poverty, as opposed to wealth, is the greatest promoter of better. Of all, by all and for all.

        keep up the good work..

  18. Pat 18
    16 June 2009 at 2:43 pm

    “MORE roads” – I think you could more accurately define the major projects as making existing roading networks more efficient, such as Waterview to complete the Western Ring Route. The spin-off is that they also improves public transport systems such as bus lanes, bicycle routes, rail park’n’rides etc. .

    • jarbury 18.1
      16 June 2009 at 2:49 pm

      The Waterview Connection is “another road”. It doesn’t simply make an existing network more efficient. It’s not even the widening of an existing road – it is the building of a new road. So therefore it most definitely would be classified as “more roads”.

      And from what I’ve read, there won’t be any public transport improvements from the Waterview Connection. There may be a slight improvement to cycle-lanes, but that work could be done anyway without having to spend $1.4 billion.

      • Pat 18.1.1
        16 June 2009 at 2:52 pm

        “It doesn’t simply make an existing network more efficient”.

        Except the obvious one – the Western Ring Route.

        • jarbury 18.1.1.1
          16 June 2009 at 3:14 pm

          Pat, I do see your point to some extent here – that the full benefits of the Western Ring Route aren’t properly realised until the whole thing is built. But the same could be said for Auckland’s rail system – the full potential of the system, most particularly the higher frequencies that spending $1b on electrification will allow, cannot be realised until the CBD rail loop is built. This is because the huge choke-point that is Britomart.

          So it’s the same argument really, that both projects are needed to fully realise the efficiency of the network. That still brings us back to comparing which one might be a smart use of $1.4 billion, with oil prices rising, traffic volumes falling and rail ridership booming.

      • felix 18.1.2
        16 June 2009 at 3:22 pm

        “There may be a slight improvement to cycle-lanes…”

        Yay, that should pull us out of recession fairly aggressively.

  19. Jenny 19
    16 June 2009 at 2:55 pm

    The left too, has a role to play. The unions in particular should be forcing employers to consider their workers interests over their shareholders interests. Unions should be demanding that empployers take up the nine day fortnight option, before allowing lay offs, and back this demand up with industrial action if need be.

    Union inaction in the face of this crisis could lead to their irrelevance.

  20. Ianmac 20
    16 June 2009 at 3:24 pm

    It is easy to see why some of us in the South Island perceive Aucklanders as those folk who only see things only from their point of view. The rest of us have big problems too ya know. (We have no traffic lights in our town. Should we get some? HaHa.)
    And Pat remember that National had some years to plan let alone the warnings from a Recession noted from March 2008. I was hoping that they were poised with the answers rather than just wondering what to do next.

    • Pat 20.1
      16 June 2009 at 3:31 pm

      Ianmac – it’s time we let you know that we have cast your island adrift into the Southern ocean. Let us know when you bump into Chile.

    • jarbury 20.2
      16 June 2009 at 3:34 pm

      Good points Ian. Generally I do not oppose the spending of transport money on roads in small towns and rural areas – because there is no alternative. However, in Auckland there are alternatives.

  21. Zaphod Beeblebrox 21
    16 June 2009 at 3:51 pm

    Pat,
    You have a lot of faith in technology. If you know of a cheap new alternative to oil tell me so I can invest my money.

  22. Pat 22
    16 June 2009 at 4:22 pm

    Zaphod. Just give me your money and I’ll invest it for you.

  23. Anita 23
    16 June 2009 at 7:12 pm

    Marty G,

    I know it pisses you off when I pull you up on accuracy, but I think your numbers are bogus again.

    26,000 jobs lost in March quarter. Nope, the stats you link to don’t say that. The only sensible way to use the Household Labour Force Survey is seasonally adjusted – otherwise Dec->Mar always shows a huge drop which isn’t actually a loss of jobs, it’s a seasonal peak of student returning to study and seasonal demand decreases in horticulture and agriculture (and possibly tourism?).

    March 09 shows 26k fewer employed people than Dec 08, but that is 17k more than Mar 08. Mar 08 shows 22k fewer jobs than Dec 07. So the strongest thing you could possibly say is that the loss is 4,000 higher than last year. That is, you seem to be able to justify 4,000 not 26,000.

    Well of course you could misuse the stats and claim 26,000, but then you’d be behaving just like an untrustworthy political spinmeister.

    1,000+ increase in the dole every week. All I can see in the link you gave was that there was a single week of a 1,250 increase which, even Goff says, was “the biggest increase in the number of people going on to the dole in any week since the 1990s”. So you seem to have generalised from one atypical week of 1,250 a week to 1,000+ every week, without any evidence that I can see.

    In fact, if you use the HLFS figures that you linked to there was a 6,000 absolute increase in “unemployed” in the Mar 09 quarter, which looks like 462 per week. BTW that number is not seasonally adjusted, the loss was 6,000 the previous year – so no higher increase in people listing as unemployed in 2009.

    (Of course HLFS doesn’t give the number “on the dole”, but in the absence of any better stats from you it’s a decent sanity check.

