There has been a lot of discussion about the energy package that is set to pass the U.S. House this week. But the media so far has missed one of the most interesting and innovative proposals that will be voted on: the Green Jobs Act of 2007. This ground-breaking legislation will make $120 million a year available across the country to begin training workers (and would-be workers) for jobs in the clean-energy sector. When the bill becomes law, 35,000 people a year will benefit from cutting-edge, vocational education in fields that could literally save the Earth.
Lofty as that sounds, the Green Jobs Act is responding smartly to an important, practical need. To beat global warming and meet the energy challenges of the future, the United States will need hundreds of thousands of "green-collar workers." Such workers will be needed to install millions of solar panels, weatherize homes and other buildings, create a sufficient quantity of biofuels, build and maintain wind farms, and much, much more. Without these workers, the country will not have the working muscle and hands-on smarts to change our trajectory and fashion a different future.
There is an added bonus found in creating a strong, green-collar workforce: these energy-saving, air-quality-improving, carbon-cutting jobs can do more than just save the planet or help avoid oil wars in the future. For tens of thousands of Americans who are falling behind in the global job market, these work opportunities can also create "green pathways out of poverty."
At their best, green-collar jobs offer living wages and upward mobility in growth industries. And most of these jobs simply cannot be outsourced to other countries. The reason is simple: the solar panels and wind farms must be constructed here in the United States, not overseas. And the millions and millions of buildings that need to be retrofitted to save more energy cannot be shipped over to China. They all must be weatherized where they stand -- right here in the United States. Therefore, green-collar jobs can provide secure employment for U.S. workers.
The key is to make sure that those people who most need the jobs -- urban youth, returning veterans, struggling farmers, displaced workers from our manufacturing sectors - can get all the training they need to fill those posts. Unfortunately, so far, the United States has no coherent strategy for training enough workers to meet the growing labor demand in the green- and clean-energy sectors.
Enter U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis (D.-Calif.) and U.S. Rep. John Tierney (D.-Mass.), who introduced the Green Jobs Act of 2007. They have championed, with great passion and skill, the cause of helping a broad cross-section of workers get in on the ground floor of these growing industries. They have also worked to include some support for those trainees who may have barriers to employment (like a limited prior education, a history of incarceration, or children to support). By so doing, they have designed the Act such that those job-training dollars can fight poverty and pollution at the same time. Credit for the Green Jobs Act must also go to Rep. Markee (D.-Mass.), who chaired Pelosi's select committee on climate change and energy independence. He also has been a passionate advocate for training the U.S. workforce for a cleaner, greener future.
But behind the scenes, it has been Speaker Nancy Pelosi who has made "green workforce development" a priority in her environmental agenda. She knows that we cannot have a successful clean-energy economy without a strong supply of well-trained clean-energy workers. She also sees the opportunity to move ecological solutions from being elite fetishes (hybrid cars, organic cuisine) to the basis of a massive economic engine, benefiting everyday American workers. Pelosi made it clear in a recent speech at Take Back America: she is committed to ensuring that the benefits of a cleaner, greener economy are shared broadly across society -- including with the nation's poor.
The Speaker is the first national leader -- and the highest-ranking person in the U.S. government -- to find a practical way to advance "green-collar jobs" as a cornerstone for the clean-energy revolution. She deserves due credit. So do the numerous advocacy organizations that have worked hard to get the legislation passed, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (where I work), the National Apollo Alliance, the Center for American Progress, the Workforce Alliance, Color Of Change, and others.
I just hope that this piece of legislation represents the tiny, first step in a massive effort. To avert ecological and social catastrophe, we must build a green economy that is strong enough to lift people out of poverty. We must take smart steps to help ensure that those communities that were locked out of the pollution-based economy are locked into the clean, green economy. As environmental leader Majora Carter often says, the nation should invest billions of dollars into "greening the ghetto." The return in energy savings would be enormous; and the return in lives saved from violence and would be incalculable.
If we focus on practical steps to accelerate job creation in the green economy, we can save the polar bears -- and the poor kids, too. Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes that to be true. This week, we will see if the rest of the House of Representatives agree with her.
For more information on how you can support the Green Jobs Act, click here.
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Comments
View as Flat
Ron Steenblik Posted 2:48 am
02 Aug 2007
the solar panels and wind farms must be constructed here in the United States, not overseas.
Solar panels and wind turbines have to be erected in the place in which they'll be used, but the components can be -- are being -- manufactured oversees. And that is a good thing. For years, manufacturing of wind turbines, for example, was dominated by a couple of Danish companies. More and more, companies in industrializing countries like Brazil and India are developing their own manufacturing and assembling industries in the solar and wind business.
