Are Green Jobs Really a Good Idea?
Any 'Green Industrial Revolution' will fail if it doesn't prioritise cost reduction and cultural change.
With the IPCC’s latest installment of climate forecasting out, the discourse™ has once again turned to how to deal (or rather, not deal) with the climate crisis.
There is broad public consensus that climate systems breakdown should be diagnosed as a major problem that needs to be dealt with. Yet there is also enormous divergence about what form the prescription should take.
However, one proposal that virtually every politician seems to be behind is green jobs.
UK PM Boris Johnson outlined last November that he aimed to create a quarter of a million new jobs as part of a ‘Green Industrial Revolution’. Similarly, Joe Biden has a plan to generate ‘10 million clean energy jobs by 2030’. China’s Xi Jingping is singing from the same hymn sheet! Millions of Chinese workers are now in the renewable energy industry.
And it is easy to see why.
In a post-pandemic world, our current political predicament makes a green industrial revolution an appealing one. The ‘productivity puzzle’ has plagued successive generations of governments. Marrying the high-productivity progress that purportedly comes from technological innovation with the increasing demands for securing our planetary future appears to be killing two political birds with one stone.
But is this really a smart move?
Hearing these manifestos repeated in recent days reminded me of a piece by George Mason Professor and Marginal Revolution blogger Tyler Cowen. In a Bloomberg column, he pushed back against the notion of green jobs.
The biggest obstacle to green energy is not that American voters love pollution and carbon emissions, but rather people do not wish to pay more for their gasoline and their home heating bills. If we insist that green energy create a lot of good jobs, in essence we are insisting that it have high labor costs, and thus we are producing a version of it that will meet consumer and also voter resistance.
Time and time again, polling data is abundantly clear. The public wants to tackle climate change, but not in a way that hits their finances.
If a green revolution is ultimately predicated upon high levels of labour (rather than automated capital, which Cowen believes our energy industry should be built around), this is going to lead to more expensive goods and services. This is especially likely if you want the jobs to be both well paid and well regulated. As a result, consumers may be less likely to switch to green products.
This problem is exacerbated further when you consider the fact that we need the developing world to adopt such technologies. Developing nations already account for 63 percent of current carbon emissions, with this set to continue rising. If you want to tackle the climate crisis, how energy is consumed in China, India and Indonesia is more important than what happens in the UK and United States.
There is therefore a plausible claim that you want to innovate as much as possible to reduce production costs, and thereby engage in technology transfer to the developing world.
Such a conclusion demonstrates a conflict between domestic climate politics and a more pragmatic global planetary agenda. Green jobs sound sensible, and can also address other political issues at a national level. The problem may be that this prioritises domestic issues at the expense of future generations worldwide.
Is it really all about economics?
Climate change clearly requires a sharp economic restructuring. Yet another profound contribution towards our planetary security could come through a more cultural vein.
Labour markets are really important in cultural reproduction. Ask any feminist political economist whether household activity being seen as outside the economic sphere reinforces gendered inequality, or critics of neoliberalism if the demise of labour unions has increased levels of individualism.
It should therefore come as no surprise that the NHS, which is the largest employer in Europe, is also one of the most prized institutions in Britain.
Everyone in the UK knows someone who works in the NHS. Be it nurses, doctors, or cleaners, the public recognise the hard work that these people do for their communities and wider civic society (something similar could be said about the U.S. and its large military, whose personnel are given immense respect Stateside).
As a result, the future of the NHS is almost always at the centre of general election campaigns. Whilst it can be argued that this actually stymies genuine healthcare progress, there is no doubt that the large cohort of NHS employees has thrust our relationship with health to the forefront of democratic discourse.
Now, could we attempt this with green jobs? Could organising our economy and labour around climate security enrich our relationship with our ecosystems, strengthen our obligations to our oceans, and renew our link with land?
If a significant constituency of people worked in an industry which was centred around sustainable development, it is very likely that there will be a cultural transmission both within and between generations around the importance of that sustainability. As long as our labour continues to be an integral component to our lives, the job that we do therefore has cultural ramifications. Shifting labour into dealing with the great issue of our generation is surely therefore a shrewd move.
Don’t get above your automation station
Cowen’s argument about cost and technology transfer is, in my opinion, an inescapable truth. Cost is king, and a surplus of green jobs may counterintuitively be problematic for the planet.
Despite this, we do not live in a fully automated net zero energy industry (yet!). For example, although progress is being made in automating parts of the Electric Vehicle battery supply chain, the current production methods in place are not profitable enough for many organisations, according to a report by ABB Robotics.
This means that green jobs may be here to stay for now. Two big questions therefore jump out to me:
What are the jobs that significantly add to costs which could be automated?
Which roles are important to shifting cultural mindsets around how we should treat our planet?
If you can answer these questions, you can prioritise the production of important green jobs which are:
Innovative in driving down costs of low carbon, socially beneficial goods and services.
Tough to automate.
Integral to reproducing a planet-oriented culture.
This will require:
High levels of R&D. One of the big political economy lessons of the pandemic has been that if you spend big now on a huge oncoming problem, the bill will actually be smaller than if you do not act swiftly!
The creation of new institutions to embody values and beliefs, as well as to produce new knowledge.
The cultural promotion of high value jobs in the energy/climate industry. A good example of this could be annual honours (like an Elizabethan order) to researchers, entrepreneurs and activists who have made particularly important contributions to tackling climate change.
I am surprised that more people are not acknowledging Cowen’s compelling argument. That being said, his economic view ignores important cultural and technological strands, which is why I think that the above suggestions sketch out a more pragmatic, practical landing zone. When green jobs do exist, they should maximise long term social welfare in a realistic manner.
Of the Week - My Favourites
Podcast: 80,000 Hours - Chris Olah on what the hell is going on inside neural networks
This is a long, long ep, but even half an hour of your time would let you learn so much from one of the most exciting communicators in the AI Research community.
Song: Joy Crookes - Skin
YouTube Video: Geoguessr - Urban World No Moving #22 [PLAY ALONG] ..comes with free insane guess
Article: Sam Freedman (Institute for Government) - Covid Tests: Schools and exams in 2022 and beyond
It’s not controversial to say that Britain’s school exam system isn’t performing brilliantly at the moment. This note from one of Britain’s best education commentators (if you aren’t already following Sam on Twitter, you should), offers some sensible steps forward to build a fairer, more resilient system for school students.
FYI: I will be posting a couple of interviews based around COP 26 policy in November. Because of that, I will try to limit Climate posting until then.