# Someone Explain 'Green Jobs', Please. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 8, 2009, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241 "2009-09-08T02:37:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/41 "2009-09-09T14:54:03Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Serendipity cannot be planned. At best, you can use a shotgun, spraying technology all over the place hoping some of it sticks somewhere you never thought of. > > Now, I’m not saying that no good can possibly come of this. I’ll even give you a better example than the Minuteman missile - the global GPS system. Centrally planned, it has saved the world far more money than it cost to design and implement. So such things are possible. > > I’d just like to see an actual plan. Emphasis added. **Sam** , in one breath you claim that technological innovations from government investment can’t be planned, and in the next breath you say that there needs to be an actual plan for them. Which do you mean? > [@Sam Stone](#): > > The people coming up with the plans I’ve seen are not engineers. They’re not scientists. They’re not economists. Well, your OP seemed so clueless about the whole “green jobs” issue that we tried to provide easy-to-understand overviews for you. If you’re now ready for more detailed information, I’m happy to oblige. For instance, if you want plans from economists, you could try the 2000 book [Blueprint for a Sustainable Economy](http://books.google.com/books?id=bzprvbYy3tgC&dq) by the late University College London economist David William Pearce and Edward Barbier. The rest of the grumpfest that is your most recent post seems to be mostly your own cite-free bloviating about how you personally think the private sector is already doing everything worthwhile to develop environmentally sustainable technologies, so government involvement would be just a waste of money. But **Sam** , it’s pretty much an axiom with you that the private sector is **always** doing everything worthwhile and government involvement is **always** a waste of money, so I wouldn’t really expect you to say anything different no matter what the actual facts are. If you come up with some serious sources arguing on the basis of detailed evidence that “green economy” strategies are worthless, I’ll be happy to read them and discuss their claims as compared to those of serious sources arguing for the other side. But if you’re just kvetching that you personally don’t see any value in “green economy” strategies, there’s nothing to debate. Of course you personally would naturally be very unlikely to see any value in them, because they offend your ideology. Bring out some anti-green-economy sources that are more than just the personal grouchings of a market-fundamentalist ideologue, and then we’ll have something to debate. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/42 "2009-09-09T15:10:26Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If I am, I didn’t have to look very hard. Perhaps, but you have some amazing blinders, mate, amazing. > [@](#): > > Van Jones is supposed to be the ‘expert’ on this. So much so that the White House hired him to run the whole show. I’m not up on my American Gov structure or developments (don’t really give such a fuck about it), but I thought he was merely a political coordinator, political man to push things forward. Unless the American Gov is vastly different from those I know best, one needs a “whip” to move things through bureaucracy and parliament, and there unless the fellow was supposed to be making technical calls, technical expertise is merely nice to have relative to relationship skills. Now what I read tells me he probably did not have the relationship skills, but the rest of your indictment is pretty much a non-indictment of someone looking to find fault… I would stand corrected if he was supposed to be policy decision maker of course, again versus Initiative Whip. > [@](#): > > At least T-Boone Pickens had numbers behind his proposal. This is nothing but Hot Air and radical politics mixed together. Seems to me you reached your conclusion before the facts. I am no lover of Government myself. Too often the Dead Hand, but ideological blinders to potential value are not helpful either. And mind you, it makes your critiques fairly unreasonable. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/43 "2009-09-09T15:34:45Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > His expertise, from what I can tell, comes from writing “Green Collar Jobs” The title is _The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems_ > [@](#): > > the exerpts available online do nothing but attack the handling of Katrina, the Iraq war, and talk about racism. From the reviews I’ve read, the entire book is like that. [The Amazon compendium of reviews from](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0061650757/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books) contains nothing about any of that. Have you done any “research” on this outside of your usual blogs? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/44 "2009-09-09T17:31:54Z")
Wanxiang America Corp. (a Chinese firm) is building a solar panel manufacturing facility in Rockford, Illinois. They’re also leasing hundreds of acres from the Rockford Airport to create the largest solar farm in the country. I mainly found it interesting that Wanxiang decided that Illinois, USA was the best place to open a solar panel facility and employ Illinois workers. I assume they plan to sell the panels to US businesses and its cheaper/easier to manufacture them here than in China. To tie this in with the government, it was $2mil in incentives (taxes mainly, I’d guess) that brought to to Illinois and not some other state. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/45 "2009-09-09T20:44:03Z")
You are all getting bogged down … A green job can ALSO be changing from going into a office/call center to working from home, saving the fuel and seriously reducing the carbon footprint, reducing the cost of maintaining and operating the vehicle. When I got changed to telecommuting, I went from a round trip of 100 miles per day, and paying a higher premium on my insurance for working in Hartford, to driving 100 miles once a month [or sometimes twice] and reducing my insurance to a lesser scope [went from the over 75 miles per day to the minimum other than unemployed/retired rate] and reduced my auto maintenance accordingly. Now mrAru is the only one commuting, and he is doing it in a diesel car that gets 43 miles per gallon … [and I got laid off, so Im not commuting even 1 day a month] and he is working on getting into his companies telecommute program. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/46 "2009-09-09T21:17:22Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > You are all getting bogged down … > > A green job can ALSO be changing from going into a office/call center to working from home, saving the fuel and seriously reducing the carbon footprint, reducing the cost of maintaining and operating the vehicle. When I got changed to telecommuting, I went from a round trip of 100 miles per day, and paying a higher premium on my insurance for working in Hartford, to driving 100 miles once a month [or sometimes twice] and reducing my insurance to a lesser scope [went from the over 75 miles per day to the minimum other than unemployed/retired rate] and reduced my auto maintenance accordingly. > > Now mrAru is the only one commuting, and he is doing it in a diesel car that gets 43 miles per gallon … [and I got laid off, so Im not commuting even 1 day a month] and he is working on getting into his companies telecommute program. If telecommuting is a Green Job then the term really is as meaningless and foolishly political as Stone claims. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/47 "2009-09-09T22:04:31Z")
Why should it be political at all? Its is, or ought to be, far more a question of technology and practicality than of political persuasion. But as in so many circumstances, if change is the reasonable choice, then resistance to change is unreasonable. Progressives favor change (well, duh!) while conservatives resist change. But that certainly isn’t our fault, not a day goes by when I don’t offer encouragement and counsel to help a conservative free himself from political error. But if the challenge of practicality can be met, then the conservative resistance will fade, because they will be offered the opportunity to make a buck off it. Exxon will sell me sunshine just as cheerfully as they sold me air pollution. They can be very understanding and flexible, in that regard. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/48 "2009-09-10T00:03:42Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > If telecommuting is a Green Job then the term really is as meaningless and foolishly political as Stone claims. It falls under the concept because its a greening application of an already established industry. The fact of the matter is that the world has probably gone through some green changes historically , we just called it going from the industrial age to the information age. Where that green tsar could have done a better job was to ensure that the federal govt led the way in setting an example by looking at its own house and seeing what could be greened. Somethings can be legislated, others can be incentived but the marketing for green has failed. You have a lot of smart people out there who ask the same questions that sam did , and they dont care how they make money, call it green , red , purple economy. If I cant explain a business plan to those guys , it comes down to no bucks , no buck rogers. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Duke\_of\_Rat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Duke\_of\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke_of_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/49 "2009-09-10T01:04:09Z")
> [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > There are plenty of new jobs being generated in the renewable energy market, if you choose to look for them. > > [Search Results for “ci\_13276294” – The Denver Post](http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_13276294) Other than the “… new program of rebates and tax credits, which took effect July 31, could revive the market…”, what was the government’s investment in this particular company? The article mentioned investments, but it made it sound more like it was venture capital rather than the government doing the investing. > [@Sam Stone](#): > > At least T-Boone Pickens had numbers behind his proposal. Pickens had a plan, and it was green. As in green for T Boone. The electric grid where Pickens wanted to place his wind farm has significantly cheaper electricity than the ERCOT grid that serves the rest of the state. So instead of just generating electricity and selling it for the cheaper rate, he needed a few hundred miles of transmission lines to get it downstate. Say the DFW area. No problem, surely nobody would stand in the way of such a noble venture, he was sure to get the land condemned for right-of-way. And even if he didn’t, he said he’d just build the transmission lines himself. Cut to Roberts County, TX. A county with less than 1000 people, most of the land unfit for irrigated farming due to its proximity to the breaks leading to the Canadian River. Pickens buys the water rights from many of the landowners so he can pump their allotment from the Ogallala aquifer. Due to the low population of the county, all he needs are 5 people to vote in an election to establish a water district that would give him the right to condemn right-of-way to lay dual 96" pipelines to the DFW market. As luck would have it, Pickens had 5 employees living in Roberts county (his ranch is also there, Dick Cheney is a frequent visitor), the water district vote was passed. Pickens now stood to make an estimated $165 million by selling water from the Ogallala aquifer, and he had right-of-way to build his transmission lines. Except the Texas Public Utilities Commission (I think, it’s been a while) shot down his 5 member water district. The wind farm was shelved at the same time due to lack of getting the right-of-way for the water pipelines. Pickens also was an advocate of burning natural gas in cars as part of his plan, and who better to sell all this natural gas than Pickens. I don’t argue that his wind farm was an ambitious project, but it was so chock full of ulterior motives that many people around here came to despise it/him mainly over the water. There’s plenty of wind here, sell all you want, water is fairly scarce to be selling just because you despise the area you are pumping it from. There are plenty of wind farms in the area that don’t need transmission lines to DFW, the water was just a personal grudge Pickens has with the area. He tried to sell water to the conservation district and some cities for more than they wanted to pay, so he bought many water rights as a way to leverage his clout. Now several wind farm companies are pooling their resouces to tie into the downstate grid, making it much easier for somebody with plans of a huge wind farm to tap into that market, while Pickens is selling the 667 wind turbines he pre-ordered to start the project. