A timely exposition on socalled green jobs, the generation of which politicians like to spruik, or worse, like to waste scarce government funds thereon. The problem is that alternative energy sources are just not competitive with the fossil fuelled. There is no scientific or economic justification for governments to legislate on controlling the illusion of anthropogenic global warming.

Like many other approaches to the problem of environmental degradation the article assumes we have to keep up the same level of employment, consumption and energy usage. There are more creative approaches. One is to change our life styles to use less energy. If there are fewer jobs. So what? We can shorten working hours and spread the work out. Many people work 60 or 70 hours a week with much of the work off the books. Others are unemployed. That's crazy.

Raycom has it in a nutshell.

If the purpose is to create "jobs" why not abolish the trucks transporting all our food? Think of all the jobs for rick-shaw drivers this would create! That is the moronic level of advocating creating green jobs by government policy.

What the green jobs advocates never seem to understand is that the funds to pay for them are taken from somewhere else. That other activity has to use correspondingly more natural resources in order to attain the same result as before. The environmental credentials of a green job have to take account of all the extra pollution, resource use, environmental degradation etc. generated in the activity supplying the funds. But how could they do this, without knowing what or where were the activities taxed to pay for the green jobs, and their environmental detriments compared with the environmental benefits of the green job, and how these would be known and accounted for?

To ask the question is to see that the advocates of green jobs don't even seem to be aware of this issue, and have no way of knowing or calculating a rational answer; they are mere displaying fasionable piety enthusing over the magic of moonbeams and worshipping in the church of big fat government.

Hey, we should be advocating a green society, not just a small portion of the workforce!

If our society was truly green, that is: sustainable and in harmony with our resource base and the natural environment, then practically all jobs would be green.

So the key to the development of green jobs is the same as the key to the achievement of a sustainable society.

And if we don’t get stuck into doing the things that are necessary to achieve this goal, then we ARE going to suffer one or more huge economic/social disasters, with massive unemployment as one of the consequences.

So for goodness sake, let’s not worry about the extra costs that a few green jobs might lead to, let’s worry about how we get off of the absurd continuous-growth-based economic system and onto one that operates on a dynamic steady-state basis, serving a stable population….and let’s do it QUICKLY!

Climate change may or may not be a big concern, but peak oil or the energy crunch that threatens to result from the rising price of oil, is very real. And much of the same sort of things need to be done to address this as would be needed for anthropogenic global warming.

Quite frankly, the more green jobs that are created now….genuine green jobs that help us achieve a sustainable society that is, the better, regardless of any extra costs they may create compared to conventional jobs within the conventional fossil-fuel-dependent continuous-growth-with-no-end-in-site absurd outdated dinosaur-era economic paradigm (:>/

>>So for goodness sake, let’s not worry about the extra costs that a few green jobs might lead to, let’s worry about how we get off of the absurd continuous-growth-based economic system and onto one that operates on a dynamic steady-state basis, serving a stable population….and let’s do it QUICKLY!<<

That's the problem with doing things quickly - someone else pays in as just an acute a fashion as the original action was implemented. In the quote above, it's the extra costs that will put pressure on ordinary people. The suggestion's OK if you've got the dough to pay for the program to be implemented. If you don't, it's potentially a big problem.

No - don't do things quickly, do them methodically. And thereby ENSURE they are done in a sustainable way. If these initiatives are done too quickly, they are the equivalent of a New Year's resolution, or binge dieting or worse.

Will a stable population work. When a new gizmo comes along to save labour, it's going to be the case that the labour saving devise is the one that gets the employment.
So where does new jobs come from if you don't have growth.
Tax rates would have to continually increase.
If a product was overproduced a section of the community would be in the doldrums.
I don't think it would work in a free society.
Everybody would be having production quotas.
Is there a place in the world with a stable population. There living conditions would tell you something.

Rob, we’ve reached the point where we need to do it quickly. No more dilly-dallying around. We need a concerted effort to achieve sustainability.

Doing it quickly is not at odds with doing it methodically. However, there is a real danger that if we concentrate on doing it methodically but not with a degree of urgency, we’ll end up doing no more than a token effort and effectively not address the antisustainability or antigreen momentum of our society.

If Ludwig is serious about setting a sustainable green example, presumably he (1) no longer uses reticulated power and gas supplies, having switched over completely to solar and/or windpower,(2) has sold his motor vehicle and now walks or cycles everywhere, (3) no longer flies on domestic or international airlines, (4) has become a vegetarian (5) has switched from fixed to mobile phones (6) no longer drinks or smokes.

Ludwig, I'll settle for the following compromise.

That the concerted progressive effort you talk about is brought to bear in such a way that it neutralises the strongest opposing conservative forces and thereby acts as the platform from which the process of reaching sustainability can proceed in the right way and at the right speed given the circumstances.

That way, the real gung-ho types can funnel their energy in a way where the ordinary Joe Blow is not hurt or sideswiped by it and is happily carried along by the flow.