What are "green jobs"?

This week people celebrated earth day. My kids yesterday on the way home told me all of the things that they had been learning this week. Some of these things were very sad. Everybody like see turtles and evidently they can mistake plastic grocery bags for jelly fish and mistakenly ingest the plastic. That’s horrible. Of course I never liked the plastic bags anyway. Wasn’t it the environmentalist when I was a kid telling us that the paper bags were killing trees and these new plastic ones don’t kill any trees or rainforests?

In any case they pointed out some things that should be improved. Of course with any ‘improvements’ that are made, we need to look at not only the environmental impact, but also the cost.

We’ve been hearing almost non-stop about green jobs, and how the administration wants to create millions of green jobs in a green economy, with green technologies and green improvements to homes and infrastructure, where everyone will drive around in green cars and eat food that was produced in a green way.

I’m just about greened out.

What is a “green job”?

If green technologies are such a great idea, why haven’t private investors moved in to corner the market on these breakthroughs?

If green energy were such an obvious thing, then why aren’t energy producers already investing some of their profits to develop these green life lines? I mean, come on, it would not only improve their bottom line, but their image within the country and the world. Why WOULDN’T they want to “go green”? If it were possible. If it were really feasible.

The fact is that we have been pumping literally BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of dollars into researching green technologies and specifically renewable, non or low polluting energies for decades.

What do we have to show for it?

Really?

Is there an alternative out there?

I’m almost certain.

Will a government sponsored project find it?

Almost certainly NOT.

The greatest discoveries and advancements in history haven’t been made by government. They’ve been made by individuals that saw a need, had an idea, and were able to find and produce a solution.

Environmental protection, alternative energies, and green jobs are nothing new. Others have gone down this road before. The president sites Spain as a great example. Unfortunately Spain has found that it cost them 2.2 regular jobs for every “green job” they were able to create. On top of that, only 10% of those “green jobs” were actually permanent. That’s right, you are destroying 2.2 regular, full-time jobs, for 1 green, temporary position.

Is that what we need right now?

I do believe that we should be good stewards of our resources. Of course much like being a good steward of you money doesn’t mean that you don’t spend any of it, it just means that you use it wisely. We shouldn't be shutting off our resources, we should be using them in a safe and responsible manner.

Gradual improvements are good.

The company I work for continually looks for ways to make its process and it’s products more environmentally friendly. They make one change like removing lead, then they check the process and the product to be sure that we are still building something of quality that our customers will buy.

Keep cleaning up coal, build nuclear power plants, build more hydro plants, improve the efficiency and output of wind turbines, and most importantly encourage private enterprise by keeping tax rates low. Green energy sources and by default “green jobs” will happen when an intelligent entrepreneur or company, sees an opportunity, calculates the benefit, (both personal and financial), and starts to market it.

A green job that is permanent and pays is the only green job that we should be concerned about.