Jobs, Jobs, and Green JobsA scary realization came to me while thinking about mychildren’s future the other day. There’s no guarantee ofjobs for all the people in the world. As a global tradingnetwork, we may have become so efficient in makingshoes, shirts, and automobiles that there’s no need foreveryone to manufacture things or even to serve eachother any longer. A “jobless recovery” they call it. Whatkind of recovery is that?

The New York Times points out in a recent editorial(NYT, October 4, 2009) that the continuous job losses inthe U.S. are unprecedented since 1939. We have lost jobsfor 21 straight months, a total of 7.2 million since Decem-ber 2007. But this doesn’t even count the poor folks whohave dropped out of the system, after searching for 27weeks and given up hope. Last month they amounted to571,000 more peoplesthose who are no longer capturedin the “unemployment” statistics. Officially, unemploy-ment is now at 9.8% or 15.1 million people. But if oneactually computes the “employment rate” as all thosewho have a job divided by the sum of those employedAND those who would like to have a job (if one wereavailable), we are down to only 58.8% employment, thelowest percentage in more than 25 years. That soundslike 41.2% unemployment to me. There’s no dignity injoblessness. Will we ever be able to replace these jobs, oris this the structural unemployment that economists havelong warned us about?

I am reminded of Joseph Schumpeter, 1883-1950,Austrian-born Harvard economics professor, who in-vented the notion of “creative destruction”. Creativedestruction holds that wealth is created by the naturalperiodic erasure of old production systems and re-placement with something better. Thus, Schumpeterwould reason that transitioning from the fossil fuel ageto a system of renewable energy and efficiency is justwhat the doctor ordered.

It certainly seems to be the elixir for China. HuJintao and the People’s Party have embraced renew-able energy like no other country. They are now thelargest solar panel manufacturer in the world withmore than 40% of the market share. China recentlycommissioned a U.S. company, First Solar, Inc., tobuild the largest solar photovoltaic power plant inthe world (2000 MW) in the Inner Mongolian desertwith 25 sq mi (∼65 km2) of solar panels, enough topower over 3 million homes. Further, China hasdoubled its nameplate capacity for wind energy ineach of the last four years, and will likely pass theleading country in wind power (the U.S.) within ayear or two. To illustrate how serious they are, 40%of the stimulus funds in China are devoted to invest-ment in green technologies, while only 14% of thefunds in the U.S. are so dedicated.

Not only China, but the entire world needs to creategreen collar jobs. I’ve seen it work in my native state ofIowa. We’ve lost thousands of jobs in appliances manu-facturing and small industries, but we’ve gained 7,702clean energy jobs since 1998, mostly in wind manufactur-ing, biofuels production, and as contractors for the wea-therization of homes (www.pewcenteronthestates.org).In the past two years in Iowa, over $149 million in ven-ture capital funds have been invested to create these jobs.We have five wind power facilities which manufactureturbines, towers, and bladessand more are on the way.And Iowa is just average in terms of inducing jobs fromthe New Economy. Certainly, green jobs are not the en-tire answer to our nation’s unemployment problem, butthe sector is growing much faster than others and it con-stitutes a light at the end of the tunnel that we shouldharness.

That’s the hope and promise for the meetings in Copen-hagen this December to replace the 1997 Kyoto ClimateTreaty which was not ratified by the U.S. As of this writing,the U.S. again does not have serious support from the Sen-ate needed to ratify a new treaty. But on their side, support-ers have the dramatically changing climate, the logic ofcreative destruction, and senators’ strong desire for greaterenergy independence. For example, we could replace ourfleet of automobiles with hybrid and electric vehicles (creat-ing jobs), fill their lithium-ion batteries (research and jobs)with wind power at night (wind manufacturing jobs) andsolar power during the day (solar industry jobs), while solv-ing the energy security problem of imported oil. That’s apowerful impetus. Jobs, energy independence, and green-house gas emissions reduction in one fell swoop.

There’s more good news. Once wind and solar en-ergy comes on line, we will no longer suffer the vagar-ies of price fluctuations and cartels as we do with oiland natural gas. Who owns the wind and the sun? Noone ... we all do. The sun always rises in the east, andthe wind will always blow from high pressure to low.These energy sources fluctuate with earth’s predictableperiodicities, which is much different from the oileconomy. Solar and wind power create a cleaner,healthier life on this planet.

Joseph Schumpeter was right. Renewable energy iscreative destruction just when we need it most. Andgreen jobs are the result.

Jerald L. SchnoorEditor*

est@uiowa.edu9 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / December 1, 2009 10.1021/es903236k 2009 American Chemical Society8706

Published on Web 11/03/2009