Unfortunately, there is an anti-trade bias among many advocates of renewable energy in the United States. I can understand why: for years, they have been arguing, "Renewable energy means jobs, lots of them!" So when somebody comes along and points out that developing countries might have a comparative advantage in manufacturing solar cells or some of the parts of wind turbines, that seems to pull the rug from under one of the advocates' main selling points -- one they have honed to perfection.
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naturescene Posted 2:54 am
02 Aug 2007
Second, it has the potential to provide the technical & labor base needed to shift to a cleaner economy. However, I'd be more interested in knowing exactly what the education programs will entail. Hypothetically, I don't know if it would be the greatest thing if it is training workers for the heavily subsidized ethanol industry.
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Sean Casten Posted 3:26 am
02 Aug 2007
Kids don't decide to study computers because of a tuition break - they decide to study computers because they're thinking they could ride the next Google equity wagon. Take this from experience. Over the last 7 years, I've led two companies (see here and here) that have hired a lot of engineers. We consistently find that it is virtually impossible to find electrical engineers who actually understand how electrical generating and distribution equipment works. This is in spite of the fact that there are a lot of EE's coming out of school (but they're all electronics focused, per the above comment about Google). These are precisely the type of people you're talking about.
The issue therefore isn't whether we get some nifty jobs bill. The issue is that we need to get a regulatory environment that makes it possible to make a lot of money in green industries. In today's economy, the vast majority of the jobs available to someone with a degree in power engineering are at utilities. You get a pension, you get steady job increases... and if you were born in the depression, that's a great deal. But for today's generation, they'd much rather be in a position to take a risk and maybe find a big score. More or less the same is true on the automotive side (if you study automotive engineering, there's a bigger chance of you designing fuel injectors for next-generation SUVs than there is that you'll design the next great green vehicle. And even if you do the latter, it will likely be in the context of a big automotive firm... where you get the pension & job security, but no big equity carry.)
Bottom line is that this bill is the cart, not the horse. Enact regulatory reforms that remove the subsidies from dirty industries and let people capture value from the environmental benefits they create and you will create jobs. Train people for those jobs without those reforms enacted and you're simply lengthening the unemployment line. I will grant you that the reforms are much harder politically, but anything else is just window dressing. I would much rather see the environmental community come to bury Pelosi on this, not to praise her. Let's push her to enact substantive reform rather than something that serves only to give a soundbite on the campaign trail.
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naturescene Posted 3:45 am
02 Aug 2007
I've changed my mind on this bill on the whole, although I think a "green job" safety net might still be a good idea for displaced manufacturing workers.
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Colin Wright Posted 4:04 pm
02 Aug 2007
But the reliance on natural gas will involve massive new LNG terminals, bringing in a flammable substance from volatile areas of the world that may only last a few more decades (in significant quantities). While this could serve as some sort of bridge technology, it is not the real thing -- sustainable energy.
That is why we need to develop solar, wind, geothermal, etc. as rapidly as possible. (I don't think we should put all our eggs in one basket and pray that nuclear fusion will eventually save us.) This can't be done with the "free market" -- otherwise the cheapest energy would win, probably coal. So we need the government to develop and subsidize renewables, train a new generation of workers and rebuild the depleted manufacturing sector of the economy. The energy infrastructure is a common, shared resource, critical to national security, and too important to be left to the vagaries of the market.
As well, it makes perfect sense to try to level the playing field by focusing on the communities that have been pissed upon the most by the free market and government policies of neglect -- "urban youth, returning veterans, struggling farmers, displaced workers from our manufacturing sectors". Congratulations to Van (and others) who have worked so hard to change the direction this country is headed.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:50 pm
02 Aug 2007
The boom in ethanol and biodiesel is heralded as a catalyst for economic resurgence in rural America, but residents near the towns and villages where new plants spring up often lack the skills to take advantage of the jobs.
While there is no dearth of applicants for the new positions, industry officials say most of them lack the technical knowledge and specialized training that make refineries hum.
...
Bruce Rastetter, chief executive officer of Hawkeye Renewables, told lawmakers in Washington last month that less than one-quarter of hires at the company's new ethanol plant in Fairbank, Iowa had "experience with biofuels."
More than 800 applied for 45 jobs at the plant that opened in December.
The biofuels industry, along with Iowa state economic development and education officials support a proposal by Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, that calls on Congress to help underwrite community college bioenergy education programs.
The biofuels industry likes to boast about how great the subsidized biofuel industry is for rural America, yet here they are, back at the public trough, moaning, "But these rural workers aren't skilled enough! Give us more money so we can train them to fit our particular requirements!"
And one more investment is made in an industry that would probably not exist were it not for the subsidies.
Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense (a Washington-based nonpartisan watchdog of federal spending), who is quoted later on in the article, sums up my view: "It's one more subsidy for ethanol. Training is part of the cost of doing business."
