The green jobs debate rages on. Some argue that all the stimulus money being poured into green efforts - like renewable energy and building retrofitting – will create millions of new jobs, and will revitalize the economy. Others are not so sure. The latest opinion to be voiced comes out of the Institute for Energy Research, which just published a study challenging the rosy predictions of people like the Center For American Progress (who predicted that $100 billion worth of green investment would create 2 million jobs).
One criticism is that the term “green job” is ill defined. This is certainly true, although the root of the problem is that “green” is pretty ill defined to begin with. There is no “green” sector – all sectors of our economic infrastructure are part of the problem, and fixing all of those parts will have to be part of the solution. And so, a construction worker weatherizing a house has a green job just as much as a solar energy technician.
And so it is difficult to make predictions in the first place, let alone specific numbers like 2 million. But the IER also points out that for all the new jobs that will be created when we start building wind turbines, we will lose jobs at coal power plants. In fact, the impact will go far beyond just the power sector. People talk about how the economy needs to be “restructured”; to be blunt, “restructuring” means that a lot of industries that people depend on to put food on their table will become discouraged, and eventually useless.
Will The Green Jobs Come? Read more
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I see this question in my inbox or in comments several times per week. The asker generally proposes one of several possibilities. These range oil-company assassinations to esoteric problems with the car's transmissions.
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