green jobs

The green tax credits are good ideas, but not good stimulus ideas

So, maybe you've heard: the economy looks like it might be headed for the tank. You may have also noticed that there's an election this year. That means it must be time for a stimulus package on Capitol Hill. No one up there wants to head into reelection with rising unemployment, a rash of foreclosures, and falling incomes on their hands, without at least looking like they're doing something about it. So there's a rush on the Hill to get a "stimulus package" out the door to help boost the economy ASAP.

Cynicism aside, I think this is a good thing. People are suffering, and if the government can do something about it, why shouldn't they? It sometimes seems like heresy these days, but I tend to think it's what we pay them to do.

The problem is that some of the stimulus proposals floating around, including ones by our green friends (see Josh Dorner's post for example), are not very good stimulus policies. It's not that any of these ideas are bad. Most of them are downright good. Excellent, even. The problem is that almost none of them can be remotely classified as stimulus.

Here's the problem, or at least one of them: Since World War II, the average recession has lasted just 11 months. Add the fact that it takes a fair bit of time (anywhere from 3 to 6 months) before we even recognize that we're in a recession. Add still more time to decide what to do about it, and more time on top of that for whatever we decide to do to actually have an effect, and you see the problem. Even for the quickest policy approach, we could be solidly 7 months into an 11 month recession before we can have any impact.

There is a very short window for policy to stimulate the economy. If we don't act fast enough, the policy won't take effect soon enough to help anyone. If we're late enough, the policy ends up hitting the economy when it's on the upswing, and instead of smoothing out the business cycle, we end up contributing to it.

Green energy projects bloom in California

Right on the heels of Tappergate, The New York Times comes out with a couple of articles exploring the economic benefits of fighting global warming. As is evident to anyone but a Taphole, the energy business is the largest business there ever is or was or will be, and therein lies not only enormous money-making opportunities but jobs, jobs, jobs. These things, we hear, are good for the economy.

So, take California, which decided to get serious about developing a solar industry. The state committed $3 billion in declining incentives over a 10-year period, and in return leveraged a lot more than that in private equity. Venture capitalists have put $625 million into California solar companies in 2007 alone. Manufacturers are feverishly commercializing new technologies, and if you can spell solar you can get a job out here.

So, how does an enterprising young state get a piece of that action? I'm glad you asked. Last Wednesday, in Denver, with Governor Ritter on hand, we released a report that we developed with the Center for American Progress titled "Developing State Photovoltaic Markets" (PDF). It's a blueprint for making a solar market work. The premise here is that the key to lowering solar's costs -- and generating good jobs while you are at it -- is creating markets. The folks at NREL have done a great job in developing the technology; photovoltaics work great. Government R&D efforts should be redoubled, but using policy to open markets will leverage orders of magnitude more in private equity and further accelerate solar's entry into the mainstream.

Secondly, without an extension of the federal investment tax credit, everything we are trying to do gets 30 percent harder -- and it's quite hard enough as it is, thank you very much. There's a great argument to be made for putting an extension in the financial stimulus package, as the Senate is currently considering. Congress, if you are reading this, won't you please consider a very easy action that will jumpstart the economy, fight global warming, and establish energy independence all at the same time? These things are popular with voters, we hear.

Umbra on choosing a college

Dear Umbra, I am a high school junior this school year. I am currently researching what college to attend. One major decision in your school choice should be choosing a college that is strong in the field of your study. I am interested in college majors that will translate into green jobs. I know about […]

Green-collar jobs mean standing up for people and the planet

For those of us who are a part of the movement for "green-collar jobs," last Sunday's Democratic presidential debate was a real watershed moment.

Clinton, Edwards, and Obama were in the debate of their lives. And all three of them passionately championed the importance of creating good jobs in the clean energy sector. They presented "green-collar jobs" as a way to simultaneously boost the economy and beat global warming.

Their words were like music to our ears. It felt like a victory for all of our organizations, which have been making this argument for some time. So ... hats off to the Apollo Alliance, Ella Baker Center, Workforce Alliance, Center for American Progress, Sustainable South Bronx, Center on Wisconsin Strategy, 1Sky, Energy Action Coalition, Green For All, and many more.

