Does The Green Economy Create More Jobs Than The Fossil Fuel Industry? (arstechnica.com) 206
"Whereas the fossil fuel industry employs about 900,000 people in the U.S., green economy jobs -- those associated with non-oil energy -- number about 9.5 million," writes long-time Slashdot reader DavidHumus, citing a new study by two researchers at University College London.
On Ars Technica the study's authors shared their analysis of America's emerging green economy: According to new data, by 2016 it was generating more than $1.3 trillion in annual revenue and employed approximately 9.5 million people -- making it the largest green market in the world. It has been growing rapidly, too -- between 2013 and 2016, both the industry's value and employment figures grew by 20%... Our study estimates that revenue in the global green economy was $7.87 trillion in 2016. At $1.3 trillion, the U.S. made up 16.5% of the global market -- the largest in the world.
Our analysis also suggests that in the U.S., nearly ten times more people were employed in the green economy and its supply chains (9.5 million) than employed directly in the fossil fuel industry (roughly 1 million) -- that is, miners, electricity grid workers, infrastructure manufacturers, and construction workers. This wide gap comes despite the U.S. fossil fuel industry receiving huge subsidies, estimated at $649 billion in 2015 alone.
On Ars Technica the study's authors shared their analysis of America's emerging green economy: According to new data, by 2016 it was generating more than $1.3 trillion in annual revenue and employed approximately 9.5 million people -- making it the largest green market in the world. It has been growing rapidly, too -- between 2013 and 2016, both the industry's value and employment figures grew by 20%... Our study estimates that revenue in the global green economy was $7.87 trillion in 2016. At $1.3 trillion, the U.S. made up 16.5% of the global market -- the largest in the world.
Our analysis also suggests that in the U.S., nearly ten times more people were employed in the green economy and its supply chains (9.5 million) than employed directly in the fossil fuel industry (roughly 1 million) -- that is, miners, electricity grid workers, infrastructure manufacturers, and construction workers. This wide gap comes despite the U.S. fossil fuel industry receiving huge subsidies, estimated at $649 billion in 2015 alone.
What if it's all a Hoax (Score:3, Insightful)
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I know, all those good jobs for working class people, and for what?
In related news there is more than enough offshore wind in shallow waters and only the areas where it blows the most to both power the entire world and create a huge cheap energy boom: https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Re:What if it's all a Hoax (Score:4, Interesting)
the only time we have have a measurable decrease in greenhouse emissions was during the financial crisis.
Green jobs sounds good, but more consumption means more pollution.
A reduction in consumption is not easy. For example, It is better to change society so we drive less, rather than incentivize hybrid minivans and electric sports cars. (current California sticker program). But no-one would incentivize a real decrease in consumption. All of the worlds measures of success assume an increase in consumption. Only a radical event would change our trajectory and philosophy.
The main flaw in your argument is that more consumption doesn't inherently mean more pollution. In many cases, increasing consumption can actually reduce pollution. For example:
Heck, it isn't even true that increased energy consumption necessarily results in more emissions. Increased power use at night results in more consistent load, which allows slow-spin-up/down sources like nuclear to be used more, rather than fossil-fuel-based generation. Thus using more power at night can mean lower emissions.
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I was going to list a few of the benefits of developing larger scale use of alternative energy resources. The list you pointed out is more complete.
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There are many advantages to renewables, but "creating more jobs" is NOT one of them.
If option X requires more labor than option Y, thus diverting workers from productive activities elsewhere in the economy, that is a NEGATIVE.
If we want to "create jobs", then that is easy: Ban shovels, and require ditch diggers to use teaspoons.
I think you're underestimting the amount of work (Score:2)
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involved in changing an entire civilization's primary source of power.
No, I am absolutely NOT underestimating it.
What I am saying is that it is a BAD THING that it requires so much effort, and it would be much better if we could do it all with NO effort.
The point made in the TFA, that it is a GOOD THING that it is an enormous effort requiring the diversion of trillions of dollars of resources from other priorities, is idiotic.
