The Cost of Green Jobs | TigerFan.com

XXL TideFan · May 28, 2009

There was a comment about "Green Whores" in another thread and it reminded me of this. It makes you wonder exactly what a "green whore" is. Not necessarily a sex worker.

Tony Blankley

PDF of original study

The central finding of the study is that — treating the data optimistically — for every renewable-energy job that the government finances, "Spain's experience reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created."
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Each green megawatt brought on line destroyed 5.28 jobs elsewhere in the economy (8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy and 5.05 by mini-hydropower). The total higher energy cost — the higher cost of renewable energy over the market price of carbon-based energy — between 2000 and 2008 was about $10 billion. Moreover, the report concluded, "These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain's approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources."
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red55 · May 28, 2009

Yep. the Heritage Foundation (with funding from Exxon-Mobil) has been promoting this paper and it has been commented on extensively. And negatively.

Heritage Promotes ‘Completely Untrue’ Attack On Green Jobs

The report relies on bad numbers, grossly underestimating that Spain’s renewable program created only 50,000 jobs, when official estimates are 188,000. Indeed, the study is claiming that “government spending on renewable energy is less than half as efficient at job creation as private-sector spending,” the Wall Street Journal’s Keith Johnson explains. Critics neglect to say that “Spain’s support for renewable energy came out of existing tax revenues,” so “it’s hard to see how it could have edged out private-sector spending, especially when the Socialist government there has reduced corporate income-tax rates, most recently this past January.”
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NAVARRE: RENEWABLE ENERGIES

An article was published recently which has placed a doubt in renewable energy’s ability to create employment; it states that it destroys employment, and therefore, is a factor in the social impoverishment of a country. As I will demonstrate, this statement is completely untrue. In Navarre, the development of renewable energies, and above all wind energy, has created wealth, employment and technological development, and I can assert that this can be achieved in any other region or country.

Our region’s GDP is among the three highest in Spain, participation by the industrial sector is 12 points higher than the entire country’s, and for many years Navarre has had unemployment rates inferior to Spain’s. Before the beginning of the current world crisis our region enjoyed full employment. Now, after the strong economic and employment crisis that affects Spain in particular, Navarre maintains itself as the Spanish region with the least unemployment.
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Debunking The Spanish Study on The Dire Result of Green Jobs Creation

Who is Calzada
Let look at the author of the study. Who is Calzada. Gabriel Calzada is a founding member of the Prague Network, an international grouping of institutions aimed at countering panic connected with global warming. He is also a fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, a Brussels-based libertarian think tank that in recent years has accepted funding from ExxonMobil. The company has a history of funding groups that have misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence. According to a study conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2007, ExxonMobil had spent over $16 million to fund climate change skeptic groups as part of a “tobacco-like disinformation campaign on global warming science.” They have continued to channel money to these groups.

Calzada is also the founder and president of the Fundacion Juan de Mariana, another libertarian think tank. The libertarian movement in Spain does not believe in taxes, so it is my guess that they would not support many programs paid for with tax dollars. Calzada is also an admitted climate change skeptic and recently spoke at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009) hosted by the conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute. The Heartland Institute is another well-known hub of climate science denial. This year’s conference was its second effort on climate change, and attracted representatives from conservative and free enterprise groups around the world; many of their members and supporters deny climate change and work aggressively against renewable energy and environmental endeavors. A large number of the attendees also came from bodies funded by ExxonMobil and other fossil-fuel companies.
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XXL TideFan · May 28, 2009

Thanks for the counter argument writings. I will read them.

mctiger · May 28, 2009

XXL TideFan said: ↑

It makes you wonder exactly what a "green whore" is. Not necessarily a sex worker.
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In the Star Trek universe, this is a green whore, also known as an Orion slave girl:

BTW, that's Yvonne Craig, Batgirl from the Adam West "Batman" TV series, under the makeup.

XXL TideFan · May 28, 2009

mctiger said: ↑

In the Star Trek universe, this is a green whore, also known as an Orion slave girl:

BTW, that's Yvonne Craig, Batgirl from the Adam West "Batman" TV series, under the makeup.
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The one's that Capt. Archer had aboard the new series were much, much hotter.

TigerKid05 · May 28, 2009

i bet the green jobs booms will show up in the midwest. they need something up there and the wind blows quite a bit

CParso · May 31, 2009

Any job the government finances, "green" or not, will not be as effective as a job created by the free market.

IMO, the only argument in favor of the government "creating jobs" is that it will lower the cost of the technologies until it becomes economically feasible in the free-market. And, at least theoretically, this shouldn't even be a good argument as the free market will make these investment decisions.

red55 · May 31, 2009

CParso said: ↑

Any job the government finances, "green" or not, will not be as effective as a job created by the free market.
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Generally speaking this would be true, but it is not a universal truth. A privately contracted army would not be as effective and extremely expensive as the experience with Blackwater has taught us as well as the history of mercenary armies in general. A privately contracted Treasury Department or IRS would open up a huge can of worms about potential corruption. The Post Office will deliver mail to me for 44 cents. Minimum of 4 bucks from UPS.

A better generalization would be that most jobs will be more effective in the private sector if by "more effective" you mean making more profit in the free market. Jobs that are measured by criteria like vital national interests, institutional fairness, national responsibilities, permanency, and continuity from decade to decade are sometimes best performed by government agencies.

We MUST have an military force whether it is profitable or not. We MUST have a postal system whether it is profitable or not. Certain government functions ARE FAR BETTER performed by those whose motives are NOT for profit, but for the essential mission at hand.

uscvball · May 31, 2009

red55 said: ↑

We MUST have an military force whether it is profitable or not. We MUST have a postal system whether it is profitable or not. Certain government functions ARE FAR BETTER performed by those whose motives are NOT for profit, but for the essential mission at hand.
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The counter to that is when these same entities don't even attempt to find profit through improved efficiency but simply raise prices. The post office keeps upping their costs, yet service delivery (and I'm not talking just mail delivery) hasn't improved much if at all. That is the birth of beaurocracy. Get bigger, not better.