If the main aim of the Green Jobs Act is actually to target "urban youth, returning veterans, struggling farmers, displaced workers from our manufacturing sectors", far less distorting would be to provide them with the resources to help them ascertain their interests and aptitudes and to get training in skills that best fit them -- not that best fit the needs of a government-determined "merit industry".
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Sean Casten Posted 11:30 pm
02 Aug 2007
My point about markets in this case though is separate. Creating job training without creating the conditions that create employers is one hand clapping. My experience with respect to a few specific technologies is illustrative in this regard not because of the technologies, but because it exposes the larger truism that our playing field is not level, and entrepreneurs are not going to create the next "new thing" to draw all those employees so long as they aren't allowed to profit from the benefits that they create. If we simultaneously maintain subsidies to inefficient, heavily carbon-emitting power plants AND resist putting a price on carbon (which would create revenue streams for those who reduce carbon, regardless of path), we won't see businesses create jobs. So what's the point of job training? A green jobs bill in this context is just another flavor of supply-side economics, except now instead of supplying cash, we're supplying labor. Neither makes much economic sense. Demand will attract supply, but supply doesn't beget demand.
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Jon Rynn Posted 11:33 pm
02 Aug 2007
I assume you believe in the merits of free trade, so let me try a different line than one you may have heard in the past. In my opinion, there are two main reasons why manufacturing should take place in the nation where it is used, but I will concentrate on one here: you can't trade services for goods if you are a decent-sized countries. The reason for this is that most of trade, in fact 80% of trade among global regions according to the WTO, is in goods, and only 20% is in services. And the reason for that is that services are for the most part economic activity that occurs by using or distributin manufactured goods.
What has this got to do with solar panels? The time will come when the huge trade deficit of the U.S., at about $800 billion a year, will have the world so awash in dollars that the dollar itself will "correct", which is a polite way of saying that it will lose much of its value, which is a polite way of saying it will probably crash. And our vaunted services sector will not be able to make up the rest, ever. (I have statistics and further verbiage in an online article I wrote called "Why manufacturing is central to the economy")
So eventually, and by implication currently, not being able to make our own solar panels/wind turbines will be a disaster, because we won't be able to afford other nations' equipment, and number two, we will have lost the opportunity to jump start our own industry -- by doing the same thing that other countries do that are not, er, oh well, I'll be impolite, blinded by an ideological need to prevent government from helping the economy. The governments fund/buy lots of solar/wind machinery, the industries get going, and then they are perfectly able to kick the crap out of American industries because the US government is not doing the same.
So whatever short-term lower-cost solar panels or wind turbines we might get by not creating such industries here will be more than lost by not creating such industries here. I'm sure you will disagree with much of what I say here, but you should be aware of the issues of not being able to trade services for goods.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 11:43 pm
02 Aug 2007
And yes, you and I probably disagree on some of the core points, particularly regarding the need for the government to determine what skills are needed for the economy. (I grew up in a period when the government decided that, thanks to Werner von Braun and the space race, high school students interested in science should be encouraged to study German. Spanish or Chinese would have been much more useful.) But I'll let it go at that.
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Jon Rynn Posted 11:44 pm
02 Aug 2007
So, anything that helps to train up our population is a positive situation, in my opinion; in fact, done correctly, it should dovetail nicely with appropriate deregulation to allow for localized energy generation. We have nothing to lose but our ignorance.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 11:52 pm
02 Aug 2007
A green jobs bill in this context is just another flavor of supply-side economics, except now instead of supplying cash, we're supplying labor. Neither makes much economic sense. Demand will attract supply, but supply doesn't beget demand.
Indeed. One of the risks of over-supplying the market for something is that you risk depressing its price. And what happens when the market for specialized skills is over-supplied? The price -- in this case, the wage or salary of "green workers" -- falls. Some reward for those who have already gotten into the business out of personal motivation and their own hard work!
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Sean Casten Posted 12:01 am
03 Aug 2007
These students are not stupid - but they are going into these fields because they've seen enough friends get jobs at internet or other high tech startups that gave them a piece of equity when they came in and now are filthy rich. Similar trend on the biotech side.
The issue on energy issues is that they are dominated by industries that are really unappealing for someone looking at a google-esque alternative. Would you rather work at Ford or the company that claims to be the next Intel? Con Ed or the next Genzyme? These aren't hard choices, and it has drawn engineers into those disciplines. And so long as regulation makes it problematic for new companies to compete with those sleepy dinosaurs that dominate those industries, we're going to see engineers going elsewhere.
Again, let's fix the demand problem, not pretend it's a supply problem. The internet certainly didn't boom because of a surplus of computer programmers!
