POSTED: 10 JULY 2010

Green jobs: Putting the cart before the horse*

Much has been made of the potential for climate-change policies to create green jobs. But, argues The Australia Institute in the latest edition of its weekly Between the Lines, it is quite inconceivable that you could make a significant investment in renewable energy and not create a lot of jobs.

The questions they ask are: “Would they be green jobs? What, in fact, is a green job? And should we really care?

“If the jobs of people who build wind turbines are defined as green, what does that mean for those who manufacture the steel and aluminium from which the turbines are made? Are some mining and manufacturing jobs green and some brown?

“Surely, people who clean up the environment can be defined as having green jobs?

“But if that is so, BP’s oil spill will have been responsible for a massive increase in green-job creation in the US.

“The only way out of this definitional pea-and-thimble trick is to keep your eye on the thing that really matters—the environmental outcome. If we introduce good environmental policies they will inevitably create new jobs, but we should always evaluate the policy primarily in terms of what it delivers for the environment.

“Imagine if there are two ways to build wind turbines, a cheap way using cranes and concrete mixers and an expensive way using lots of people with lots of ladders and lots of shovels. The latter would create more green jobs but the former would be a more efficient way to tackle climate change.

“One of the least understood ironies of the Rudd Government’s CPRS was that while its supporters enthused about the number of green jobs it would create, the reality was that most green-job creation would actually have been exported. This is because the scheme allowed polluters to import an unlimited number of offset permits, which granted polluters the option to simply keep on polluting while meeting their targets by importing the permits from developing countries. This meant that there was little need to invest in renewable energy or energy efficiency here in Australia.

“Indeed, in our latest report, Green jobs: what are they and do we need them?, we estimate that the importing of offset permits under the CPRS would have cost the creation of 114,000 jobs in the construction and maintenance of renewable energy.

“Tackling climate change will create lots of jobs, but creating lots of ‘green jobs’, whatever they are, won’t necessarily mean that we tackle climate change. Those interested in addressing climate change should focus on what policies will do to reduce emissions rather than become distracted with spurious claims about jobs. It’s not rocket science—we simply need to keep our eye on the emissions pea and ignore those who want to show us their new thimbles.”

*Based on media release issued by The Australia Institute.

To read the full text of Green jobs: what are they and do we need them?, CLICK HERE