The New York Times tackles the hottest trend since carbon offsets:
Green jobs are especially good "because they cannot be easily outsourced, say, to Asia," said Van Jones, president of Green for All, an organization based in Oakland, Calif., whose goal is promoting renewable energy and lifting workers out of poverty. "If we are going to weatherize buildings, they have to be weatherized here," he said. "If you put up solar panels, you can't ship a building to Asia and have them put the solar panels on and ship it back. These jobs have to be done in the United States."
Many advocates of green employment say the jobs should be good for the workers as well as the environment. Two weeks ago in Pittsburgh, more than 800 people attended a national green-jobs conference, where much of the talk was about ensuring that green jobs provided living wages. Many speakers anticipated that the jobs would do so, because they often required special skills, like the technical ability to maintain a giant wind turbine (and the physical ability to climb a 20-story ladder to work on it).
It's hard to decide where to wade into this silliness. First off, what's wrong with Asia? Do environmentalists not want Asians to have jobs? Second, if a green job cannot be outsourced, does that mean that manufacturing solar panels isn't green? After all, they can be produced anywhere. And why do green jobs -- not including functions such as accounting -- require more skill than traditional jobs? Another green jobs advocate tells the Times that a traditional mining job magically becomes green when the metal is used for a green purpose. So which is it?
Advocates also say that green jobs are different because they produce things 'the world wants.' I suppose that sets them apart from traditional capital intensive and polluting jobs such as say, producing food and energy. Those are clearly things that have been forced on the reluctant consumer.
It seems it might be time to conduct a poll and figure out how much Americans are willing to spend to create more green jobs. I bet it's about the same as they'd spend to combat global warming.