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:44 am
03 Aug 2007
In the US, that cutting edge has more often than not been military industries, which has drained the civil side for decades -- but that's a whole other discussion! What I want to get at here is that 1) there is a supply problem because we have holes in our competencies and 2) to put it very simply, the demand can come from government -- not via subsidies, by the way, but by actually building things, with a very long time-frame so that people can make career choices.
Something just happened which shows this very dramatically, the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. A post of mine should come out shortly about this, but there is a $1.6 trillion backlog of fixups for the infrastructure. that, plus building rail networks, could take decades. Now lets throw in governments at all levels building solar and wind systems. There is the demand.
I don't expect this to sound particularly doable at this point, but just that, logically, the possibility exists. As far as the government picking the best jobs, Ron, the government does that all the time through its funding of education. In fact, the post-sputnik funding of science education I think is generally considered a good thing. In fact, doubling education money, just to pick a number out of the hat, woulnd't be so bad either. As far as oversupplying labor, there are two points: 1) if the labor is unionized, the price does not necessarily have to go down for labor, and 2) we are talking about people who need good jobs, installing jobs can be a path to other parts of the business -- even engineering!
Again, I'm totally on-board as far as cutting subsidies to dinosaurs and deregulating so that the dinosaurs die out peacefully. But we need to think more broadly and holistically about how an industrial economy operates.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 1:17 am
03 Aug 2007
if the labor is unionized, the price does not necessarily have to go down for labor
Only in the short term. Something then has to give: either fewer new employees are engaged -- so you are left with some workers in well-paid jobs and others under-employed or looking for jobs in another part of the economy -- or the industry (like the unionized coal industries of Europe in the 1960s through 1990s) turns to the government to artificially prop it up.
Yes, general support of education, even science education, can be a good thing. But what you seem to be proposing is very specific government direction of particular skills and aptitudes. As Sean says, let demand pull: don't try to solve your perceived problem with supply-side policies.
As for helping disadvantaged groups, please see my previous comment.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:20 am
03 Aug 2007
increasing local capacity to produce goods and provide environmental services
I'm not advocating huge import tariffs -- in fact, I'm not really advocating any, although some might be a good idea in certain circumstances -- what I am advocating is the US have it's own independent capacity to produce solar and wind energy systems, including the capacity to produce the various equipments to make those systems. Unfortunately, the state of the manufacturing base of the country is such that I don't think the market alone will provide this capacity. We may have to pursue strategies that other governments have in the past (or continue to do) -- import engineering consultants/companies to train up our own people, provide a market for local manufacturers for a certain period of time -- strategies that are normal "infant industry" policies.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 2:02 am
03 Aug 2007
The main point of this paper, however, is that potential benefits of simultaneously liberalising trade in environmental services and in environmental goods are likely to be much greater than liberalising trade in either one or the other. These benefits include, naturally, improving the environmental performance of local industries, and thereby increase a country's attractiveness for foreign direct investment; increasing the availability of these services, for the benefit of the environment and the health of the population; and reducing costs and spurring innovation. But they also include increasing local capacity to produce goods and provide environmental services -- capacity that, with multilateral liberalisation -- can be translated into increased export opportunities."
There is nothing mercantalist or protectionist in that recommendation. Exchange of skills through trade (especially trade in services) helps build local capacity.
You say, however, "What I am advocating is the US have it's own independent capacity to produce solar and wind energy systems, including the capacity to produce the various equipments to make those systems". The USA already has companies that manufacture and service solar modules and wind turbines. What it sounds like you are advocating is self-sufficiency in those areas ... a position that you have not convinced me is either necessary or desirable.
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:18 am
03 Aug 2007
As I said previously, going all the way back to the beginning of the industrial revolution, the momvement of engineers to teach others how to do things has been a critical part of local/national increase in production competency. So clearly, trade in services, especially for know-how, is important, and I'm not talking about being protectionist; certainly, I'm not being mercantilist, which historically refers to an attempt to outcompete another country. I would prefer if all countries would achieve sustainable economies. But to get back to the original post, building up the local capacity to produce is a function that governments have historically undertaken. Sometimes they seriously screw it up, sometimes, as in Japan, for instance, they do a spectacularly good job. I think that in the US, it is going to depend on how involved the citizenry is in making sure the government does a good job and does not turn such attempts into the kinds of ridiculous subsidies you have outlined or the ridiculous regulations that Sean has shown. Hopefully this discussion/discussions can be part of that educational effort.
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:36 am
03 Aug 2007
So, it would be advantageous of every large country/region had their own independent capacity to produce most parts of an industrial system, which would actually help trade, since there would be many centers of innovation, and every center would be wealthy enough to trade high-tech goods. That does not mean autarchy, but I would expect a majority of each national/regional (by region I mean something like the European Union) industry to be local, which indeed is what actually happens, say, among North America, Europe, and Japan.
