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  • From: "Nicholas Roberts" <nicholas@themediasociety.org>
  • To: "permacultue discussion list" <pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org>, "pil members list" <pil-members@lists.permacultureinternational.org>, permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] The Truth About Green Jobs
  • Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 05:25:00 +0000

MotherJones.com <http://www.motherjones.com/index.html> /
News<http://www.motherjones.com/news/index.html>
/ Feature

The Truth About Green Jobs
Yes, they could be plentiful. And no, they're not immune to outsourcing.

* David Roberts" /> *
November 17" /> , 2008" />

Message discipline has never been one of the left's strengths (*oy gevalt*),
so it's been somewhat astonishing to hear the chorus of support lately for
"green jobs." From city officials in Albuquerque and Minneapolis up to Nancy
Pelosi and Barack Obama, more and more Democrats are framing climate change
as "a moment of opportunity for innovation and job creation," as Obama has
put it, that can revitalize the flagging US economy. But occasionally,
enthusiasm outpaces reality. Let's sift through a few of the more popular
claims.

[ 1 ] *Green jobs are everywhere!*

Does the administrative assistant in the front office of a solar power
company count? How about the vanpool driver? Using extremely generous
assumptions, energy economist Roger Bezdek calculated that green jobs
accounted for about 5 percent of the US workforce in 2006. That's not
shabby, but it's a long way from a clean, green economy.

[ 2 ] *We'll turn miners into solar installers.*

Working-class Americans still feel burned by nafta, when they were told not
to worry about lost manufacturing jobs because they'd be trained for new,
high-skill jobs. Clean-energy advocates, promising that jobs sent offshore
by future carbon taxes will quickly be replaced, are now pushing an
uncomfortably similar line.

But things may be different this time. There is already a relatively high
demand for green-collar labor in manufacturing and the power sector, and a
shortage of trained workers. In a 2005 survey by the American Public Power
Association, half of utility employers said that at least 20 percent of
their workers would be eligible to retire within the next seven years. Most
of those 20 percent were highly skilled. Those vacancies avoid the main
problem with the old nafta strategy: A job training program that's not
linked up to specific industries with documented demand for labor "never
works," says Dan Kammen, director of the University of California-Berkeley's
Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and a top environmental policy
adviser for Obama. "But if you have a federal mandate for clean energy, and
you have job training in association with industry, there is a big success
route." It's worked in Germany, which added 57,000 jobs in the wind, solar,
hydro, and biomass industries between 2004 and 2006. But in the US, where
industrial and job training policy is still haphazard? That remains to be
seen.

[ 3 ] *Green jobs are primarily in wind and solar, i.e. the West and
Southwest.*

Consider wind turbines: Each consists of more than 8,000 parts, from ball
bearings to fiberglass housing. A 2004 report from the national research
firm Renewable Energy Policy Project found more than 16,000 US firms that
could take part in that supply chain, most in the populous Southern and
Midwestern states that have lost the bulk of the manufacturing jobs.

But renewable energy is only half the strategy. The other half, and the
biggest job creator, is increasing efficiency—revamping buildings, cars, and
appliances as well as improving transit, waste, and water infrastructure.
Take the building sector (please)—it accounts for 39 percent of US carbon
emissions. Driving up its energy efficiency may be the fastest and most
cost-effective way to reduce emissions; by one estimate, 75 percent of
buildings stand to be replaced or substantially rehabbed over the next 25
years. According to architect Edward Mazria, investing about $20 billion in
building energy efficiency would save consumers $8.46 billion in energy
bills annually (a less than three-year payback), replace 22 coal-fired power
plants, reduce annual CO2 emissions by the equivalent of taking almost 16
million cars off the road for a year—and create more than 200,000 new jobs.

[ 4 ] *Green jobs can't be outsourced.*

There's nothing magical about a solar panel that makes it less likely to
gravitate toward cheap labor—in fact, China already produces one-third of
the world's solar cells. If the US wants green manufacturing jobs, it will
have to develop industrial policy to keep them here. Obama has taken a step
in that direction by proposing $150 billion in spending over 10 years on
green energy incentives and job training. And infrastructure jobs can't be
outsourced—retrofitting an economy must be done from the inside.

[ 5 ] *The green-jobs movement can unite progressives across race and class
lines.*

While "green jobs" and "green-collar jobs" are often used interchangeably,
the latter is actually a subset of the former—the blue-collar green jobs.
And who gets the green-collar work? Labor organizations want them to
replenish the declining pool of mid-skill, working-class manufacturing jobs.
(Though actually, old distinctions between white-collar and blue-collar work
may not necessarily apply here. Renewables are so hot, says Michele McGeoy,
who runs a solar-photovoltaic installation training program in Richmond,
California, that "College grads who want to get their foot in the door are
willing to do labor.") Meanwhile, community groups would like them matched
up with recovering addicts, paroled felons, and at-risk youth.

Politicians are notorious for wooing white, working-class voters. If policy
choices have to be made that favor either whites or poor minorities, who do
you think gets screwed? The Green Jobs Act of 2007 set aside $125 million
for green-collar job training. Just 20 percent was targeted for pathways out
of poverty.

[ 6 ] *Fossil fuels power lots of jobs.*

Proponents of fossil fuels tout job creation, but the truth is there aren't
many jobs in dirty energy, and that number is declining. To wit: Over the
last two decades, coal output in the US has grown by a third, while the
number of jobs in the coal industry has fallen by half. According to
economist John A. "Skip" Laitner of the American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy, for every $1 million of revenue in energy-related
sectors, fewer than two jobs are created, compared to seven jobs per $1
million earned elsewhere. Thus, shifting investment away from conventional
energy can't help but create more jobs, particularly during the transition
to a green economy, when construction, efficiency, and other labor-intensive
industries will be scaling up.

[ 7 ] *Environmental laws slow the economy.*

The classic rebuttal to green-jobs hype: Putting people to work installing
geothermal systems won't help if green policies destroy more jobs than they
create. In this year's Senate debate over cap-and-trade legislation, for
example, Republicans brandished economic models from the Environmental
Protection Agency and elsewhere that predicted the destruction of up to 1.8
million jobs if a price is put on carbon.

Without getting into a discussion of econometric modeling (you're welcome),
suffice it to say many mainstream macroeconomic models are increasingly
considered, in the somewhat intemperate words of ucla economics professor
Matthew Kahn, "crap." Their problem is a whole series of dubious assumptions
that overstate costs and understate benefits.

Even as it tallies up specific jobs in specific industries, the green-jobs
crew is missing a chance to confront the toxic premise that sustainability
is at odds with economic growth. A country that takes on the massive task of
creating a clean and efficient economy will put more people to work, create
competitive industries, and ultimately make all jobs a little greener.

*David Roberts is a staff writer at Grist.org.
Tim J. Luddy is the creative director at Mother Jones. *

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This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National
Progress<http://www.motherjones.com/about/admin/index.html>,
the Investigative Fund of Mother
Jones<http://www.motherjones.com/about/philanthropy/index.html>,
and gifts from generous readers like
you<https://secure.ga3.org/03/donate_now>.

(c) 2008" /> The Foundation for National Progres
--
Nicholas Roberts
[im] skype:niccolor



  • [permaculture] The Truth About Green Jobs, Nicholas Roberts, 12/09/2008

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