Ok, I'll bite, what priorities? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're at levels of wealth inequity not seen since the great depression. And most economists/historians will tell you that what got us out of that depression was WWI & II. That's because:
a. We killed millions of working age men, reducing labor supply.
b. We blew up Europe, which required us to rebuild it.
c. The cold war meant capitalists were scared to move their factories overseas, meaning a solid middle class could form w/o having to face a race to the bottom.
What I'm getting at is this: The Broken Window "Fallacy" isn't one. Not in the world we live in now. That's because the theory rests on the shopkeep spending the money he saves on windows. We are way, way, _way_ past a world of shopkeepers. The Shopkeeper where I'm at doesn't make enough money to afford a 1 bedroom apartment in a bad neighborhood without driving Uber & Lyft on the side and working a second job. The profits from the shop go to the top and no where else. And as a result the mega rich aren't reinvesting their profits. They're hoarding them and turning them into political power.
Things change. The world Adam Smith and his fellow economists occupied is long gone. Robber Barrons killed it. For a time you could go west, slaughter some Indians and go back to a time when small shop keeps didn't compete with mega conglomerates. Even that's gone, with every square inch of land worth owning on this ball of rock claimed by someone already who's got enough firepower to start a war.
This isn't to say we break windows. Instead, we build things we want. Things that will benefit everybody. You know, what they used to call "Infrastructure" before "Starve the Beast" politics and non-stop pro-corporate propaganda filled our heads with an almost religious fervor.
And yes, you're still underestimating the size of the job. Everybody does. Always. For every job. Let alone one this big. It's a fundamental shift in human civilization. On par with the switch from Bronze to Iron to Steel. And if we screw it up we're in for another 1200 years of Dark Ages.
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a. We killed millions of working age men, reducing labor supply.
Thanos 2020
Make Wages Great Again
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For the last 40 years or so the middle class in most countries has suffered while the ruling class has benefited.
And right there, you are already 100% wrong. The middle class has benefited amazingly over the past 40 years.
In 1979, the lower class was 10% of the population while the upper class constituted 29%.
in 2018, the lower class was 9% of the population while the upper class constituted 49%. There are more upper class people than middle class!
And that's just in America and western Europe. The billions of people in Africa, India, and China have had their standards of living rise at levels best measured by order
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When it takes 10 x as many people to create the same number of MWh, what you're doing is absolutely awful, not better.
In this case, it's far worse. Because you have many times as many people, producing less than 2% of what the other guys are producing.
It's a clown show. And it will never be anything more than that, until we get hundreds of thorium reactors (or even better, fusion) online.
This is trivially "broken windows" (Score:4, Informative)
This is trivially the well known "broken windows" fallacy [wikipedia.org].
Sure, you can "create more jobs" by demanding everyone do something in a more inefficient way, but that ignores the jobs and productivity you're losing by doing them in this inefficient way. Someone who is doing make-work projects is not doing something useful.
An argument could be made that the fossil fuel industry ignores costs by passing those costs onto society, but that's not the argument the study is making. The study is saying that the "green economy" produces less energy using more workers. That's not a good thing.
And the "green economy" produces CO2 and waste as well. It also tends to have a much larger environmental impact, because you can't build a small plant and carefully control emissions there, you instead have to build enormous fields for solar and wind, or dam rivers for water, creating enormous environmental impacts that frequently get ignored because it's "renewable."
You can't just say "it produces more money" while ignoring the entire picture. That is literally the lesson that the parable of the broken window is supposed to teach us.
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There are a couple of things missing in this discussion. "jobs" is not the right measure. Cost is. A technology can still be more cost effective even though it needs more workers if it uses less other resources. Second and more importantly, we are talking about a transition where plants a build. The jobs are a measure where we invest in and not what is needed to keep the system running. So if we are building a low of wind power but shut down coal it is simply impossible use the number of "jobs" in the in
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No, the value of Bitcoin is that other miners have not shut down, and therefore it takes much more than one computer to control what blocks get added to the blockchain. Specifically, the "waste" of computing resources is part of its value proposition.
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Insofar that if you have a limited supply of workers to employ. If you have unemployment, creating new jobs is a net benefit for all involved.
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If you have unemployment, creating new jobs is a net benefit for all involved.
If the jobs are unproductive, then they have to be subsidized, which means someone else has to be taxed. Those taxes are diverted from spending on goods and services elsewhere in the economy, thus reducing employment and lowering living standards.