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naturescene Posted 2:49 am
03 Aug 2007
So, it would be advantageous of every large country/region had their own independent capacity to produce most parts of an industrial system
Sounds like there is a real economic concept that you should try to learn more about: comparative advantage.
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:04 am
03 Aug 2007
The theory of comparative advantage assumes that technology does not change. It predicts that if every country specializes in what it does best, and drops the rest, that global utility would be maximized, in the short term. However, since even in the economics profession, at least within the subfield of growth theory, it is asserted that technological change is the main driver of economic growth -- a view I share -- then a theory that assumes no technological change can have dangerous consequences.
If, on the other hand, nations/regions grow in the long-term because of technological change, and if technological change proceeds more rapidly when most industries reside in the same area, then it would be better to not drop off industries that you are not the best at, and to build competence in most if not all industries.
David Ricardo, who invented comparative advantage theory in the early 1800s, tried to show that his theory was correct by asserting that the US should always grow grain and Britain should always manufacture goods. That is one of the most colossally bad predictions in human history, but it is consistent with his theory.
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naturescene Posted 3:19 am
03 Aug 2007
This is not anywhere near true. It's the same kind of BS that comes from the likes of the Economic Policy Institute (which also claims that comparative advantage doesn't hold if labor is free to move).
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Ron Steenblik Posted 3:21 am
03 Aug 2007
The mysteries of the trade become no mysteries; but are as it were in the air, and children learn many of them unconsciously. Good work is rightly appreciated, inventions and improvements in machinery, in processes and the general organization of the business have their merits promptly discussed: if one man starts a new idea, it is taken up by others and combined with suggestions of their own; and thus it becomes the source of further new ideas.
Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London, 1920), 271.
But what he was describing was a naturally occurring phenomenon. What you seem to be suggesting is that governments can somehow create this magic. If they try enough times, they will on occassion I suppose. But how cost-effective are policies that go beyond simply trying to remove barriers to agglomeration?.
In any case, economists have moved on from the pure Marshallian view. As discussed in "International Trade and Agglomeration: An Alternative Framework", by Ronald W. Jones, the new economic geography
... presents a more complex world in which fragmentation of production results initially in a dispersion of economic activities. However, as a realignment of production patterns takes place within and across countries, the forces of agglomeration once again are in evidence. The addition of these externalities allows the forces of fragmentation and subsequent agglomeration to become engines of growth
I come back to what Sean said: facilitate growth in the industry. Create a demand pull, if necessary. But don't try to mold its raw material for it.
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naturescene Posted 3:25 am
03 Aug 2007
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naturescene Posted 3:33 am
03 Aug 2007
Jon,
I encourage you to explore the idea of dynamic comparative advantage, so you can see that many of the criticisms you and others make are misplaced.
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naturescene Posted 3:42 am
03 Aug 2007
But the problem still lies with government choosing which infant industry to protect, etc.
I think the short-term issue is overblown.
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:45 am
03 Aug 2007
The importance of human capital, or more specifically engineering know-how, is generally downplayed in economic journals, partly probably because it's difficult to quantify. For instance, how do you quantify the advantages engineers have in "kicking the tires" in a factory by visiting those factories, talking to people, seeing how things are done, etc? This is were much, if not most, of the advantages of proximity come in, it seems to me.
Alfred Marshall was more production-centered than most of his successors, and thanks for the quote. He wrote a whole book about industrial districts; the phenomenon of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, much less the old industrial districts like the machine tool industry in Cincinatti, are examples of industrial districts.
I think it's a very good thing that geogrpaphy and the phenomenon of distance is being taken more into account, because I think proximity is very important, again, because of the way it allows engineers to move their ideas around and industrial system (There is a classic work by Nathan Rosenberg on machine tools in the 19th century, in which he shows how machine tools and other kinds of machinery mutually benefitted each other).
Nations have successfully created industries quite often. To be honest, I don't have a pat answer for you on how the government should intervene in the solar or wind industries; the Apollo Alliance, which should also have an answer, probably doesn't either, except to say that it will create jobs; I'm attempting something bigger here, I'm trying to argue that creating an industry would improve the overall health of the economy. There are interesting hints: the Germans putting solar panels on rooftops, and the Japanese as well. So, I'll put the burden on myself to come up with more concrete plans/proposals, so that we can continue this discussion.
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JMG Posted 3:49 am
03 Aug 2007
Of course, we all know about ecological niches, where the species best fitted to exploit the niche tends to thrive to the exclusion of all others --- except that, contra expectations, nature doesn't create many (if any) monocultures except, perhaps, in the most extremely resource-limited niches.
