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Tuesday, August 9, 2011
News Grab your green collar and get to work
Posted By Rhiannon Fionn on Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 9:51 AM
What? There are no job offerings to be had, you say?
Well, according to Discover Magazine, if those in power would stop subsidizing last century's jobs (*ahem* fossil fuel jobs) and start creating green collar jobs, things would turn around for America in a big way.
- Robert Strasser
- As usual, Germany is ahead of us in this arena.
Here's a snip:
Major economic and institutional obstacles stand in the path of a green-energy revolution, however. Federal subsidies provide enormous support to entrenched energy sources. In 2009, governments around the world doled out $312 billion in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry while giving just $57 billion to renewable energy. And in a grim economic climate—the unemployment rate in the United States stands at 16 percent, including those not actively looking for jobs or underemployed—there is a natural tendency to cling to the jobs and businesses that exist right now.Judging from recent polls and election results, many Americans regard renewable energy as an uncertain bet at best, and at worst as a costly, government-directed folly. Many energy experts, including the panelists at our recent town hall meeting, have the opposite perspective, seeing resistance to renewables as the folly.
The green-energy sector in the United States is growing at twice the rate of the economy at large. Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a coauthor of a recent report quantifying the green economy, notes that Europe and China are investing heavily in solar, wind, and other renewables, anticipating a long-term payoff. Meanwhile, the United States is lagging behind. “We’ve underinvested for a long time in energy innovation,” Muro says. “We need to take care of the technology pipeline.”
Read the entire article, by Eric A. Powell, here.
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