Make work jobs are NOT "good for the economy".
There are times (e.g. the Great Depression, and possibly the 2008 recession) where aggregate demand collapses and it makes sense to have the government "prime the pump" by being the employer of last resort. But even t
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> That 1% can't possibly spend 50% of the entire output of a modern civilization.
That's a good thing. It means that they are saving that money. Even better, instead of sitting on it, they normally invest it in hope of getting a positive return -- an indication that the way they invested their money created value. But even if they sat on it, that's okay too! Now everyone else it just that much richer because the man who sits on his money doesn't divert any productive resources to himself. This is why gove
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We have a problem that needs fixing, so why not get some quality jobs out of it too? Also just so happens that the best solution is the jobs one too.
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In truth the jobs don't show up, and when they do they're extremely finite. This is a repeat of the "don't go into trades! You'll be working with computers and in an office" that was pushed through the 80's, 90's and 00's. Just like in Greece, Spain, Germany, Canada the jobs never materialize and when they do there's suddenly a glut of workers and the number of workers depresses wages.
Here's an example from Ontario. Your average sheet metal worker(trade), now makes more money after their apprenticeship
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If anyone could do 7 weeks of training and earn $88k why isn't everyone earning much less than $88k?
And is it really a good idea to be become a truck driver when automated trucks are only a few years away and the haulage industry will be the first to adopt them?
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This is bizarre.
A weird combination of two lies (commies are taking over and climate change is a hoax) that serves some strange purpose... But surely it's so bizarre that only people already far down the rabbit hole will buy it.
By the way renewable energy is the cheapest now so it's gonna happen because of capitalism. Apparently the Communists won by harnessing the power of the market.
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You have made a key error.
First, if X requires more labor than Y equivelent, it doesn't get done unless it it has significant advantages. There is NO such thing as work that is a net negative for the economy. But more importantly, you are working off a false premise - that we want or need 'more jobs'.
Second, "Creating Jobs" is easy. The truth is we have too many jobs, that is why we have immigration problems. The problem is that those jobs suck. The pay is low, the work is hard.
What we want and ne
Re: What if it's all a Hoax (Score:2)
Real wages (adjusted for cost of living) have been falling for decades. Yay "free trade" and financialization!
Creating Wealth (Score:2)
Some economist said that wealth is created when assets move from a lower-valued use to a higher-valued use. (This includes simple barter; each participant gets something he/she values more than what they give up.)
Moving people to lower-valued work decreases wealth.
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True, if constrained by the number of workers. Don't forget to account for the very lowest value 'job' though: Unemployment. In time of high unemployment it may be beneficial to create even low-valued jobs. Governments sometimes turn the situation to their advantage by starting labor-intensive construction projects.
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At this time, we should have LESS labor hours / unit of energy. In addition, it should have less emissions / unit.
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Also, the numbers in the summary are false. There's no $649 Billion in subsidies. They're counting their guesses about climate change, health care, plus all the taxes the study authors think governments should collect (but don't) from people who buy fuel. In reality, fossil fuels are one of the most taxed industries, with the government making more money from a gallon of gas than either the gas station, the distributor, or the refiner does.
The reported "green jobs" measurement is also flawed. Is working in
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There are many advantages to renewables, but "creating more jobs" is NOT one of them.
If option X requires more labor than option Y, thus diverting workers from productive activities elsewhere in the economy, that is a NEGATIVE.
If we want to "create jobs", then that is easy: Ban shovels, and require ditch diggers to use teaspoons.
Not when there's a lot of skilled workers either unemployed or doing simple shitty jobs for peanuts just to get by. Why not give them better jobs so that they can benefit themselves & society better?
One of the fundamental roles of government is to ensure that its citizens get "good" jobs & so can live healthy productive lives. They can't do that working for Walmart, Amazon, McDonald's, or Uber.
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Sounds like Pascals's Wager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] :-) )
(except one is real. Funny how the people denying the overwhelming evidence on the former are happy to take the latter on faith
The problem is that if we ever take climate change seriously, there will be a massive diversion of resources to tackle it.
