Web Letters: Will Workers Be Left Behind in a Green Transition?

Currently, only 1 percent or so of US energy needs come from renewable sources like wind or solar. An attempt to make them majority sources forty years down the road is sort of like dictating electric lighting years before Thomas Edison was ever born: unrealistic.

A recent, often-cited study conducted by an economics professor at King Juan Carlos University in Spain predicted a loss of nine jobs for every four green jobs created. While some may quibble about the findings and methodology of the study, common sense should tell us that economic efficiencies make us richer, while inefficiencies do the reverse. If you replace a snowplow with twenty-five shovels, you create more jobs for shovelers, but a loss of more jobs elsewhere, as the streets would not sufficiently plowed to allow traffic to normally proceed.

Steven Kalka

East Rockaway, NY

The underlying problem is that green jobs vs. current jobs is a comparison of apples and oranges. Many of the well-paying manufacturing jobs that will be lost will be replaced by low-paying service jobs. Even if there is a one-to-one ratio of lost jobs to created jobs, the affected worker takes a big hit. Add to this that fact that they will probably have to relocate for new lower-paying job.

I am all for going green and realize that it is critical we make the move, but as a nation we have to do it in a way that does not hasten the erosion of manufacturing jobs. Twenty years ago 24 percent of our GDP was from manufacturing; now the number is around 12 percent.

Michael Scholnick

www.ProudlyMadeInAmerica.com
East Meadow, NY

Any idea that workers will be compensated for damages cause by policies against "global warming" fails to understand that it is part of an attack on the poor by the super-rich. "Green" taxes are highly regressive taxes on consumption, as are the increments to consumers energy bills needed to fund "carbon trading credits." These credits are subsidies to the big energy companies, therefore, a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

The first thing to understand is that the concept "global warming" is meaningless (Essex, McKitrick, Andresen. [2007]. Does a global temperature exist? J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn., v32, 1-27.). Next, there is no evidence whatsoever that the climate is changing in a manner that requires action. While models can show dangerous changes coming, actual measurements of the planet's energy balance show that the balance went negative at the turn of the century and that we are in a thirty-year period of reduced heating from solar radiation. "Then, in 2000, the trend reversed. Earthshine increased, and the amount of sunlight reaching the surface began declining – an observation subsequently confirmed by data from orbiting satellites" ("The lighter side of the moon," by Richard A. Lovett, San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 24, 2006). As I show, psychological effects can explain the current "panic." (Stodolsky, D. S. [2001]. "Myth of Environmental Fragility," unpublished manuscript. Institute for Social Informatics, Copenhagen, Denmark.)

Many other sources are available, for example, Roy Spencer's book "Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor.

David Stodolsky
Institute for Social Informatics

Copenhagen NV, Denmark

Disclaimer: I am a union organizer, and have been for twenty years since I moved on after being a rank-and-file activist for an equal period.

Congress will not adopt a program that will protect workers in a "green transition," nor will it adopt a program to mitigate or respond to the crisis of peak resources. It is in denial about the limits of resources and the seriousness of global warming.

To expect them to do so is to expect pigs to fly. If the labor movement has any future, and frankly I am dubious, it needs to move to the fore with a different vision for this country that rejects consumerism and demands that our military budget be eliminated--not just Iraq, as USLAW proposes, but the 95 percent of our military budget that constitutes the most polluting subsidy to big business and the most unproductive unemployment relief campaign in history. It should unequivocally organize for healthcare as a human right through a single-payer system, which would dramatically reduce the complexity and cost while improving the quality and equity of care. And it should recognize that relocalization and the rejuvenation of lost skills are the key to our future.

Uehlein fails to proffer any of these visions, but rather speaks in the tired terms of looking for a piece of the pie for his special interests. If you play with the rules established by corporate America, you can't win for workers.

Jerry Silberman

Philadelphia, PA

You are right. The acute employment fallout from any carbon scheme will be severe and the people will be ignored. More important than the displaced workers (and so-called green jobs will not absorb a fraction) is the chronic regressive tax on all workers who must commute to work, heat and light their homes, etc. What about us? So they figured out how to profitably sell us the air we breath! When do elite do-gooders realize they do not?

mike flynn

New York, NY

Time for a reality check here. It's not just a "green" transition, it's an existence transition that is facing our population here in the USA, and the world. Sorry to break the news to you here, but the utopian vision of the "worker's paradise" is not only absurdly ridiculous but will never occur in the world we are now compelled to repair and maintain in sustainable equilibrium.

The days of vast legions of workers engaged in labor-intensive monolithic industrial and manufacturing enterprises is fading away into a realm of irrelevance. And along with it, are the glory days of big labor and big labor unions. There are still some who cling to their delusions of grandeur, longing for political capital harkening back to an earlier time that no longer exists.

This is the hard reality that will have to be reckoned with, not just here, but in countries and populations around the world. As the global population is fast approaching 7 billion, a harsh reality is rapidly becoming manifest, and glaringly obvious to those willing to step outside the political correctness box and look at the real data.

The simple truth is that there is not going to enough labor-oriented jobs that will be relevant and feasible in the future industrialized world to support this accelerating population growth. In some developing countries, there will still be a future demand for very low-cost, labor-intensive workers, but the actual relevance of this sort of labor resource will continue to diminish. There is a point of diminishing returns, not that far off into the future, where there will be millions, if not billions, of people who will be situationally marooned in a world in which their own existence has no purpose or relevance.

This is a very hard reality to come to grips with and, for very obvious reasons, it is being quietly ignored by most politicians and others representing some sort of social policy authority. The future world is going to be subject to a series of compounding challenges, requiring rigorous responses that will not be "friendly" or politically correct, but will be required in order to continue to exist as a civilization on this planet. Sorry folks, but that's the way it is.

Charles Ostman
Institute for Global Futures

Berkeley, CA