Just What Is a Green Job Anyway?

By Emily Badger, Miller-McCune.com. Posted January 31, 2009.

Renner salutes Obama's appointment of Congresswoman Hilda Solis to head the Department of Labor for her apparent agreement on that question. She has been an advocate of both unions and green jobs, and she authored the Green Jobs Act of 2007, which called for an investment of $125 million in job-training programs.

But Renner also calls dismaying a trend in the opposite direction: European leaders, long far in front of their American counterparts in addressing climate change, began to backpedal at U.N. talks in Poznan, Poland, in December. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's explanation? She didn't want to endanger German jobs in an a lready shaky economy.

That old either/or model, Renner knows, is dying slowly.

Greenest Story Gets the Greenbacks

Ultimately, a common definition for jobs in an environmentally conscious economy matters (whether we label them "green" or not) for two reasons.

As economists like Pollin prepare policy proposals and statistics for both the new administration and public consideration, we cannot measure potential job creation tied to the environment -- and stemming from significant government investment in a cleaner environment -- if people can't agree on what these jobs are.

The U.N. report counted 2.3 million jobs worldwide that currently exist in the renewable energy sector, but it called the estimate "conservative" in part because of the sketchy statistics available. That figure also counts only some of the most obviously "green" jobs and not the others that may radiate out in areas like retrofitting, construction and transportation (gray-area green jobs?). In measuring future potential growth, the most expansive definition will invariably lead to a picture of more expansive job creation.

Government, however, will likely need to rein in the definition when it comes time to dole out loan guarantees, contracts or tax credits to the creators of "green jobs" in any stimulus plan.

Kreutzer cynically suggests Obama will have plenty of help in defining the term from lobbyists. The time-management consultant who shows workers how to do in 45 hours what they used to do in 40 -- allowing them to turn off their computers an extra five hours a week -- suddenly has a "green job."

"Virtually every new thing is more energy efficient than the older model it replaces," Kreutzer said. "So, the same thing is now 'green' and deserves special subsidies. And on and on.

"Here's the net effect: The lobbyist who is best able so spin the 'green' story will get the most greenbacks."

The government could certainly curb carbon emissions -- by imposing caps on industry, for example -- in a way that wouldn't directly create jobs, just as it could stimulate the economy with no regard for the environment. Pollin, though, argues that we all get the best recovery for our money if billions of dollars -- and it appears beyond debate that Obama plans to spend billions of dollars on something -- are spent retrofitting public buildings rather than printing more stimulus checks people will stash in their mattresses (or even if that same amount is spent on jobs in the oil industry).

"It's really not the green part that creates jobs," Pollin said. "It's the fact that you're spending on things that are labor-intensive and have a high domestic content."

Renner's hopeful vision is that we should be aiming for an economy in which every job is green, or at least as green as it can be in terms of consciously minimizing its impact on the environment.

The alternative consequence: To continue to ignore the environment could actually lead to job loss, Renner says, as climate change disrupts agriculture and tourism or halts oil production and distribution in the wake of more hurricanes. And it will be much harder to come up with a term for that phenomenon.

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