And then yesterday The Washington Post ran a major story on green jobs, Time magazine has taken up the issue, and CNN just featured it on their Situation Room. So it is now official: our demand for "green-collar jobs" has finally broken through!

But before the concept gets watered down by its very popularity, now might be a good time to give a clear and uncompromising answer to this question: What is a green-collar job, anyway?

The latest eco-buzzword

The Washington Post has a good article yesterday on the explosion in the use of the term "green-collar" jobs. You will no doubt be hearing much more of this term since it is a favorite of Clinton and Edwards; Me and the Center for American Progress are on the bandwagon; and even the super trendspotting Tom Friedman has glommed onto it.

No, it's not a perfect term. G-C jobs -- my effort to coin the ultimate eco-buzzword -- won't get you a green uniform and green power-ring like the Green Lantern Corps, although you will, coincidentally enough, be promoting green power. As the Post notes:

... while white-collar and blue-collar bring distinctive images to mind -- the mutual fund manager screaming into his BlackBerry, the coal miner coming home, coughing from a long day -- such iconic imagery is hard to find with the green-collar worker.

Still, the term, popularized by social activists like Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center, does have a powerful ring to it [sorry about that], so I expect it will be around for a while. I will try to limit use to, say, once a month.

With all the upbeat talk about an environmental labor boom, is rhetoric running away from reality?

Someone help me puzzle this out:

Proposition 1: A shift to renewable energy and energy efficiency will result in a boom in green-collar jobs -- good service-industry work that can't be outsourced. This proposition is attractive because it holds forth the promise of a grand alliance between greens and the labor movement. See, e.g., Tom Friedman and everyone who posts on Grist.

Proposition 2: The optimism over green-collar jobs is a classic example of the make-work bias, a widespread economic fallacy that mistakes amount of work for wealth creation. The actual effect of greenhouse-gas reductions on labor markets is unclear, so environmentalists should stick to environmental policy. See, e.g., various environmental economists.

I don't have a clever opinion here, although I will say that the case for a positive labor impact from energy efficiency measures seems decently solid. Efficiency is, after all, an unambiguously good thing for the economy as a whole. If it costs us less to get the same amount of stuff, we're all richer. Certainly this is a nice thing for consumers, and because energy industries tend not to be labor-intensive, we can expect that wealth creation at the expense of energy producers will be a net benefit for employment as well. I think.

The impact of renewable energy, on the other hand, is more difficult to suss out. More to the point, it's not clear that anyone has sussed it out. Discuss.

Green job planning for 2008

It’s a whole new year! A fresh canvas to paint on. The first page of the brilliant adventure story that will be your green career in 2008. An endless progression of dreary days with that pathetic guy in the next cubicle who spends half his time complaining and the other half in loud personal conversations […]

Job market sees growing demand for sustainability managers

Way back before the turn of the century (when we partied like it was 1999), I could count the number of real “sustainability managers” on my fingers and toes and still have a couple of digits left over. What a difference a decade makes. Today, I see new job postings every week for sustainability directors, […]

The economy is an ecosystem

It is increasingly argued by people who used to be climate change deniers that preventing global warming will be too expensive to contemplate; even the Stern report, which was put together by a sympathetic economist, estimates that the world economy would have to decrease annual growth by about 5 percent. On the other hand, reports are emerging that argue that green jobs will reinvigorate the economy, creating an entirely new green-collar job sector.

I want to argue something much stronger -- that by building green industries, such as wind, solar, geothermal, public transit, zero-emission buildings, and others, we will not only provide millions of jobs, we will be able to rebuild our manufacturing and machinery industries and thereby expand the middle class and the long-term source of our wealth. I will argue such an expansion can be environmentally sustainable.

In order to understand why this is so, we have to understand how the economy works, looked at from a production-centered point of view. Think of the economy as a kind of ecosystem -- a system that is full of various niches and levels, as a natural ecosystem is.