The relative efficiencies at making pins vs. bread ignores that the maker and the baker might have things to offer one another when located in proximity, things that are not apparent from a view that simply tots up the number of loaves or pins that could be made if one or the other was sent to a distant country where baking or making pins was more efficient.
(And, of course, the theory developed in an age of sail, where only renewable energy was available; now we are starting to understand that the embedded energy of things is a significant component of the energy we all use, and thus a significant part of the ecological damage we all impose on the world.)
I can't help buy notice that the ecosystems of greatest abundance and health do not follow the theory of comparative advantage to a great degree. I suggest that this is a sign that the theory is, on the whole, not a model to follow.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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wiscidea Posted 3:49 am
03 Aug 2007
Oh... and an influx of capital and less resistance from "environmentalists". When will we see the introduction and passage of THOSE bills. And a little more marketing savvy would help.
Hey... there's no denying that it is a "green job"!
I've never felt better about what I do for a living!
Forward!
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:50 am
03 Aug 2007
As far as choosing which industry to support, again, I like to think that this can turn into a democratic discussion of which way we would like the society to turn. Do we go with solar/wind? How? How hard do we push it? I think that the civilization has gotten to the point where the citizenry needs to be actively engaged in these questions, because we have some huge decisions to make to avert ecological (and in my opinion, economic) catastrophe. In Japan, bureaucrats made the decisions, and they usually, though certainly not always, worked out. But big business is so thoroughly enmeshed in the government here that that would probably not work in the US, so I think it will be a citizen-directed process.
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wiscidea Posted 3:53 am
03 Aug 2007
Consider a specific bee dependent on a specific flower, which, in turn, is dependent on that very bee. If one suffers, both suffer.
We should manufacture as much of what we need or want HERE, in North America. Trade only what absolutely cannot be made here.
Forward!
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:55 am
03 Aug 2007
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JMG Posted 3:57 am
03 Aug 2007
Nobel felt good about selling arms, until he didn't.
Gen. Smedley Butler felt good about being the most decorated marine in history until he figured out that his heroism was in the cause of serving gangsters.
What sort of bills to reduce opposition to genetic tampering from scare-quote environmentalists did you have in mind? Shall it be illegal for real persons to oppose plans of corporate persons to unleash genetically tampered organisms into the biosphere? Are you hoping for even more servile labeling laws that prevent people from knowing whether the food they buy contains genetically tampered materials? Are you looking for a little more of the "veggie libel" laws, only now in favor of genetically tampered organisms?
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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naturescene Posted 4:05 am
03 Aug 2007
In theory, thinking about long-term, rather then short-term, comparative advantage makes sense - especially if we are considering environmental consequences.
But as Jon equates the changing technology problem to the traditional view of comparative advantage, I'd argue that it provides the same difficulty for the theoretical long-term thinking. It is all a case of Hayek's knowledge problem.
How do we know that the technology and training we choose now actually will give us a long-term comparative advantage. What if we spend millions in specialized training, only to have a technology change in a few years. While in our heads, we believed we were thinking about the long-term, it turns out we didn't know enough to be able to do so.
Jon, I guess it's your political science education that keeps you thinking about a global economy in terms of nation-states. I on the other hand have a degree in economics (as well as one in natural resources) and I view that way of thinking as an obstacle to an understanding of what a global economy really means.
Either way, you've sparked an interesting debate, and I hope you have more to say.
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Biodiversivist Posted 4:05 am
03 Aug 2007
In the real world most learning occurs on the job. Nobody needs to go to a government-sponsored class to learn how to install solar panels on a roof. They will learn how to do that when they go to work under the guidance of experienced supervision. That's how framers learn to frame, roofers learn to roof, and engineers learn to engineer. Not many of you out there took a class in how to comment on blogs or use the Internet. The lack of solar panels on roofs isn't due to a lack of installers. It is due to the high cost of putting solar panels on roofs and therefore a low demand for them by consumers, myself included. Free enterprise is working that problem, as discussed in Dave's recent thin solar piece. You can't force something to happen before the technology is there. You can, however, fund research like there is no tomorrow. The EV1 and Toyota RAV4EV (who wisely did not initiate a documentary by destroying their marketing experiment) cost those companies billions and did not result in a country full of electric cars. Conspiracy theories and government expenditures aside, we just didn't have the battery technology to pull that off.
Likewise, nobody needs a government-sponsored class to work in a biodiesel refinery or a manufacturing plant. The employers are responsible for teaching employees what they need to know. The government could just give the manufacturer a tax right off for education expenses so they can tailor the class to their processes (their CAD system, their machine tools etc). But that would not be nearly as visible and would therefore not buy any votes--not that I support a tax break either.
I think what we are seeing here is more government incompetence and self-serving, similar to what we are seeing with the agrofuel debacle.
Keep in mind that government builds next to nothing. It can only fund the building of things. Bridges, like fighter jets, are built by free market enterprises hired by the government.
