Michael Giberson
The U.S. Conference of Mayors trumpets a study predicting a boom in green jobs. (A green job, for this study, is a job “devoted to the reduction of fossil fuels, the increase of energy efficiency, and the curtailment of greenhouse gas emissions.”)
According to a groundbreaking study establishing a national Green Jobs Index, the U.S. economy currently generates more than 750,000 green jobs–a number that is projected to grow five-fold to more than 4.2 million jobs over the next three decades.
Geoff Styles was not addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors report directly in a recent comment, but the more general belief of which the Mayors report is just a recent example. Political campaigns are filled with similar claims. Nonetheless, Styles’ comments are to the point:
We shouldn’t desire the largest energy sector possible, but rather the smallest one that does the job of providing the clean energy needed by the rest of the economy, where the vast majority of the goods and services we consume are created. With that in mind, let’s all hope that the 5 million green jobs we keep hearing about are merely another example of election-year pie-in-the-sky, and not a realistic estimate.
[Via The Energy Collective]