THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 250, September 29, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
GREEN-COLLAR JOBS, OR CON JOBS?
By Paul K. Driessen
ALLIANCES BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTALISTS, LABOR UNIONS, & POLITICIANS USING THEIR CLOUT TO PROMOTE "NEW
ENERGY" & "ECONOMIC VISION": WILL THEIR EFFORTS CREATE NEW JOBS, WITHOUT ADVERSELY IMPACTING
EXISTING JOBS, LIVING STANDARDS, & ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES? TAKING A HARD LOOK AT THE GREEN-COLLAR
JOB ISSUE, EXAMINING ITS REALISTIC POTENTIAL, EXAGGERATED PROMISES & LIKELY PITFALLS, AS WELL AS THE
POLITICAL & IDEOLOGICAL FORCES BEHIND THE GREEN JOBS MOVEMENT -- CALLING ATTENTION TO THE DELIBERATE &
DETERMINED DRIVE TOWARD A GOVERNMENT-DIRECTED TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA'S ENERGY & ECONOMIC SYSTEM
FULL STORY:
The quest to be “green” has spawned countless proposals, programs, laws, and advertising campaigns. In Washington,
D.C., a “Green Jobs Advisory Council” is promoting policies for green buildings, energy efficiency, renewable energy,
city infrastructure, and lower carbon emissions.
Better sequencing of traffic lights speeds commuters to their workplaces, saves gasoline, cuts pollution, and reduces
accidents. Better insulation reduces energy expenditures, and pays back investments in a few years. Concentrated juice,
detergent, and other products reduce packaging, shipping, and storage costs.
Redesigned systems and energy-efficient computers and servers mean big savings in power-hungry data centers that
facilitate banking, You Tube, Internet searches, and modern business operations.
Initiatives like these also create jobs – “green-collar jobs” in the vernacular of activists, politicians, PR firms, and
companies. Renewable energy and energy efficiency (RE&EE) industries already generate 8.5 million jobs in the United
States, claims a 2007 report from the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), and could create “as many as 40 million
jobs by 2030.”
That may happen, or may be wishful thinking. It depends on how terms are defined – and whether hype and hope are
distinguished from reality, practicality, and unintended consequences.
The ASES report includes direct and indirect employment associated with retrofitting buildings, installing insulation or
solar panels, constructing transmission lines from wind farms, producing biofuels and fuel-efficient vehicles, designing
and manufacturing supplies for projects – even jobs for accountants, lawyers, salesmen, repairmen, truck drivers,
landscapers, bureaucrats and lobbyists.
Many projects represent sound economics and should be pursued vigorously. Others would not survive without
mandates, renewable energy standards, and taxpayer-financed subsidies that the Wall Street Journal says are 100
times greater per unit of energy produced than those enjoyed by oil and gas
Moreover, money and time spent by governments and citizens on green-collar initiatives isn’t available to address critical
problems like teenage mothers, absentee fathers, crime, AIDS, drug abuse, dropouts from failing schools, soaring gasoline
prices and heating bills, or dilapidated apartment buildings, roads, and bridges.
Some opportunities are limited by the nature of a community’s business sectors. Washington, D.C.’s, government-centered
sector, for instance, cannot easily take advantage of new technologies that enable smelters and factories to recycle waste
heat to power turbines and generate electricity for the plants and nearby customers – or for power grids, if regulations and
equipment permit such hookups.
Other opportunities are more myth than fact. Solar panels to heat water or generate electricity have a maximum lifetime of 30
years, but a century of energy savings is needed to equal the panels’ installation cost, says the Royal Institution of
Chartered Surveyors.
Wind farms require large swaths of land to generate intermittent electricity, and eco-activists often oppose the transmission
towers and lines needed to carry their power to distant cities and factories.
Ethanol requires huge amounts of land, water, and natural gas to replace a tiny portion of our gasoline demand with an
expensive fuel that drives up the cost of food and gets cars 10% less mileage per tank.
Compressed natural gas vehicles represent only 120,000 of America’s 235,000,000 cars and light trucks. Honda’s
CNG-powered Civic costs $7000 more than the regular model, but has half the range. Converting an existing vehicle to run
on CNG costs $3000. And opposition to drilling on federal lands means increasing demand for natural gas (for cars, home
heating, factories, electricity generation, fertilizers, petrochemicals, wind-power backup, and ethanol production) will send
prices even higher.
An even bigger problem with the green-collar vision is its ultimate goal: ending our “addiction” to fossil fuels and
mandating “sustainable,” hydrocarbon-free lifestyles. This agenda is promoted by U.S. Senator Barack Hussein Obama,
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of environmentalists, labor unions, civic groups, and
companies that want the United States to run only on conservation, efficiency and “clean energy,” through government
control of energy and economic decisions.
Their agenda covers every conceivable facet of our homes, businesses, infrastructure, and lives. Its consequences – good
and bad, intended and unintended – would affect every sector of American society.
Fossil fuels provide 85% of all the energy Americans use; nuclear power an additional 8%; hydroelectric another 3 percent.
Wind and solar produce a minuscule 0.5% of total U.S. energy.
Conservation, efficiency, and renewables will not bridge this enormous energy gap, certainly not in one decade and probably
not in four. To decimate the energy system we have, and claim we can replace it with technologies that don’t yet exist, is
delusional and irresponsible.
Creating millions of green-collar jobs, via legislative mandates and taxpayer-funded subsidies, will require trillions of dollars
(and vast mineral resources) to dismantle an existing infrastructure that works and replace it with one that is mostly
experimental. It will pink-slip tens of millions of direct and indirect jobs that depend on abundant, reliable, affordable energy
from hydrocarbon and nuclear power.
Yet, not once have renewable energy proponents explained where that money will come from, or how they will compensate
workers, families, business owners, investors, and pensioners whose stake in our current economy will be impacted. Nor do
they address current energy needs or other troubling questions
Producing oil and natural gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Outer Continental Shelf would slash the $700 billion that
America spends annually on foreign oil (and is about to spend on a Wall Street bailout) and garner $3 trillion in lease bonus,
royalty, and corporate tax revenues, according to congressional and University of California calculations, plus another half
trillion in worker income taxes. But RE&EE activists want to keep these areas and revenues perpetually off limits.
Catastrophic climate change remains the primary justification for this opposition to hydrocarbon fuels. But satellite
measurements reveal no global warming since 1998, despite steadily rising CO2 levels. And climate models that predict
disaster bear little resemblance to Earth’s actual climate. It’s no wonder hundreds of climate scientists reject the false
“consensus” on climate chaos, as Lawrence Solomon’s book The Deniers, a U.S. Senate report, and the Heartland
Institute’s 2008 conference demonstrate.
Many labor union leaders nevertheless support the anti-energy agenda. Some see mandates and subsidies as a way to
increase government and service sector jobs, or retool some blue collar jobs to RE&EE substitutes. Others want to
replenish under-funded union pension plans with revenues from massive taxpayer-funded renewable energy, efficiency and
global warming “prevention” projects.
Even before the financial services implosion, the California public employees and teachers unions faced significant pension
shortfalls. The Service Employees International Union pension plan covers its officers completely, but is only 75% funded
for rank-and-file workers. Their self-serving advocacy of renewables and efficiency raises serious ethical, conflict-of-interest,
and portfolio risk questions.
As the Washington-based think tank DC Progress emphasizes, we need more green-collar jobs. But we also need to
safeguard existing jobs, and avoid killing the energy we have, before we develop the “new energy” that some keep promising.
Otherwise, millions will freeze hungry and jobless in the dark.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, a member of the Board of Scholars of DC
Progress, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity