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“Green Collar” Jobs -- A Political Misnomer

February 14, 2008

Posted by Jon Coifman

Presidential candidates have been out and about this week talking about their respective plans to create thousands of new “green collar” jobs. 

It’s the right idea, but the wrong way to talk about it.

Building the clean, sustainable, energy efficiency economy we need to meet the both environmental and energy resource challenges of the coming decades is indeed a giant opportunity – and also the best economic stimulus idea out there.

In fact, we can’t afford NOT to make these investments.

And we’re talking about much more than wind farms and solar panels. Some of the biggest and most important opportunities today involve big changes in the way we use energy in buildings and homes and factories.

But “Green collar” is not an aspirational term. Who raises their kids to think of their future in terms of collars?  The language sounds too much like make-work to my ear, at best a sort of niche endeavor. It doesn’t begin to capture what is at stake.

It is going to take a tremendous amount of cement and glass and steel to save the natural habitats that ultimately sustain our lives (and our economy) on this planet.

That means we’re talking about all kinds of jobs -- Architects and engineers; drywall contractors and air conditioning guys. Software designers and lighting installers. Plumbers and loan officers.  The lawncare crew  that mows your green roof.

In other words, white collar, blue collar, and no collar.

We’re talking about the whole economic pie.

Much of this work is in the very sectors that are in the worst shape today. And these are jobs that can’t easily be shipped overseas.

Maybe pollsters and focus groups have tested this out. But they’ve been known to get it wrong before.

There’s a bigger vision here. It would be great to hear about it from every candidate in both political parties.

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Comments

Doug Simpson — Feb 16 2008 12:07 PM

Excellent point, Jon.

At the risk of telling Babe Ruth how to hold his bat, I quoted and linked to your remarks on my blog at My.BarackObama.com.

A "Green New Deal" will probably be unwelcome to the fossil fuel industry and their shareholders, but will make a big difference to wage earners, new engineers and entrepreneurs bringing on disruptive technologies. Joseph Schumpeter would smile.

Keep up the good work.

Doug Simpson
Wethersfield, CT USA

Jon Coifman — Feb 16 2008 05:20 PM

Thanks for taking the interest. This post actually sparked a fairly rigorous debate among folks inside NRDC, with a number of people noting that the term is widely embraced within the environmental justice community.

I'm not sure I know what the two- or three-word shorthand is here. I do still feel pretty strongly that there has to be a better way to make this bigger than just one of those Environment things.

If there is one single fact that has been completely crystalline over the decade or so that I've been following the polls on this stuff, it is that while most Americans say they care about the environment, they will always put jobs, health and economic concerns first. And by that I think they are putting concerns about their *own* jobs, health and economic circumstances.

So the impulse to frame the green dimension in those terms is the right one. But I don't think this particular shorthand jumps the canyon.

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