Everything else will suffer: personal income and government spending on healthcare, education, transport, defence etc.
Right now it looks easy because we are only picking the low-hanging fruit. Bu
New compared to mature (Score:2)
Sure, Zorg dropped a glass and there was a flurry of activity. I see apples and oranges here.
absolute bullshit number (Score:4, Informative)
The fossil fuel industry employs much more than 900000 in the USA alone. The workers in coal, gas, and oil alone are over 1.1 million. Now add in power production from fossil fuel (2.3 million) and fuel distribution and sales.... it's huge
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I agree, how many people are employed just in gas stations alone. I will tell you: A LOT!
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467,648 people where employed in 2017 for the sole purpose of extracting gas, coal and nuclear fuel.
The real question (Score:2)
Is who cares? If the green economy loses jobs, it's still the right thing to do. People will survive, but not if we don't have a habitable planet to live on.
Re:The real question (Score:4, Informative)
If the green economy loses jobs, it's still the right thing to do.
If the green economy loses jobs, that makes it a BETTER thing to do.
Requiring less labor is a GOOD THING.
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Requiring less labor is a GOOD THING.
Labor is what you barter (by way of money as an intermediary) for the goods and services you require. If there isn't much demand for labor, what else are you going to offer in exchange for the things you need? Reduced demand for labor is all well and good until it's your labor that's no longer needed.
"I never thought a robot would replace me!" , sobs man who voted for the "Robots Replacing Workers Party".
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If there isn't much demand for labor, what else are you going to offer in exchange for the things you need?
If the rich don't want goods and services from the poor, then why can't the poor just provide goods and services to each other?
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I see.
So Paul is a plumber and Betty is a baker. Paul fixes Betty's plumbing, and Betty bakes pies for Paul.
Then one day Robert shows up with a robot that can do both plumbing and baking.
So Betty buys her plumbing services from Robert, and Paul buys his pies from Robert as well.
But now Betty has no income. Paul has no income either. And, since they can't afford his services anymore, Robert has no income either.
So all three starve to death.
Is that really how you think economies work?
A little more objectivity, please (Score:3)
"Green" is a meaningless term. There is no "absolute green" or "zero green" anything. Even solar has negative environmental effects in its supply chain. If we admit that, do we get to hide that fact behind the "green" nature of the end result, focusing solely on the upside?
On this relative scale, -everything-, including the oil industry, is "green". Surely, one can't claim there's never been the slightest effort anywhere in the oil industry to limit or reduce environmental impact. That's simply a false projection intended to make a political division between "the good guys" and "the bad guys" (i.e., "them"). Or, with equivalent lack of honesty, through a company marketing plan showing, or rather claiming, how "green" their product is.
Finally, for the most part, comparing the size of the "economies" between a system doing production efficiently, and the jobs dedicated to doing them inefficiently (at a given state of knowledge), is just a variant of the Broken Window fallacy. There are very good reasons to protect the environment, but this kind of comparison is logically and economically perverse. The "green" job is not focused on creating efficiency or value, it's focused on reducing both for the sake of the environment. The guy making and installing windows to protect from the weather is not producing the same a the guy breaking the windows due to government mandate. It -might- be existentially necessary to break the windows, but that has to be evaluated as a separate issue. The window-breaker claiming he's "green" due to he's providing natural cooling rather than air conditioning is not automatically some holy shade of green merely by making the claim.
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Your reply was smooth.
I leave it to you to determine whether it is green.
The Green New Deal will create millions more... (Score:2)
The Green New Deal will create millions of new jobs in renewable energy, infrastructure improvement worker re-training. It includes a job guarantee.
According to The Washington Post (February 11, 2019), the resolution calls for a “10-year national mobilization” whose primary goals would be:[46]
"Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States."
"Providing all people of the United States w
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Idiocy like the Green New Deal that's laden with crap peddled by equity merchants are why environmental reform is essentially impossible. Get rid of that crud and find some middle ground related to the environment and you'll find plenty of conservatives that are on board with passing that legislation. Start ta
Paying for it? (Score:2)
Teaching Farmers and Ranchers (Score:2)
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I must have missed that part... do you have a reference for that or is it just something you made up?