    Finally, the graph: even if your numbers weren’t bogus, plotting a weekly rate, an absolute number and a quarterly number on the same graph is somewhat problematic.

    Look, I’m not saying that the recession isn’t happening, or that people aren’t losing their jobs, or that National is doing enough. But bogus stats are just bogus stats, and they don’t help.

  24. Shona 24
    16 June 2009 at 7:24 pm

    Pat, becoming irritated at my perfectly valid questioning of your rosy coloured scenario is no way to communicate on the blogospere either.
    My points could be better made for sure but I loathe uninformed Pollyanna’s.
    I have had it with constant put downs of the Greens by the uninformed. NZ is totally unprepared for the change to a sustainable economy. we are a backward overpriced little country at the edge of the world and have our collective face firmly planted between our buttocks and have been in that position for a long time. i would happily give you a list of reading material to back up this view but I am beyond caring about the education of environmentally ignorant. I do not hold expressly doomsday views but global warming and peak oil are not eco nazi wet dreams they are are happening now.

    • GC Martin 24.1
      16 June 2009 at 8:13 pm

      hi again shona..

      a small point to aid clarify the use of ‘peak oil’. If by its use you mean an actual or coming soon shortage of so-called sweet light crude oil then fine, I have no problems with this belief.

      If, however, the term is used to suggest a shortage of oil pers̩ then I point out that this is definitely not the case. There is much Рhugely Рoil in the earth. It is mainly heavy oil Р>API 23 for example Рand this is the stuff fossil fuel industries shall be reliant upon in the future. Yes, heavier means dirtier combustion products unless refiners undertake less profitability from greater clean-up processing and expenditures.

      For your information the Canadian tar sands extractions are even dirtier than heavy oils. Yet exceedingly profitable. which, of course, is exactly why they are being developed prior to heavy stuff.

      Time may yet come to pass when planetary concerns have gotten to folks even so much as those who profit from the works. Though not, I daresay, without knowing their minds as well as they claim to do…

  25. mike 25
    16 June 2009 at 7:50 pm

    Bring back Clinton Smith at least his totally skewed, partisan and out of date numbers where semi-believable

  26. Shona 26
    16 June 2009 at 8:28 pm

    GC according to Jeremy Leggat in Half Gone the Canadian tar sands are not all that profitable because of the vast amounts of fresh water required to process them. There isn’t enough water according to him to process the majority of the tar sands. And yes it’s filthy. Peak oil is primarily a reality because of the cost of production not the amount of fossil fuel left in the globe.And also because of our profligate use of existing easily accessible supplies.
    Anyway it wasn’t my intention to hijack a thread with one of my hobby horses.
    I reiterate the environmentally ignorant are a wind up for me. Must learn not to bite so readily.

    • GC Martin 26.1
      17 June 2009 at 11:02 am

      let’s say I’m curious at Leggat’s costings — are these actual or treated as commercially unaccountable ‘externalities’..?

  27. daredtodream 27
    16 June 2009 at 9:34 pm

    There’s one BIG assumption underpinning arguments of “job protection”: people are employed in the most allocatively efficient occupations for the economy as a whole now and into the future.

    I would rather Government helped enable the market/economy and, where appropriate, directly intervened or supplied goods/services to help the market/economy reach allocative efficiency (bearing in mind we’ll never reach full allocative efficiency).

    Cutting certain public sector jobs is necessary but where appropriate Government should aid and assist affected workers move into more productive roles. That from a public servant – not some commentator with no public sector experience.

  28. jarbury 28
    16 June 2009 at 9:37 pm

    Indeed Shona. The issue with the tar sands is partially environmental – that they create a heck of a lot of CO2 emissions through their extraction and refinement. But, as you say, probably a bigger issue is simply that they’re not scaleable due to the water required. By that I mean there may be billions and billions of barrels of oil locked up in the tar sands, but there is a fairly low maximum extraction rate for the area.

    So it’ll give us oil for a long time, it just won’t give us much oil at any one time. That’s the main issue with peak oil – there comes a point where you just can’t increase your production levels any more. Arguably, this was reached in 2005 (as I’m pretty sure oil production hasn’t increased beyond 2005 levels).

    • GC Martin 28.1
      17 June 2009 at 11:23 am

      hi there..

      your first para has me think be that as it may re scaleleability etc, but I would point out how Canadian tarsand oil producers are planning a two-to-three-fold production increase over the next year or so..

      the drive for this appears factored by:

      1. can’t drill offshore US (to any needed extent anyway);
      2. prices to sustain high cashflows

      this latter point requires acceptance by consumers/markets that baseline economics shall reward ‘scarcity’. Certain hedgefunds are working this.. which likely explains individual exponents’ donation capacity to earn community brownie points by which the so-influenced become fodder to their fees pool.

      Which you’ll recognise has bugger all to do with production, field jobs et cetera. And yet a great deal to do with hijacking economics in lieu of monetized manipulation/ whose era just fell over.

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