Hot Earth = Cold Job Market?
In my last blog post, I explained all the ways that climate change would positively impact the future job market, but I might have been hiding part of the truth a little bit. Though we are bound to see an increase in jobs in certain sectors such as architecture, zoology, and professors, for example, sadly that won’t be the case for thousands of other workers who will soon be without a job.
A few examples of jobs that are going to be negatively impacted include:
- Agriculture
- Construction
- Pilots
- Mail Carriers
Without looking into this topic it may seem strange that the weather itself is going to change the way we look at work and the jobs available, but it actually has a much bigger effect that many of us would ever believe. According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Food And Agricultural Organization, there are over 1 billion people employed in world agriculture, which represents 1 in 3 of all workers in the world.
Knowing that this seems like a much bigger issue than it was 2 paragraphs ago. 1 in 3 people rely on agriculture to feed their families and pay their bills, and that’s all going to change because of our constant abuse to our planet.
One part of the world that is going to see a major impact is in sub-Saharan where 1 in 3 looks minuscule compared to their working population which is comprised of over 60% agriculture workers. Now it seems even worse than it did the last paragraph.
As I said earlier, it’s not only jobs in agriculture that will be affected. The United States Postal Service actually released an adaption plan named the “United States Postal Service Climate Change Adaption Plan” which addressed its future delivering mail while also dealing with “excessively high temperatures, more heavy downpours, an increase in wildfires, more severe droughts, permafrost thawing, ocean acidification, and sea level rise”.
In their plan, they said that all of these but 3 would all heavily impact their workers and the way they run their business.
Not only is the weather going to be having an impact, but so is the fact that they are major contributors of greenhouse gas emissions with their very large fleet of mail carrier vehicles.
