Oh, Hi Ya
Cheerful frickin’ morning, isn’t it? I had just finished commenting on Bingley’s “Doom” post below…
Normally I’d say, “WOW! Can’t WAIT to hear the *&%&()* try to spin THEM puppies in the big speech at Chrysler (another taxpayer blowjob) today”, BUT.
I…just can’t stand the sound of his voice. Any. More. It burns. It grates.
It gives me acid reflux and nervous ticks.
I hateses it.
So you guys tell me what he said ~ “Rah, rah, rah, WEATHERIZATION!” ~ and I’ll write a post.
Thanks for taking one for the team.
…when I puttered over to CNBC to see what the pre-market futures were doing in reaction to the news. Semi-tanking, as you might imagine, along with my particular favorite, the energy futures. (For some unfathomable reason, I’m obsessed, even in flush, full-o-crude times.) I didn’t think there’d be a lot of reports on much of anything yet, but, SURPRISE!
I were wong. “WEATHERIZATION!!!” spin in place, Captain!
Hype Aside, ‘Green Jobs’ Are For Real
Experts may argue about what constitutes a “green job” or how many of them currently exist in the U.S. economy, but everyone seems to agree there will be many more of them in the coming decades.
Growing support for energy independence and a cleaner environment is driving a mix of market forces and legislative mandates toward renewable energy and away from fossil fuels.
Twenty-nine states have ordered their utilities to produce up to 30 percent of power through renewable energy in the next couple decades.
In addition, the federal economic stimulus plan earmarked more than $70 billion in direct spending, tax breaks and loan guarantees for the nation’s energy economy, most of it for “green” energy.
More than $500 million of stimulus money for education is targeted for green job training.
In response, community colleges, vocational schools, universities, labor unions and nonprofits are gearing up to meet the challenge of training students for “green-collar” jobs.
…What’s a Green Job?
Much debate centers around the question of what constitutes a green job.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is casting a wide net to find out; it is in the midst of gathering employment data on some 330 job classifications that range from a solar panel installers to a secretary at a recycling plant. BLS plans to publish its data in Spring 2012 and annually from then on.
The industry sector devoted to weatherization and energy efficiency alone will grow as much as fourfold in the next decade, to some 1.3 million people, according to a March 2010 report done by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and financed by the Department of Energy.
Though some may consider those jobs borderline, its clear others, such as those in renewable energy qualify.
“Whether counting direct, indirect, or induced jobs, determining what a green job is and calculating exactly how many of them there are is not an exact science,” says Joan Fitzgerald, author of “Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development.”
Even by the most conservative estimates, adds Fitzgerald, “we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of new jobs — and maybe millions.”
“For reals” (as Ebola used to say as an adorable 4 year old) only in the windmills of the collective green mind. In the first place, this article is linked at CNBC as, “More Money Earmarked for Clean Energy Means More Jobs”. Everything, every single JOB, this article talks about is a projection born out of every single dollar mentioned in the article that is a GOVERNMENT HANDOUT/TAX BREAK/STIMULUS LARGESSE. It’s a shell game.
The wind turbine and solar industries ( “Nobody was expecting it.”), even WITH the excruciating amount of money poured into them by this administration, have been collapsing in the face of economic and physical limitation realities (you’ve got to keep those milesandmilesandmiles of panels CLEAN, for one thing…), that would have surfaced far sooner had they NOT been artificially kept afloat with fairy dust and more cash from the Keeper of the Exchequer.
The most abominable thing may be all the folks who are victims of Recovery Summer’s never ending hope spending what few hard earned dollars and/or precious resources they have being “retrained” to take advantage of the myriad opportunities soon to be available in the brave new world of Green Energy and…Weatherization.
When they SHOULD have learned to be a plumber.
The money quote from the NYT green blog article I link to on wind-turbine lay-offs is,
“I thought we were bullet-proof.”
Dude, even Superman has Krytonite.
Biz, Gorebal Warming, Nanny State, People, Politics | tree hugging sister | 
June 3, 2011 10:07 am
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Ain’t no one bullet-proof these days. No one.
Hell, even being unemployed is a “green Job” if ya walk to the minit market for smokes and beer.
If you’re a peasant with your feet wrapped in newspaper, hopelessly chopping at your farmland with a dull-bladed hoe, and your spouse pulls the plow…
THEN you’ve got a green job. And you’re welcome to it.
As of 8 January, 2010, the cost per green job was $135,294 ($2.3 billion in tax credits / 17,000 projected jobs).
As Spain, since 2000, has spent €571,138 to create each ‘green job’, I’d say the earlier estimate is low.
The only solution to our energy problem is nuclear energy.All this green stuff is Earth Day-outlaw plastic bag- kindergarten projects.
They must make small save and simple reactors that can be put anywhere.They use them on ships-with no problems.
And this in the aftermath of Germany’s announcement that all their nuclear plants will be closed by 2022…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/30/germany-nuclear-power-plant-shut-down_n_868786.html