Being "green" didn't start with hybrid cars, and it certainly doesn't end with them either. These days, it seems like everywhere you go, something promotes itself as "green."
This week, the Obama administration unveiled its plan to invest $500 million to train workers for so-called "green jobs." If helping the environment wasn't enough to sell the idea to the public, the White House presented the funding as a move meant to help the middle class.
The notion that the government can "build a strong middle class through a green economy" is simply absurd. As a professional in the architectural field, there is a huge push for "green design," and LEED accreditation and certification. In fact, I am studying for the LEED exam myself. The intent of various "green" design practices may be noble, but the reality is that green design comes with a price that has to be paid by someone. Green technologies explode construction budgets, and take years before any financial benefit is realized. Green jobs won't help the middle class one bit. But, you don't have to take my word for it.
Former President Bill Clinton, speaking at the European University of Madrid this week, conceded that Spain’s taxpayer-funded green jobs program "has cost many jobs."
The Institute for Energy Research, put out a press release in response to Bill Clinton's statement:
The statement mirrors closely the findings of a recent study authored by Professor Gabriel Calzada of Spain, a report that has attracted attention in the United States as [Barack Obama] continues to cite Spain as a model to be followed in promoting a similar green jobs plan here at home.
And what exactly does that study say? One of the key findings states that based on Spain's experience, "for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, [...] by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created." There is, of course, no way to translate Spain's experience into exact numbers we can expect here in the United States, it is quite clear that the model which Barack Obama likes to cite gives us an ida of what we can expect: "green" jobs will bring "green" unemployment.
Thomas J. Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), issued the following statement:
“Though efforts continue to be made in the United States to discredit the Spanish green jobs study, and even personally attack its author, President Clinton’s affirmation of its core findings serves as just the latest reminder that the facts are what they are – and they aren’t pretty. More than 10 years and nearly $40 billion in public investment later, Spain still only acquires less than one percent of its power from solar, and the vast majority of the so-called green jobs created by the government to support that industry are no longer in existence today. If this is the model for near-term economic growth and long-term energy security that President Obama envisions for our country, we may be in for a longer, more severe recession than we know.”
Ironic isn't it. Barack Obama called Guantanamo Bay and enhanced interrogation a "failed experiment," even though they helped keep our country safe after 9/11, yet lauds Spain's failed green jobs program, and wants to replicate it here in the United States.