It seems the debate about green jobs is focused on "jobs" rather than "green". According to Lucy Blake of the Apollo Alliance; which is helping to transition the economy from fossil fuels to renewable energy: “A green-collar job is, in essence, a blue-collar job that has been upgraded to address the environmental challenges of our country”.

The emphasis is also on Green Energy jobs(wind power,solar panels) while there is a number of companies working on making products from recycled materials, developing supply-chain software to better manage resources and working towards sustainable development. What about Green IT jobs and the old Reduce Reuse Recycle principles.

Your headline betrays you. It's hardly careless. It follows the dirty energy memos to a t. Phony? Why not Uncertain? Dragging out Harry and Louise? Not comparable in the least in intent or coommunications strategy. Wonderfully idle speculation that postures as "balanced" and incisive but equates two wholly difference sets of research, one fairly reputable and hopeful — the clean energy economy is a myth? — one clearly designed to derail green jobs and underwritten by by dirty energy. You are either a sycophant or another duped writer. Given your professional chops, I doubt the latter. Good infiltration.

Lori Lake here at GreenTV.

Check out the home page of GreenTV with the new John Mellencamps Green Jobs music video featured.

Please let me know what you think of it.

Lori Lake
President: GreenTV
http://www.greentv.com/

Marc, EDF's executive director, David Yarnold, has replied to your post on Climate411. You can find it here - http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2009/04/17/green-jobs-not-just-economic-...

Your argument is flawed.

Proponents of climate change legislation advertise the point that compliance with the new regulations will create new jobs.

Your argument is that this position is "intellectually dishonest" because other (traditional) jobs will be lost due to the higher costs companies will face in having to comply with the legislation.

However, you are guilty of the same sin that you complain about. You have no data suggesting how many jobs will be lost, in comparison to the number of jobs created.

All disruptive technologies, and business paradigm shifts, come with some jobs loss. This effect is unfortunate for a few, but not always a detriment in the grand scheme.

For example, the internet essentially put the newspaper industry out of business. Many jobs lost. Would you, by that fact, say the internet did not create jobs? Would you say the business world, as a whole, is not functioning better now because of the internet? Probably not.

If you are going to say that the same is not true for climate change legislation, please bring the data to support your position.

-Brandon Conard ( BlueMap Inc.)

Whether or not the changes create more jobs, I think there's a significant benefit to the green economy. It's creating real stuff - like windmills, electric grids, solar panels, new buildings. One of the sources of our current economic problems was that the "value" that was created was not "real" - in the concrete sense of, well, concrete.

(Of course, a problem with cap-and-trade is that it creates a lot of non-real work. It's mostly accounting and trading - with all the options for leverage and other dangerous financial shenanigans.)

It is a well known fact that jobs are created initially when construction begins and fall away after the maintenance crews begin their work. There is only one way to keep a growing capitalist economy in place and that is with innovation, upgrading, and plowing new ground.

To continue any capitalist society we need to consume energy and resources. The key word here is "consume". On the flip side, all we need to do to maintain a social society is to maintain the essential ingredients to support life. Everything else is icing on the cake.

When the resources are gone, they're gone. The down side of technology is that innovation increases efficiency and reduces cost associated with construction and maintenance.

We have to chose if we want to continue down the road of consumerism and it's ultimate exhaustion of our resources and continued introduction into the environment of waste products or move upward towards a more socially, maintainable, structure of living together.

Yes, green creates jobs but it won't continue to increase the growth in the number of jobs, but, that's just the way things roll in the real world.

The oil industry operates in the same manner. Once the drilling rigs are built to find the oil, the need of those rigs decreases as oil is found. Jobs associated with that industry decrease.

When the oil runs out and we don't have an energy production infrastructure in place, There won't be any jobs anymore. We can forget about capitalism or socialism, we will be living in harmony with nature as our former primitive ancestors.

The other side of the green initiative, distortion campaign are those who want to continue to pursue the current energy production strategy until it is exhausted, without any regard for the future of our society.

We have to be multitasking on the issues of pursuing a green energy production infrastructure, while maintaining our present energy production structure. The old will give way to the new, in due time but we must make the decision to move in that direction.

We must feed and care for those who are misplaced by the change in our energy focus and that is a job for government, not Engineers. Maybe we need a congress full of firemen instead of the deadbeats we currently have. Firemen get the job done.

The US imports around $ 800 B worth of energy (mostly "oil" = fancy carbon) annually.
This is just wealth leaving our country and eating it away like a cancer.
If we can say cut this in half, we save $ 400 B annually.
Needless to say, this needs new technology and investments. Assuming all these are being spent in the US, at a clip of $ 400 B annually (most say this is not needed, too high), the net effect financially is the same, but the money is being kept in the US, not exported.
Yes, initial "seed funding", upfront investment will be needed to get the process going.
After some time, say 10 years, we have an energy infrastructure that is unique in the world, makes us independent of imported energy, and allows us to be competitive again, creating ever more jobs, for decades to come.
The fact that we saved the planet is icing on the cake......
It is pretty simple!