November 8, 2008 – 6:10 pm
Will a government led green revolution galvanize the foundering economy of the United States and set the stage for a new era of growth and prosperity? The question has attracted a significant amount of attention since the financial crisis began to escalate several months ago and stuck a wrench in the wheels of the go-go-go global economy. Heavyweights like Thomas Friedman have begun to champion the idea of a “green revolution” as the best antidote to America’s current economic illness. Here’s how Friedman puts it:
Basically, what I’m arguing, is the energy sources that powered the Industrial Revolution, we thought were going to be permanently inexhaustible, inexpensive, and benign. What we discovered as we’ve entered what I call the energy climate era, around the time of the Millennium, is that these energy sources that have powered growth since 1750, since the Industrial Revolution, oil, coal, gas are exhaustible, expensive and toxic. Toxic for the climate, toxic for the air we breathe, toxic geopolitically because of the kind of regimes they empower. And so, to me, the boundary line between the previous era and the energy climate era … is this crossing of the line, where the very fuels that power our growth, go from inexpensive, inexhaustible and benign to expensive, exhaustible and toxic. And I think that is a fundamental shift…. I like to call this new era the energy climate era because I think issues related to energy, its price, availability and impact on the world and the climate are going to really shape more politics than any factors as we move deeper into the 21st century.
Some very simple and relatively low-cost initiatives. Let’s start with green-collar jobs. Well, you change the building codes in cities and make it really economically advantageous to put up solar panels on your roof because the local utility will have to buy that solar power from you. Or you change the code around insulation, how a home is supposed to be insulated at any given time, at what level, you create a huge demand for home insulators and solar-panel installers. Those are blue-collar jobs that I would call green-collar jobs. And I think you’re going to see more and more of those kind of jobs - building a wind turbine, installing a wind turbine - that’s a big manufacturing, formerly a blue-collar, now a green-collar job. So, that’s what I’m focusing on that end. At the high end, of course, there’s going to be more and more need for the scientists who can design those solar panels and drive their progress forward, so that they can become more and more efficient. There’s going to be huge demand for middle, kind of white-collar jobs that will also be green-collar jobs, to come in and help design and implement energy efficiency in your own home.
As David Rothkopf , energy consultant, says, will this financial crisis be the end of green or could green possibly the end of the financial crisis? I think that is a very, very important question. Right now, I’m extremely worried. I’m worried that the falling price of oil will reduce consumer demand for energy-efficient products and better mileage cars and at the same time reduce the willingness of venture capitalists to take risks on more expensive renewable fuel, knowing that it’s going to be harder for them to compete in a marketplace of $2 per gallon gasoline than it’s going to be as opposed to $4 per gallon gasoline.
Despite Friedman’s optimism, a number of conservative voices have called attention to the significant costs likely to accompany a green revolution. Here is how eNewsUSA
summarized what one of the most recent critics of the green revolution concept had to say:
On November 5, in a “WebMemo” entitled, Impact of CO2 Restrictions on Employment and Income: Green Jobs or Gone Jobs?, David Kreutzer, Ph.D., with the Heritage Foundation criticized the report and two others claiming that policy initiatives to advance a green investment agenda necessarily hurt economic growth and employment. Kreutzer said, “The clear political failure of the Lieberman-Warner bill last spring shows that support for global-warming legislation wanes considerably when the extraordinary costs are compared to the almost insignificant benefits. In response, those pushing restrictions on carbon dioxide (CO2) have tried to repackage global warming legislation as jobs bills. As appealing as the repackaging seems on the surface (lots of high-paid, high-tech workers in lab coats), the support for these claims collapses once it is examined.”
Kreutzer makes a compelling point about the real costs associated with a green economy project. On the other hand, he assumes that the economic costs associated with clean energy and sustainable economic practices are avoidable. They are not. There is not enough oil and there is too much carbon. The combination (plus the entrenched political mandate for combating climate change) means that the “green revolution” will happen regardless of America’s embrace of it. The costs of weaning our economy off of fossil fuels are going to be felt anyway you chalk it up. The only question is who gets the jobs that might offset the hurt? Americans or Europeans or the Chinese?
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