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I'm completely failing to see a path from the sentence you quoted to the statement you made. Can you please clarify?
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It reminded me of old stories about the Peace Corps... people with good intentions trying to teach sustenance farmers deep in some remote part of South America or somewhere how they should really be farming.
I was, in fact, trying to make a joke.
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Tax the rich.
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Of course, that always works.... but sooner or later you run out of either rich people's money or rich people.
This is not a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
If green energy is creating more jobs while producing the same amount of energy, then that means it's less efficient than the fossil fuel industry, and bad for the economy overall.
Economic productivity is increased when you do jobs more efficiently. You produce the same amount of something (goods, services, energy) using fewer workers (or more stuff with the same number of workers). That frees up people to work in new jobs created by new emerging technology (most recent big one was computers) which acts as a force multiplier for productivity. That's why giving construction workers shovels or spoons doesn't help your economy. You're needlessly wasting labor on something that could be accomplished with a lot less labor, tying up workers who could be doing something productive elsewhere.
The whole thing began back in antiquity. It used to be that each family grew their own crops, raised their own food animals, hunted their own game, built their own house, sewed their own clothes, etc. Then we figured out that specializing allowed people to gain more expertise and become better at that one job - a blacksmith could produce more and better metal products using less labor per product. That put people out of work in that field, but that was OK because it freed them up to specialize in their own field. They could then trade with each other for what they needed - a dairy farmer could trade milk and eggs, a blacksmith could trade metal products, a carpenter could trade wood products, a mason could trade stone products, etc.
Every improvement in technology means fewer jobs and resources are needed per product. If this drops the price of the product far enough, it can result in a net increase in the number of jobs in that industry as the number of products sold increases (e.g. what happened to cars when they went from a plaything for the rich, to a tool for the masses). But energy production is capped by energy consumption. So unless green energy is dropping the price of energy so low that we're each consuming a lot more of it, it's actually a bad thing for the green economy to require more jobs than the fossil fuel economy. It means it's more labor-intensive - it requires more people to produce each megawatt-hour of energy, not fewer it as should happen in a growing and developing economy.
No, no it doesn't (Score:2)
It's like why nobody bother's trying to compete with AT&T/Cox/Comcast. They've already spent billions (much of it paid for by taxpayers). It's the old "You've got to spend money to make money".
Long term renewables will be less labor intensive. This is actually a problem, since there will be fewer jobs. But the huge influx of new jobs will hopefully give our civilization some breathing room w
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If green energy is creating more jobs while producing the same amount of energy, then that means it's less efficient than the fossil fuel industry, and bad for the economy overall.
That's only necessarily true if you value natural capital at $0. But all wealth is derived from the land, and the biosphere is necessary for all human life, so clearly the value of the environment is not $0.
Economic productivity is increased when you do jobs more efficiently.
Yes, but ecological damage is also often increased when you do jobs "more efficiently". This is because your supposed improvements in efficiency are actually improvements in worker productivity, and not in efficiency at all. If it takes more energy to do the work, then it's actually less efficient. And i
Re:This is not a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
They could then trade with each other for what they needed - a dairy farmer could trade milk and eggs, a blacksmith could trade metal products, a carpenter could trade wood products, a mason could trade stone products, etc.
The opposite of this is poaching, if you let economic forces run wild resources go from plentiful to endangered to extinct. On a human time scale oil and gas are extracted and consumed, not produced. And I don't mean like the sun will swallow the earth a billion years, but like what's left in the year 2100? 2500? We're taking hundreds of millions of years of sediments and stripping them clean in a few centuries. I've actually considered this as one of the factors in the Drake equation, that any sentient civilization will burn brightly as they devour the resources of that world and then collapses into a barren husk. Like the days when you could get non-trivial amounts of gold with a washing pan in Klondyke is long since gone, if society was starting over it'd take us forever to find viable resources to extract because the easy pickings are long since exhausted.
Why even try this comparison? (Score:4, Insightful)
So when you combine every tangentially related person on one side, you get a big number. And when you very narrowly define the other side, you get a small number.
And then you report it that way. Not because you're honestly trying to inform people.
Seriously, why is it that honest, straight, non-exaggerated facts are never good enough?
Because in most places if you don't have a job (Score:2)
And no, saying "But Climate Change!" isn't going to make them change their minds. Climate change is years from now but rent's due next week.
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If we could discover a source of energy that only took
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This is only true if there are other jobs to do. And I know there are SOME other jobs to do, but how many politicians (like Trump) have promised the return of good paying jobs in industries like coal that have been destroyed by productivity gains? These green jobs are the jobs that need getting done. If there was a lot of waiting work somewhere else, the gig economy wouldn't be so big despite the low pay and lousy conditions.
But on top of that, you're jumping to an incorrect conclusion. Sometimes more peopl
900,000 is misleading (Score:2)
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That's misleading too. You may still have stores or other jobs available. When people wait at quick chargers, they still need something to do. Further, EVs don't need as much maintenance but it's not zero either.
If we did a study (Score:2)
If a "study" was done I bet you it would show that the "Corn Flakes" economy creates more jobs than the "Fossil Fuel" industry.
Especially when the "Corn Flakes" economy includes everything needed to make a box of Corn Flakes, distribute, market, sell, consume, clean up and get rid of the waste products.
Re: If we did a study (Score:2)
For example the animators that draw the cartoons that the corn flake cereal ads run during!
They are being imprecise in their comparison, lumping 3% of the IS population into 'green jobs'.
There's no such thing (Score:2)
Might want to talk about efficiency (Score:2)
You can't just look at raw numbers and draw a conclusion without considering the maturity of an industry. All industries in their infancy are inefficient. Oil drilling used to require a lot more people. Take a look at any historical photo of an oil field. Spindletop is a perfect example. Hundreds of wells in close proximity to each other. These days with advanced drilling techniques, one surface infrastructure unit can span out over vast areas.
Point being that green jobs will eventually become more ef
so... (Score:2)
Re: so... (Score:2)
Yes, that's why 1 out of every 30 Americans works in a green energy job! (9.5 million out of 320 million)
The evil fossil fuel industry gets along with one-tenth the number of workers (1 million out of 320 million Americans).
Of course, no one knows how they defined 'green job' except it doesn't involve working in the fossil fuel industry...
I don't care about jobs (Score:2)
So, you are saying it costs more. (Score:2)
The number of workers being far higher for less output means that labor costs will be higher. It's no mystery that alternative energy costs more.
Here's a good analogy I recall hearing that displays this well. What does a physician call an alternative medicine that works? MEDICINE.
If "alternative energy" worked then we wouldn't call it "alternative", now would we. There is another thing that is also telling. I'll hear people talk about "non-hydro renewable energy". Is hydro a renewable energy source?
Don't do either (Score:2)
How about do stop all this "Green Economy" Bullshit and start shutting down the "fossil fuel" economy. We all survived just fine without it all of it before. Use horses and wagons etc.. Yeah it takes longer to get somewhere but think if the children! No more car accidents killing children, no more drunk drivers, no more unhealthy air to breath. Think of the birds! Think how many birds will be spared from being sliced and diced by those awful windmills. It would also reduce a lot of that big money in politi
Re: Don't do either (Score:2)
Average lifespan was shorter in the horse and buggy days.
Green subsidies? (Score:2)
The definition of a green job Being used here is only slightly more specific than 'don't work in fossil fuel industry' - I find it hard to believe that nearly 1 out of every 30 Americans [0] works in the so-called' green energy field.
Where is the accounting for all the grants to train solar panel installers, underwrite solar panel factories, fund solar panel research, and surcharges paid solar owners for their excess energy above and beyond the market value of their sporadic, largely unpredictable excess ki
So thats why (Score:2)
All the workers installing, selling, regulating, looking after projects. Then replacing old "green" energy projects?
A new big battery in 10 years? Better get ready for that cost.
Thats a lot of green supply chains to look after and profit from.
Awfully wrong metric (Score:4, Insightful)
We can have the green economy create the most jobs by having the windmills be rotated by people on a cogwheel, or maybe manually moving solar panels around to catch the sun. What matters is how much wealth each person creates.
