The New York Times tackles the hottest trend since carbon offsets:
It’s hard to decide where to wade into this silliness. First off, what’s wrong with Asia? Do environmentalists not want Asians to have jobs? Second, if a green job cannot be outsourced, does that mean that manufacturing solar panels isn’t green? After all, they can be produced anywhere. And why do green jobs — not including functions such as accounting — require more skill than traditional jobs? Another green jobs advocate tells the Times that a traditional mining job magically becomes green when the metal is used for a green purpose. So which is it? Advocates also say that green jobs are different because they produce things ‘the world wants.’ I suppose that sets them apart from traditional capital intensive and polluting jobs such as say, producing food and energy. Those are clearly things that have been forced on the reluctant consumer. It seems it might be time to conduct a poll and figure out how much Americans are willing to spend to create more green jobs. I bet it’s about the same as they’d spend to combat global warming.
