It's Green Jobs, Stupid

San Francisco -- Gasoline will hit $4 a gallon soon. Millions of mortgage holders face foreclosure and the usual nostrums from the Federal Reserve Board aren't working. Everyone thinks we are headed for a recession because consumers can't keep spending if their wages have stagnated and their houses are depreciating.

People are looking for some quick fixes, some pixie dust, some magic potions -- perhaps even some snake oil. But the exciting -- if frustrating -- thing is that a fix has been right at hand all along.

We need to accelerate the shift to a green economy and focus on making sure that, as we create it, we generate good, green jobs at the same time.

If Congress had raised fuel-economy standards a decade ago, we would be using much less gasoline to get to work -- and the price of oil would never have hit $100 a barrel. Yes, Detroit would have had to hire hundreds of thousands of workers to modernize its auto plants -- but it wouldn't instead be shutting them down.

In Sunday's New York Times Business Section,  Alan Binder proposed to revive a New Deal Federal Agency, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, to buy out defaulting mortgages from the banks at their fair value, then refinance them for the home owners. Binder's idea has been endorsed by Senator Chris Dodd and others, and it sounds like a good one -- but he should consider adding a wrinkle. In exchange for having the government help them stay in their houses, homeowners should have to retrofit them for energy efficiency -- with capital loaned by the same agency. Their utility bills would drop dramatically, increasing the odds that they would be able to make their mortgage payments -- and millions of new building trades jobs and manufacturing jobs would be created producing and installing the news windows, insulation, furnaces, etc. (You can't outsource the job of installing windows on your house.)

At a meeting Tuesday of the Apollo Alliance, whose main focus is green jobs, people pointed out how crazy it is that once again this winter we are spending billions of dollars helping low-income families pay their heating bills, when for the same amount of money we could have helped them permanently reduce their bills to an affordable level with energy retrofits. It turns out that three percent of our building stock is either rebuilt or substantially remodeled each year; if we could ensure that all of those were efficient, and retrofitted another three percent a year, within 11 years every house and commercial building in America would be modernized, while millions of Americans would have had good jobs on the project.

The new Congressional leadership gets it. The House yesterday voted 236-182 to keep the solar and wind industries alive by extending their tax credits. But almost no one is certain that the Senate can muster 60 votes to overcome the filibuster that thus far has blocked this effort, even though these industries could become huge new job machines for the American economy. In fact, the White House is threatening to veto the bill to protect huge subsidies for the oil industry, which is exporting jobs to the Middle East rather than creating them here at home.

So we have a lot of public education to do. The Sierra Club, Apollo, and the United Steelworkers are sponsoring a major conference in Pittsburgh in March, designed to launch the green jobs revolution. This could be one of the most important steps we take this year -- its very clear that the economy is going to be the focus of this year's elections, and that green jobs are the key to fixing the economy.

Comments

[James Polk]

The argument against green has always been centered on the notion that we have to choose between "jobs" and the environment. Reality is disproving that myth.

If we establish strong performance standards based on
what's good for humanity we tap into America's famous entrepreneurial spirit. The result: green-collar jobs and a booming economy centered on healthy, positive change.

My blog discusses those very issues. I invite you to click in. Scroll down to "Stimulating Proposition" for a post on a green stimulus package, and "Green is the new Green" for a discussion about the cost benefits of sustainable development.

http://newamericanvillage.blogspot.com/

James Polk, Architect and Neighborhood Designer
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA

[PROUD TREE HUGGER]

Gas will soon be $5 -$6 a gallon - and this is good. Will it hurt? Sure, but it will slowly force people to consume less and look at alternatives seriously. It's what we need. It doesn't matter who is in congress if people aren;t willing to seriously change their habits.

[Paul Justus]

Good comments from Carl on Green Jobs and a great blog-space posted by James Polk!

We must have Green Jobs and Green Technology but, I believe, we need to work around the clock focused on one thing to get the job done. More than anything else we need a Green Tax Structure. Once we have Green tax incentives Green Jobs and Technology will follow.

When prices reflect the true cost of the environment you and I will automatically Green-Shift to the ecologically right thing to do.

We need to lower taxes on work and production as we raise Green Fees on the use (and pollution)of our common natural resources. Some of this revenue should go into Environmental Trust Fund accounts to pay not only for governmental services, but also to preserve natural habitat and to provide individual retirement, health savings, and "green transition" accounts for all of us.

So if we want an ecologically sustainable future let us promote more than anything else a Green Tax Shift:
Tax Waste, Not Work;
Tax Economic Bads, Not Goods;
Tax What We Take, Not What We Make;
Tax Pollution, Not Production;
Tax Entropy, Not Effort

GeoArk
www.green-shift.org

[jstack6]

gas is already $7 to $10 all over the world. We have huge subsidies our government pay to big oil and have for 20 years. Congress failed to stop these payouts recently in HB6.

Sure it will be hard for some people if the price at the pump goes to what it really is. Many people will have to use the bus or even walk. I ride my bicycle back and forth to work just for the health of it. This also gets over 2,000 MPGe on bio-fuels,( eating healthy). It also reduces oil use, pollution and I could never run over anyone and kill or injury them like vehicles do at the rate of 40,000 killed in accidents each year. That's more than any war !

The price of lives for oil in Iraq and pollution along with global warming is already too high. We have to start walking, biking, car pooling ,mass transit and caring. More people are over weight and out of shape than ever before. It's time to wake up.

[Alan Scott]

I really would like to believe in your " green jobs " point of view, but I honestly have my doubts that it is practical. There are other countries such as Japan and Germany that are as technically advanced as the US, and have fewer conventional energy resources. One would think that by necessity they would be further along in the green economy progression.

I have not heard of any green energy in these countries that is not heavily subsidized. Eventually everything green has to stand on it's own or it is nothing more than a government hand out to special interests such as the ethanol bonanza to the big agri- businesses.

[Alan Scott]

: jstack6 ,

You said, "We have huge subsidies our government pay to big oil and have for 20 years." What subsidies are you talking about? I see all kinds of Government subsidies for Big Green.

Paul Justus ,

You said, "More than anything else we need a Green Tax Structure. Once we have Green tax incentives Green Jobs and Technology will follow."

That would be an economic disaster .