by Brad Johnson
The challenges facing President Obama and the U.S. Congress have not gone away. Paul Krugman worries that “unemployment is likely to stay near its current level for a year or more,” because “much of
the political establishment now sees stimulus as having been
discredited by events, so that it’s very hard to come back and scale
the policy up to where it should have been in the first place.”
But
there remains a pathway out of Krugman’s dire vision of “a process of
defining prosperity down”—if enough politicians embrace the
alternative vision of a green economy, promoted by political leaders as far apart on the ideological spectrum as Van Jones and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The basic concept is simple, as this video from Repower America shows—heat up the economy by cooling down the planet:
The Recovery Act made a down payment for clean energy jobs,
primarily through public spending. But the creation of a carbon market
would drive private investment away from pollution and into clean
energy. A Political Economy Research Institute clean energy economy report found that public-private investments of $150 billion a year could be
sustained over ten years and create 1.7 million net long-term jobs in
the U.S. economy. Fossil-based energy production sends money overseas
and sinks money into capital-intensive projects like mining and
drilling, whereas clean energy and energy efficiency requires greater
local and labor investment.
The stronger the carbon cap is in a carbon market, the greater the
investment. A $150 billion carbon market would be about double the size
of what is being considered by Congress. That investment would be
sufficient to construct a nationwide smart grid, retrofit every
building in America for energy efficiency, and produce 20 percent of
electricity from renewable sources—all by 2020.
If Congress truly wanted to restart this nation’s economy, it would
take the legislative framework of the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs Act
and the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy Security Act and:
- Strengthen the emissions targets to spur $150 billion in clean energy investment a year
- Strengthen the building efficiency standards to require every building in America be refitted by 2020
- Strengthen the renewable electricity standards to 20 percent by 2020
- Continue the Recovery Act’s ambitious smart grid plans
Conservatives are absolutely right that the future of the American
economy depends not on long-term government spending but on private
investment. But the economy needs to be first restarted by a clean
energy stimulus and then pointed in the right direction by strong,
swift federal action, ending our fealty to Exxon Mobil and Peabody
Coal, and ushering in a new era of clean energy independence.
Update: The original version of
this post misinterpreted the PERI report’s conclusion that a $150
billion a year investment creates “1.7 million net new jobs a year.” As
report author Robert Pollin explains:
It is 1.7 million jobs per year for each year that $150
billion is spent. So we could say there are 1.7 million net new jobs
(i.e. 2.5 million clean energy minus 800,000 fossil fuel) jobs, and as
long as spending is $150 billion each year, 1.7 people will be able to
keep these or equivalent jobs. But the cumulative total of “job years”
for 10 years would indeed be 17 million.
Related Links:
India aims for 20 gigawatts solar by 2022
New Energy Finance: Solar power 50% cheaper by year end
Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy