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/50 "2009-09-14T13:09:13Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > But what I’m unclear on is exactly what people expect from a ‘green jobs czar’, or how a ‘green economy’ is somehow supposed to be a savior of the U.S. and allow the country to become more environmentally friendly while at the same time creating jobs and GDP growth. Because it seems to me that if there was profit to be made here, people would be investing in it without the help of a Czar. **Sam** , can I ask a dumb question? Why do you keep calling this guy a ‘Czar’? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/51 "2009-09-14T13:47:08Z")
Because that’s the way he was described in a number of news articles. I didn’t realize it had negative connotations for you. I’m a little fuzzy on what makes someone a ‘czar’ anyway. Is the title inaccurate? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/52 "2009-09-14T14:41:18Z")
Well, apparently the wingnuts (including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who I wouldn’t have previously characterized as a wingnut) are all up in arms about all the ‘czars’ in the Obama Administration. Apparently part of your beef is that this guy is a ‘czar.’ So: what gives? ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/53 "2009-09-14T15:18:13Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > I mainly found it interesting that Wanxiang decided that Illinois, USA was the best place to open a solar panel facility and employ Illinois workers. I assume they plan to sell the panels to US businesses and its cheaper/easier to manufacture them here than in China. To tie this in with the government, it was $2mil in incentives (taxes mainly, I’d guess) that brought to to Illinois and not some other state. That and the level of political corruption helped make them feel at home. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/54 "2009-09-14T15:33:32Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Because that’s the way he was described in a number of news articles. “News”? > [@](#): > > I didn’t realize it had negative connotations for you. Oh, how precious! You didn’t make \*any \*connection with these “news” sources of yours trying to portray this administration as creating socialism and creeping totalitarianism? Really? Come on now. > [@](#): > > I’m a little fuzzy on what makes someone a ‘czar’ anyway. One should know what a word means before using it. > [@](#): > > Is the title inaccurate? Jones’ title was Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), as half a second on Google could have told you. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/55 "2009-09-14T16:20:31Z")
Forgot to link to Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s [largely fact-free rant about the evil and unaccountable czars of the Obama Administration](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/11/AR2009091103504.html). Can’t believe the WaPo prints this garbage. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/56 "2009-09-14T17:01:28Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Forgot to link to Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s [largely fact-free rant about the evil and unaccountable czars of the Obama Administration](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/11/AR2009091103504.html). > > Can’t believe the WaPo prints this garbage. Why? They have morphed into a neocon publication. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/57 "2009-09-14T17:01:35Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who I wouldn’t have previously characterized as a wingnut She’s running for Governor now. Gotta re-establish her cred with the wingnuts who constitute her voting base. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/58 "2009-09-14T17:38:01Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > Why? They have morphed into a neocon publication. I keep thinking they at least have pretensions of caring about the facts. My bad. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/59 "2009-09-14T18:27:04Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > She’s running for Governor now. Gotta re-establish her cred with the wingnuts who constitute her voting base. While she’s concentrating on the wing nut base, she’s ignoring the PEM nuts, swage nuts, and J-nuts, not to mention the whole other range of self-locking threaded fasteners, rivets, clasps, buckles, cotter pins, masonary anchors, and paper clips. Diversity in connections is the key to a successful design. I find this thread to be remarkably fact-free with regard to what a “green job” is, and it is clear that the o.p., despite his political rants, doesn’t know either. There is clearly money to be made and saving to be had in improving energy efficiency in production, transmission, and consumption (as evidenced by **Una Persson** ’s post) and value to the US as a whole to support and encourage the development of this industry versus expanding extraction of finite energy resources. I haven’t seen enough detail from the current Administration to see whether they offer a realistic plan to further develop this industry or not, nor does it seem anyone else here has, either. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241/60 "2009-09-14T18:35:06Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > I find this thread to be remarkably fact-free with regard to what a “green job” is, and it is clear that the o.p., despite his political rants, doesn’t know either. …I haven’t seen enough detail from the current Administration to see whether they offer a realistic plan to further develop this industry or not Defining that was essentially Jones’ job, as I understand it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/someone-explain-green-jobs-please/509241.md?page=4)