They made it up (Score:2)
According to the article
"The US stopped recording green job statistics several years ago, but these suggested 3.4 million people worked in the sector in 2011. Maslin and Georgeson used a much broader set of 26 sub-sectors including wind and solar power, marine pollution controls, carbon capture, biodiversity and air pollution. Maslin says the figures have been underestimated in the past, partly because the green economy is so diffuse"
In other words, they just pulled the numbers out of their asses
No way in hell. As we go electric, jobs will die. (Score:2)
Gas engines need constant maintenance, electric motors do not.
Heating oil furnaces requires annual maintenance, electric heat does not.
Leak that fuel, need a clean up. Electricity doesn't leak mostly
Trucking all that fuel around takes a lot of players, once electric lines are up it's mostly done.
Not to mention all the jobs created to clean up after fossil fuel products, once everything is converted
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So, which industry is more efficient? It entirely depends on what metrics you include in it, but if you only look at the price it would seem the green energy sector is way more efficient since they employ 10x the people and still produces energy at a lower price.
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if you only look at the price it would seem the green energy sector is way more efficient since they employ 10x the people and still produces energy at a lower price.
Apples and oranges. Most FF workers are running their industry. Most RE workers are BUILDING their industry.
Sure, a solar farm under construction needs more workers than a coal plant built 30 years ago. But once the solar farm is finished, it will use far fewer workers.
The obvious solution is to tear it down a rebuild it every few years.
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Order of magnitude less energy? You may want to check the figures.
In April this year for example, 23% of energy produced in the US was from renewable sources.
And the figures in the report are for people employed directly in the energy generation. According to the 2017 US Energy and Jobs Report, 467,648 jobs are associated with the extraction and mining of gas, oil, coal and nuclear fuel and 807,262 jobs in utilities whereof ~75% works in energy production, transmission or distribution - which in total repre
Re: Similar to broken window theory (Score:4, Interesting)
In April this year for example, 23% of energy produced in the US was from renewable sources.
Bullshit. You're confusing electricity and energy. A common mistake, but one which people LOVE to make as it superficially props up their otherwise unsupportable points.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not really (Score:2)
Re:Has Slashdot become a Fake Media Outlet? (Score:5, Insightful)
This so called "balance" you are writing about is a fallacy. Therr is no mkddle ground between the facts and bullshit and hence it is wrong to give the bullshit an audience.
Re: (Score:2)
This so called "balance" you are writing about is a fallacy. Therr is no mkddle ground between the facts and bullshit and hence it is wrong to give the bullshit an audience.
Based on this statement, I honestly have no idea what your views are.
I have heard both AGW denialists and environmental advocates claim that the views of the other side are "bullshit".
My guess is that you are on the "left" because you not only disagree with your adversaries but want to silence them. Intolerance of disagreement comes from the "left" far more than from the "right".
I am very much in favor of a transition to "green" energy. I. have solar on my roof and an EV in my garage. However, TFA provide
Re: (Score:2)
Whenever someone starts talking about the left and the right, unless they are actually discussing political abstracts or bemoaning the excessively partisan nature of political factions, it's a good hint that they have no actual arguments to make.
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Not quite. Green energy has a bright future in front of it, and I say that as someone who actually works in the fossil fuel industry.
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong job, wrong continent.
Re: (Score:2)
"Climate Change" and "Climate Hysteria" are vastly different things, and the pseudoscientific disaster projections of the latter are consistently wrong, decade after decade.
The only hysteria involves explaining the magnitude of the problem to deniers
Many predictions have been largely accurate.
http://theconversation.com/40-... [theconversation.com]
The use of the word "pseudoscientific" when considering the legitimacy of climate change reveals your nature.
The typical Climate Hysteria advocate will accept one is no longer a "denier" not when they agree the climate is changing due to human activity, but" when they reach the Hysteria advocate's criteria for you not being one--surrendering his brain and giving the Left absolute power for whatever pseudoscientific nonsense they demand per their whims of the moment.
I was not aware that simple facts REQUIRED a division between left and right. It's real, so which side of the divide were you on again? You are aware that no one is forcing anyone to deny facts right?
Agreement with facts they could care less about. Agreement to give them unlimited political and political power is the actual question at hand.
But, really, people should already know this. "Environmentalism" was on the short list of the official vetting of propaganda approaches the USSR could switch to when "we must enslave the workers for the benefit of the workers" was losing political traction.
