Green Jobs

• Author: Peter Poschen and Michael Renner

Green Jobs Finance & Development, December 2015, Vol. 52, No. 4

Peter Poschen and Michael Renner

Protecting the environment can go hand in hand with economic prosperity and job opportunities

U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2013 climate action plan and 2015 clean power plan triggered fierce debate. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell denounced the proposals. “Declaring a ‘War on Coal’ is tantamount to declaring a ‘War on Jobs,’” McConnell told the Senate. “It’s tantamount to kicking the ladder out from beneath the feet of any Americans struggling in today’s economy.”

The perception that there is a trade-off—an intrinsic contradiction between protecting the climate and the environment on one hand and economic prosperity and job opportunities on the other—is common among government decision makers north and south, as well as among business leaders.

Doubt also lingers among voters. An annual poll of U.S. voters’ top concerns conducted by the Pew Research Center showed a clear pattern over the past decade. During years of high growth with ample employment opportunities, environmental sustainability and jobs and family incomes were tied as the two top concerns of the American public, at 57 percent each. But when the Great Recession started to sting in 2009, fear of job losses became a top concern of 82 percent of the U.S. public; the environment worried only 41 percent, and climate change was all but eclipsed at 30 percent (Pew Research Center, 2009).

When jobs are the priority and environmental protection is perceived as causing job losses, political will is hard to muster.

But do we really have to choose between protecting the environment and generating enough good jobs?

The answer has profound implications in a world where more than 200 million people are unemployed and almost half of those who are working have unstable and often low-paying jobs (ILO, 2015). An additional 400 million jobs will be needed to counter the unemployment that surged in the wake of the Great Recession and to offer opportunity for the young job seekers who will enter the labor market over the next decade, mostly in developing economies (ILO, 2014).

Is there a dilemma?On the face of it, those who worry seem to have a point. The sectors that most directly contribute to climate change and other environmental degradation are agriculture, the fishing industry, forestry, energy, resource-intensive manufacturing, waste management, construction, and transportation. These sectors are the targets of policies designed to mitigate climate change, and together they employ more than 1.5 billion people, or about half the global workforce (see ILO, 2012).

But evidence accumulated over the past decade suggests that combating climate change does not preclude the growth of a healthy job market.

Green jobs—those that reduce the environmental impact of economic activity—are critical to shifting to a more environmentally sustainable economy. They fall into two broad categories: production of environmental goods such as windmills and energy-efficient buildings, and services such as recycling and work related to reducing emissions and energy and resource consumption, such as environmental and work safety and facilities and logistics management.

Two key measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are implementation of low-carbon energy production and lowering emissions from land use as a result of deforestation.

Cleaner energy production requires cutting back on fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide when used to generate electricity or for heating and transportation. Substituting less-polluting fossil fuels such as natural gas for big polluters like coal and heavy oil offers temporary help. But ultimately, renewable energy such as power from water, wind, and sun and from sustainable biomass are what it will take to keep emissions from exceeding the ability of carbon sinks in the atmosphere and oceans to absorb...