Apr 05 2009
Green Energy Should Grow During Recession
The economy is bad everywhere. Where I live, unemployment is now about 10%. Early last week one day when it had snowed a lot, I was out in the backyard with my new puppy. While I was watching her, a man in his 30s walked through the alley with a shovel. He paused when he saw me, seemed to hesitate, and then asked, “Do you need anything shoveled?” At first I thought, “what a nice person”, even though I told him “No thanks”. Then I realized he was asking me for a job. He was probably unemployed, and looking for a few dollars here and there shoveling snow for people in my neighborhood. Then I felt sorry for him, but he probably wasn’t the only man trying to use the snow to get some work that day.
This recession is driving people to make money from jobs kids used to have. How many older people do you see stocking shelves at local stores, or delivering newspapers these days? It’s really kind of depressing because you know that isn’t the type of work they were doing a year ago. It’s hard to believe the economy will get even worse, but that’s what we hear is coming. If it does get worse, I really fear for people, and what might happen to them.
Even so, there is optimism that the green energy and jobs revolution we were hoping for will still happen. In fact, it could really help the situation! Even the Wall Street Journal has noticed that green jobs could help the economy. I’ve noticed a few articles about environmental issues lately from their website. And like the mayor of San Jose just said, “We’ve got to create not just green jobs but green careers.” We need long-term green jobs to really help the economy and people, not just jobs that start now and end in a few months. You can read a WSJ story on green jobs here.
I agree that a jobs and energy revolution should include long-term plans for a real green revolution, not just create busy jobs like repairing roads and building bridges. That won’t even help global warming, because it might even encourage more car traffic, and right now that’s not a good idea. Let’s not get too carried away with transportation-related work and instead focus more on planning for what U.S. transportation should look like in 50 years.
I doubt very people will be driving large individual cars that run on gas on roads like we have now. I don’t even think trucks will be carrying products or produce anymore. I think high-speed trains will be carrying a lot of things that trucks now carry. Are there careers for all of that? There are, in the fields of design, politics, manufacturing, engineering, planning, and things like that. Many traditional careers can be remade to be “green” with a slightly different focus, while new strictly “green” careers are being developed at the same time.
Some politicians (right-wingers) keep focusing on how admitting global warming exists means people will lose money through new taxes. It’s not true, and that attutude focuses on remaining stuck in the past. The old ways of running economic issues don’t work, so we need different and better ideas at the same time we are working on stopping climate change. And addressing climate change seriously will create many new jobs. Just imagine factories putting out thousands of new solar panels, and windmill parts, and other new energy related products. Right now many things like batteries for cars, and windmill parts, are made in foreign countries. They should be made here in the U.S.
E360 , a blog from Yale, mostly agrees with this and thinks the new energy economy will grow in the next few months and years, right through the recession. Yes, some alternative energy companies have taken a beating during this recession, but some have survived and some of them will get tax breaks and other incentives in the coming years. Money for green energy is in the new stimulus bill.
There are many reasons to believe that green energy will continue to grow strongly in the next few years. Some of those reasons are: a growing world energy consumption, oil prices rising (not to mention peak oil happening), it’s in our national security interests, and green energy technologies are improving. Also, some of the biggest news is that investors are backing off coal as an energy source. (YAY) As coal is phased out, we’ll need new energy sources to replace it. And as all of this is happening, there is a growing public realization that climate change is serious, and needs to be dealt with. We can’t just let things go, as some extremists are suggesting.
E360 ends their story with a conclusion I agree with:
“The dangers of a fossil fuel-driven world are enormous; climate change and other environmental hazards are real and growing threats to our survival. Our collective awareness of these problems and our drive to tackle them head-on have reached critical mass around the world. And the primary solutions to the problems — renewable energy sources and efficiency technologies — are becoming more effective, more scalable, and less expensive by the day. “
