Feb 9, 10
Where Did We Go Wrong on "Green Jobs"?
I was in a meeting today with some smart folks that got me thinking again about "green jobs," specifically Van Jones' message about the intersection of environmentalism and social justice. They're not polished thoughts, but I thought I'd share them and see what folks think. Ever since Van Jones got essentially lynched by Glenn Beck's teabaggers, I've been wondering why it was so easy to target him, why the green jobs message (which seemed to me at the time uncontroversial) so clearly failed...
Local Stock Exchanges and Micro-Equity Investments
Over on Small-Mart: Ideas and Tools for Building Healthy Local Economies, economist Michael Shuman is talking about a different way to stimulate the U.S. economy: local stock exchanges and micro-equity investments. In his article, Local Stock Exchanges and National Stimulus, Shuman makes the case for reforming old laws that could open up local businesses to local investors. Outdated federal securities laws have left Main Street dangerously dependent on Wall Street, and overhauling them...
Bright Green Action as Economic Development Strategy
Throughout much of the developed world, but especially in North America, the debate about sustainability is routinely framed as a trade-off between the environment and the economy. The problem is, no such trade-off exists. Certainly, there are big industries (like coal, oil, manufacture of cheap disposable consumer goods, fast food franchises, auto manufacturing) that will take a big hit as we move into a low-energy, low-carbon, zero-waste future. Many people will lose their jobs, and places...
Cap and Trade: You Don't Have to "Get It" to Like It
by Anna Fahey Pew opinion research shows support despite lack of understanding. It turns out that most Americans are not sure what a cap and trade program is. In a Pew Research News IQ Quiz , less than a quarter (23 percent) of the American public was able to identify cap and trade legislation as dealing with energy and the environment (11 percent said it dealt with health care, 13 percent banking reform and roughly half admitted they did not know). This boggles the minds of folks like us...
How to Create 1.7 Million Clean Energy Jobs
The challenges facing President Obama and the U.S. Congress have not gone away. Paul Krugman worries that “unemployment is likely to stay near its current level for a year or more,” because “much of the political establishment now sees stimulus as having been discredited by events, so that it’s very hard to come back and scale the policy up to where it should have been in the first place.” But there remains a pathway out of Krugman’s dire vision of “a process of defining...
Blowing in the Wind
by Roger Valdez Is Oregon's Business Energy Tax Credit program worth the money? A recent article in The Oregonian (“Tax dollars blow away in wind projects”) tackles the Business Energy Tax Credit Program or BETC program in Oregon. The article by Ted Sickinger charges that the BETC program doesn’t influence where developers build wind farms. He also says those projects would have happened anyway because of the nature of regulation in the northwest pushing more renewable energy...
How Cap-and-Trade Markets Work for Acid Rain and Smog
The evidence from US air pollution markets. Contrary to claims that cap and trade is untested or uproven, there are a half dozen or so operational cap-and-trade programs already functioning in the United States. Of these, the most significant are the Acid Rain Program and the NOx Budget Trading Program. Both have large vibrant trading markets, both have been extremely successful in achieving environmental aims, and neither has evidenced manipulation or gaming. The Acid Rain Program has...
Keeping PACE With Energy Efficiencies
by Roger Valdez Someone recently said “energy efficiencies aren’t low hanging fruit, they are the fruit lying on the ground.” Then why don’t people retrofit their homes? There are a lot of reasons, but one of them is finding the money to pay for efficiencies up front. While innovative financing tools (like my favorite bond financing) can help, they are only part of the solution. An article in the New York Times this week called “A Stimulus That Could Save Money” traverses a...
The Revolution Will Not Be Hand-Made: A Quick Sunday-Morning Rant
(A first stab at articulating some ideas. Thoughtful feedback welcome.) We're nearing an inflection point in our discussions about sustainability and building a bright green future. Mainly, this is because we're realizing that our task is larger and more pressing than we thought even a few years ago. It's not enough to be less destructive, to be more sustainable. We need to actually start being non-destructive, being as close to sustainable as we understand how to get. And we need to do it...
Green Collar Jobs Start With Basic Skills
By Roger Valdez Recent study reviews challenges and opportunites in renewable energy jobs.
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