A good example of how incompetent our government has become can be seen in our crumbling infrastructure. Funding bridge and road maintenance is a government function. And, as expected, they are doing a characteristically bad job of it. Our local crumbling infrastructure here in Seattle mirrors the Federal version. Our politicians squander tax dollars on high profile items that bring them national notoriety and accolades, like fighting global warming by spending small fortunes on hybrid buses that don't work as advertised or pouring tax dollars down the biodiesel toilet while letting roads degenerate into bone breaking, wheel bending bicyclist meat grinders (ah, getting a little too worked up here :)). The high profile projects pave the way for moving up the political food chain in the future.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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wiscidea Posted 4:22 am
03 Aug 2007
There's mor to "green" than freeing ourselves from fossil fuel and emitting less CO2.
And I would not consider wind "green" until it is proven, 100%, to not cause bird fatalities. Replacing one killer with another killer is not "green".
I would also like to know more about the sources of exotic elements used in solar power. How much tropical rainforest is destroyed by mining activity? How much bush meat is harvested from those areas once the roads are cut? How much land converted to poor ag land once the settlers arrive? Is solar really "green"?
Where are the companion bills that will ensure wind and solar do not lead to serious unintend consequences? In the end, they could be new Magic Ponies that trample the last few remaining native ecosystems into the ground.
Wind, solar, GMOs... their supporters say they are perfectly safe... but is there a uniform standard for ensuring they are safe? How far out to you have to study the downstream consequences?
Where's the long-term comparative study that proves, with 100% certainty, that wind and solar are absolutely safe and will not cause the same or more harm than what the coal or other sources of energy they are replacing?
Hydroelectric dams were supposed to prevent harm to the environment. How'd that work out?
Really... there are no "green" job skills to teach anyone. It is how you use all the skills already taught by technical colleges and universities.
Someone, please post a list of "green" jobs.
Forward!
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:26 am
03 Aug 2007
As for infrastructure, I think you're falling into the Bush administration's trap of looking at an incompetent government as a reason why government is inherently incompetent. If we put too much money in hybrid buses, maybe it's not so bad compared to the other misuses of money we have. We need better government, because noone else can provide infrastructure.
But even assuming there were some bad spending mistakes, mistakes is what dynamic industrial (and nonindustrial societies) are constantly doing. In the early 1960s, steel technology was advancing so rapidly that the Japanese actually torn down steel factories that they had just built without even using them, and put up state-of-the-art factories when the technologies change. Technologies always change, we will definietly often pick the wrong ones, but that's better than not picking at all, as long as alternatives are not snuffed out because they threaten somebody's profits.
Biofuels are an example of private power being used to intervene in the governmental process; it's like the rain forest fungi that take over ants, if I remember my Planet Earth episode correctly. And we can even chalk it up to another mistake, assuming we don't destroy the planet in the process. I'm not claiming the best of all possible worlds with government, I'm saying that we need to realize that there are some things, like infrastructure and ecosystem protection, that the government can best do. My more radical claim is that the government should also intervene if we reach a point, as in the US, in which the manufacturing base is endangered.
If free enterprise can move us to a renewable energy system, great. But who's going to create a usable electrical grid? Regulate it, if not own it? Governments can and have and do actually own factories, if need be, and they can do it just as effectively (or badly) as corporations, but I'm not even advocating that. What I'm advocating is that the government, as a vehicle of the citizenry, be a good steward of both the economy and the environment.
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naturescene Posted 4:34 am
03 Aug 2007
Sure, and thus we have the theory of the firm and economies of scale.
I think it's a bold move to extend the theory of the firm to the national level in which the government is directing this.
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:38 am
03 Aug 2007
The big problem for us comes in terms of the time period. the US had a centruy to work out its industrialization, so it didn't need too much government intervention. The USSR wanted to jump into industsrizlization in 10 years, which they accomplished, but with awful consequences. How much time do we have to get this right? With global warming, peak oil, mass extinction, collapsing US manufacturing, I feel we need to, not go to the USSR extreme, but find some reasonable middle, or something closer to the US.
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naturescene Posted 4:44 am
03 Aug 2007
Is your basic idea that we need regional trade agreements, like NAFTA?
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:54 am
03 Aug 2007
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:00 am
03 Aug 2007
A job can be green from the supply side or the demand side.
A supply side GJ is what most people think: going to work and inventing stuff that is energy efficient, or walking around in a Hazmat suit and cleaning up things.
The other approach is this: eliminate the command and control system of the workers so they don't have to commute, and buy a lot of junk to be part of the economy. Let's have economic detente. Let's lower the price of houses (it's happening) so that they can be bought in 5 years instead of a lifetime. Lets cut rents so that you can work 3 months a year and stay at home with the girlfriend, kids, parents the other 9 months.