Ahhh yes of course. No one could possibly see th
Re: (Score:2)
" We cannot hit required goals in time to avoid damage. At this point if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem."
Childish and trite doesn't even capture this. Grow up and learn how a cost/benefit analysis works. Show me something actually reliable as a model, calculate the economic costs of alternatives to address it, make an actual argument, and I'll listen.
Re: (Score:2)
" We cannot hit required goals in time to avoid damage. At this point if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem."
Childish and trite doesn't even capture this. Grow up and learn how a cost/benefit analysis works. Show me something actually reliable as a model, calculate the economic costs of alternatives to address it, make an actual argument, and I'll listen.
I was able to state my objection to your position on this matter without resorting to name calling or personal attacks.
At no point in your argument was anything stated that would have required a cost/benefit analysis for rebuttal.
If you are serious about your position paint me a picture (in water color) that accurately captures you view of the world if nothing is done to prevent climate change.
Do this and I will change my opinion that you are willfully contributing to the problem.
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At no point in your argument was anything stated that would have required a cost/benefit analysis for rebuttal.
What? -Everything- you are attempting to induce personally-usable panic about, requires a cost-benefit analysis. You want something done, else a purported consequence. That "something" per standard Climate Hysteria positions, is massive efficiency-reducing alterations to the economy, with massive damage to our standard of living. But let's say you're just navel-gazing, and think a ridiculous moral poseur attitude is to your benefit. As if mere opinion on "climate change" would impact one's carbon foot
Re: (Score:2)
Every time on of you AGW cultists uses the word "denier", which is a religion term, not a science term, it makes me laugh because I have this image of you sitting in your dorm room wearing your Pope Hat and Pope Robes pecking away at your keyboard in righteous anger. And you clowns think it's an insult. I proudly will be a "denier" to your cult as I stick to real science. When AGW religious doctrine can pass the simplest Scientific Method filter, you -might- be doing real science. It would be a good start, anyway. Until then, hide the decline! Lol
I'm not typing angry. I promise. (not in a dorm room or wearing pope robes either for that matter)
And I can apply the term "denier" in any context I choose.
https://climate.nasa.gov/evide... [nasa.gov]
https://skepticalscience.com/a... [skepticalscience.com]
https://climate.nasa.gov/scien... [nasa.gov]
http://whatweknow.aaas.org/get... [aaas.org]
https://www.edf.org/climate/ho... [edf.org]
Go ahead , LOL me up some of your "facts" so we can compare. Show me your "science"
Re: (Score:2)
Calm reasoned thought?
That's a silly idea.
I've been watching the media for a long time (see userid#), and the current swarm of ignorance and arrogance (a terrifying combination) has really taken hold in popular culture and a large amount of the tech industry.
If "green energy" takes 10x as much labour, it should cost 10x as much.
This is a BIG problem, unless they see Green energy as some sort of fancy make work project for society.
The Matrix was not about how it is a good idea to use Humans as a power source
Biggest story in all of biology (Score:2)
Re: Umm... (Score:2)
Why does no one question that 1 in 30 Americans works in 'green jobs'?
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But studies are already showing that if you started building a new gas-fired power plant today with the latest clean tech, by the time it was finished renewables + storage are already projected to be cheaper per kilowatt-hour.
Where have I heard that naive optimism before? "too cheap top meter" - oh yes, the nuclear industry. "fusion by 2010". Let's be more realistic this time.
Re: more jobs required means higher energy price (Score:2)
Fossil fuel generates an obscene amount of tax dollars to fuel government.
In some areas of the country, almost 80Â In taxes are collected per gallon of gas.
Re: more jobs required means higher energy price (Score:2)
The difference is that the fossil industry has become a money vacuum, collecting cash and funnelling it to rich people.
Funny, the real subsidies are going to solar panel researchers, manufacturers, installers and purchasers. The so-called 'subsidies' the fossil fuel company's enjoy are the same tax write-offs that every other industry enjoys - the gov't does not issue checks to Exxon/Mobil, Shell Oil, etc., they simply get to deduct their normal business expenses, just as auto manufacturers, software companies, etc do.