The Forum > Article Comments > The future is green > Comments
The future is green : Comments
By Simon Roz, published 21/9/2009Coal jobs are now a retreating niche, whereas green jobs are a growing mainstream.
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If a particular green job does not exist because it could not be done at a profit, then it is done at a loss. Yet how can using *more* resources be said to be better for the environment?
It is not valid to assume that the choice is a simple one between non-green jobs that harm the environment, and green jobs that do not harm the environment. So long as any resource consumption is involved, there is a question, in the greens’ own terms, of harm to the environment. And having made 'good pay' one of the criteria of a good job, there is a need to calculate both economic, and ecological costs and benefits. But how?
Economic calculation in terms of profit and loss is only able to tell us that the consumers considered this or that product more urgent. So far as they considered environmental factors, that is contemplated in their buying, or not buying, at that price. So far as they did not consider environmental factors, that does not answer, but only begs the question of calculation of the ecological advantages and disadvantages.
Ecological calculation must presumably include all the natural resource calculations involved in economic calculation, and then in addition, some way of knowing what is involved in terms of relative scarcity of natural resources, relative value, distribution and abundance of species, and so on. The fact is, no such method of calculation exists.
Since the greens have no method of calculation of ecological values involving a common denominator, and since they also reject calculation in terms of profit and loss as a means of determining the scarcity of resources, the result is calculational chaos.
That is why so-called ‘green jobs’ all around the world are causing greater harm to the environment than even jobs conditioned on the basis of profit and loss.