We don't need to waste our lives chewing up resources for stuff we don't need or want.
That's Green!
John Bailo
Supratext:
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naturescene Posted 5:02 am
03 Aug 2007
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:16 am
03 Aug 2007
The easier one first (ha ha): Nafta. For nafta to be like the European Union, we would have to pull an ambulance up to Lou Dobbs' studio and say that every Mexican could come and work in the US who wanted to. I actually think that might not be too bad, but I tend to side with Jane Jacobs, who argued that developing countries need each other, in order to trade the lower quality goods that they make, without getting swamped by the more "advanced" economies (which is why Alexander Hamilton developed the "infant industry" argument).
So I would say that it might make more sense for Mexico to pull out of Nafta and do a lafta, latin american free trade area, because there is certainly enough size to develop basic manufacturing industries there.
On the other hand, geography dictates that Mexico and Central America are really more part of the "Northern Americas", we might call it, but in order to avoid getting swamped -- Mexico, I mean, not the US -- I think they would have to tilt toward the central planning side for a while, build some industries, and then create a union with the US and Canada. Unfortunately, their oil fields are starting to collapse, so they won't have that source of capital to buy consultants to teach their population how to build an industrial system, which is what the USSR did (they ripped off their peasants and let alot of them starve, not a good alternative).
2) I know this isn't going to be very popular, but the more I think about it, the more I think we don't have much time, and that at some point some form of central planning of a part of the economy -- not the whole thing -- is going to be necessary. I think we should start bandying about this concept -- well, people who won't get nailed professionally for doing it, maybe -- because if things get bad enough, global warming or peak oil-wise, things will move in that direction anyway. In my first post, I laid out a general plan that could easily take one trillion dollars a year to implement, which would be a, er, mild form of "central planning", if we must use that phrase.
Unfortunately, the nomenclature we have for direct government intervention in the market is stilted because of the long Cold War period -- I would just call it planning, after all, the Pentagon does 5-year plans, and they throw around one half trillion annually.
So, thanks again for letting me pontificate.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 8:10 am
03 Aug 2007
Regarding comparative advantage, this is a concept that is frequently misunderstood. As summarized on this useful website:
[T]he theory is easy to confuse with another notion about advantageous trade, known in trade theory as the theory of absolute advantage. The logic behind absolute advantage is quite intuitive. This confusion between these two concepts leads many people to think that they understand comparative advantage when in fact, what they understand is absolute advantage.
What David Ricardo showed was that one must compare the opportunity costs of producing goods across countries, not absolute costs or even relative costs. Thus (in the two-country, two-good example) one country may be able to produce both goods more cheaply than the other country, but it will still be advantageous for both countries to specialize in producing one or the other.
Of course, in the real world, there are almost 200 countries, and thousands of goods, and services too. That trade is determined by comparative advantage does not mean that countries end up specializing in only one good or service.
While I have never thought about how the theory might be applied to ecosystems, the example postulated by Jon -- in which one ecosystem is entirely composed of grass, the other entirely of deer, and the other entirely of wolves -- does not illustrate how comparative advantage operates. For one, the ecosystems he describes are presumably isolated in such a way that "trade" (the exchange of matter and energy) cannot physically take place. If the ecosystems were contiguous, one would indeed expect to see grass providing energy to deer (and through deer, wolves), and receiving their dung in exchange. Clearly a pack of deer that tried to do it all -- photosynthesize as well as metabolize energy rapidly in order to evade wolves -- wouldn't last for long!
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Jon Rynn Posted 8:22 am
03 Aug 2007
Ricardo showed that in the short (or maybe medium) term, there is an advantage to specializing. But that still does not address the issue of positive feedback loops that are inherent in the industrial system among machinery makers and machinery users. So, for instance, car makers in Japan have a lead over car makers in the US who use machine tools made in Japan. But that does not cover the entire problem, because as I stated above, engineers (and skilled production workers) need to see and feel factories, of their competitors and allies, to talk and speculate, which becomes easier the closer they are. this was one of the insights of jane jacobs, who I also realize did not pay attention to the literature -- which I'm trying to do. But again, the problem with the theory of comparative advantage is the idea of dropping an industry (that is, an industry that is technologically viable, I'm not talking about horse whips and slide rules).
The ecosystem example is rather extreme, but again, to try to move toward an area of agreement, I think that it is a good sign that geography has entered into the economists club, at least to a certain extent. It certainly helps if there is a contiguous territory, and I argued that an optimal economic system would be rather large, in fact, on the size of a continent or subcontinent (in the case of china or india). But to have the US dependent for its manufacturing on China or Europe, or at least a very large percentage, is asking for trouble, in my opinion.
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