“Green Jobs” More Myth than Magic?
Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, a professor, has released a study with startling claims about what’s happened in Spain and what he predicts will play out in America.
Calzada says for every green job that’s created with government funding, 2.2 regular jobs are lost and that only one in 10 green jobs wind up being permanent.
With billions slated to go toward similar programs in the U.S. the study is sparking new concerns.
“Well it’s an awful lot of money that is being funneled,” said Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the CATO Institute. “If we don’t pay for it, I guess we’ll get some inflation out of it. Or we could tax people and that would probably cost jobs. Take your pick. You can’t get something for nothing.”
See also: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2PHwqAs7BS0
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U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal contains about $20 billion in tax incentives for clean-energy programs. In Spain, where wind turbines provided 11 percent of power demand last year, generators earn rates as much as 11 times more for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels.
The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power – - which are charged to consumers in their bills — translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.
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Then there is this: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=1479461
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Wind power is a complete disaster
Michael J. Trebilcock, Financial Post
Published: Thursday, April 09, 2009
There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone)…
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So, if the economics, the societal jobs issue, and environmental reasons don’t favor such a policy, what the hell are we doing?????????????
I don’t know, but we sure feel good doing it.
So we are going to mainline “happy talk” to transcend reality.
Is it a worthy study? Peer-reviewed? Did the professor release his database along with the study for others to duplicate? Why are you accepting its findings without looking further into its credibility?
History shows us that business and manufacturing are mobile. More and more of Boeing’s aircraft are being engineered and major parts produced elsewhere. We lost most of our steel and textile businesses to lower cost countries. Raising power costs through expensive alternative sources are incentive to leave. Carbon caps/taxes do the same. As a country our products will cost more for products produced here. Our businesses will not be able to compete. There is a major fight in Britain: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/3350912/Wind-power-Economic-insanity-of-the-Governments-renewable-energy-strategy.html
Mark T: “Did the professor release his database along with the study for others to duplicate?”
Are you really serious with this line of questioning? If so, you should hence question the validity of the United Nation’s IPCC claims of catasrophe due to man-made CO2 emissions. Spend some time reading climateaudit.org and learn the facts about the IPCC’s “Team” withholding software code and as you term it “database” information.
You can’t have it both ways.
Keep commenting Mark T., keep commenting.
Hey Mark T: Kind of like you did with the Playboy Article on the tea parties?
“Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity”
“It (Denmark) requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability”
So because Denmark Generates 19% of it’s electricity from wind, Denmark “requires 50%” more electricity to be generated by coal?
“and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone)…”
So because Denmark’s population and demand has risen like every one else, and their carbon emissions have risen 36% (from coal or coal + everything else?) instead of 36% plus the 19% we can conclude what?
I don’t follow the logic,
“for every green job that’s created with government funding, 2.2 regular jobs are lost and that only one in 10 green jobs wind up being permanent”
Is this what happened at Judith Gap?
I had no idea someone read Playboy for the articles?
I suspect much of the PR sales pitch for the EPA branding CO2 as dangerous will be about the “green economy” and “green jobs.” A study from the University of Illinois explodes those myths: http://www.law.illinois.edu/prospective-students/news/article.asp?id=1059
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Summary of Findings
As you can see in our seven myths listed above, our report finds that the analysis provided in the green jobs literature is deeply flawed. The reports rest on a series of exaggerated, inadequate, or incorrect economic, environmental, and technological assumptions. Moreover, the scale of social change that would be required to implement the proposed programs would be unprecedented.
Our key findings are:
No agreed, coherent definition of a “green job” exists in the public debate. Many of the jobs classified as “green” in these four most popular studies produce no environmental results.
Green jobs ultimately will not promote employment growth or improve production because many are concentrated by design in low productivity occupations.
Green jobs proponents rely on highly problematic assumptions about constant prices and lack of technological change that render their “multiplier effect” misleading and, therefore, useless.
Green job advocates incorrectly assume that government mandates are a substitute for free markets. Their models are based on the assumption that politicians can predict what technologies are best and what the markets will bear.
Many green jobs proposals are an effort to implement anti-trade policies and reduced consumption scenarios that would be unacceptable to most Americans.
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