Where are Obama’s Green Jobs?

[ALEX P]

im sure it will be on VH1 for all of us to watch

[mark foster]

Most new “green” jobs I see are not readily identifiable as distinct new trades/professions.  They are expanding markets for existing ones. 

 For instance, geothermal heating/cooling is really big here.  New firms are popping up daily, and there is a waiting list.  Traditional hvac companies have benefited from the demand for high-efficiency upgrades of traditional fuel systems.  An electrician I know is growing into solar installations (Costco sells a home system now!….maybe the manufacturers are finally on the right side of the cost curve).  I don’t have first hand knowledge, but I’ll bet the window/insulation companies are benefiting from the same tax break.

The fastest growth in my business is on-site water management.  Am I creating a distinct new “green job” for this? Never occurred to me to call it that, but I will hire, and it will be a new job.  I think others are in the same situation. 

 

 

 

[Jon Quackenbush]

Green job promises sound really nice during a campaign to fool the lefties into voting for him.

$20 bucks says he’ll say the same thing next year and we’ll post this thread two years into his next term (if he wins again) wondering where the green jobs are… We will repeat this for the president after him as well… then when the oil runs out and we have no energy infrastructure we’ll know what a real depression feels like.  The writing is on the wall.  There is no debate here, we are in peak oil now and China and India are buying more and more.  Demand is skyrocketing and supply will not increase from here on out… even I can do the math and my brain can’t do equations more difficult than rise/run.

What really bothers me is the stonewalling by lobbies and politicians whom do nothing, even when faced with peer reviewed and confirmed science.  Have they no conscience?  I remember Dick Cheney speaking before the invasion of Iraq of the 1% doctrine, in which he said “If there is a 1% chance that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, we have a responsibility to act.”  I hate to give him any credit, buy why isn’t the same logic applied by climate change skeptics?  No one would be happier than me if it weren’t true, but there is truly a mountain of evidence that suggests otherwise…

Whoops, a soapbox tangent on a Friday… Sorry!

[Heather Smith]

Like Mark said I think there are jobs being created…around here at least. There are wind farms going up all over the PNW…do those count as green jobs? Funding for a sustainable business complex at the Port of Lewiston went through this year. The problem is that because construction and development has dropped across the board the huge firms are swooping in and gobbling up these jobs even in markets they wouldn’t normally go for. My husband put a proposal in with an engineering/landscape architecture firm from Southern Idaho and the people at the port said they would have loved to work with them but we were WAY outgunned by CH2M Hill and the likes. I think there is money for these projects from stimulus funds. There was also a massive creek restoration here in town where an engineering design/build firm worked with PCEI(a local watershed group) to daylight and restore Paradise Creek. That was a multimillion dollar project with new bike paths, thousands of new plants, etc. Perhaps people in our area are just better at going after funds. Our City has a full time grant writer that does more then earn her keep. Last year she won an EPA grant for brownfield restoration of a large swath of ground set aside for infill development within city limits.

[Roland Beinert]

Which brownfield site? The grain silos?

[Heather Smith]

Yes…the URA.

http://www.nwbrownfields-update.com/2010/05/one-small-idaho-city-wins-prestigious-epa-brownfields-grant/

[Alan Ray, RLA]

Wow, I  had not noticed the economy has turned around…Happy times are here again…but not in Nashville. Oh well, at least we have Jack White here to boost the local economy….

[mark foster]

Huh? Who said the economy has turned around?  I was just trying to answer your question…

[Trace One]

nrschmid you are unsurprisingly unenlightened..scientifically uniformed and focused on greenbacks in your pocket, no further..

Like Bill McKibben said about the Gulf Oil disaster and Species die-off, , it doesn’t matter if the oil is burned or  extracted and used for fueling cars, etc…It is still BAD for the environment because that method of energy extraction has uncosted enviromental consequences – we do not know the cost of loosing islands in the pacific, of loosing polar bears and walrus to global warming – they are not costed out, in the energy industries calculations, and therefor don’t appear on the balance books..What is the environmental cost of mountaintop mining for coal in West Virginia – oh, we don’t know?? QED

You appear to have made an extremely cynical and short sighted review of how things aquire value..for you apparently, the only value is the george washington dollar..Do you have any realization of other values, that do not appear readily in greenbacks? Do you have any idea the amount of politiciking, taxes, subsidies, that go into that greenback dollar evaluation that you find so

important, so ‘truthful’..Are you aware of what does not get ANY greenbacking, so to speak..do those things have ANY value for you??? I assume you don’t have kids or don’t care about your children at all…

Not surprising, but stupid, as they say..

[Alan Ray, RLA]

All very good points nrschmid, it’s all political rhetoric….I just wish I could get one of those $335.K jobs….and unless construction gets a kick start I’m afraid many more of our fellow la’s will be looking for a career change.

[Trace One]

ps, green is NOT just some slogan – it is a scientific construct, for goodness sakes..

god, how stupid have we become!!!

[Trace One]

alan, as I said above, ‘green’ is a scientific construct..at it’s base..Is there some reason you don’t understand that, and are unwilling to participate in a societal attempt to be less damaging to other species in the world we share?

We may have the details wrong, politics n o doubt has taken center stage, but the underlying concept is scientific..

Any confusion on that???

And why not work toward bettering the system, instead of saying it is all bunk..Unless, of course, you are a creationist, or someone who is waiting for the rhapsody..And I don’t mean the Wagnerian rhapsody..

[Robot]

And why not work toward bettering the system, instead of saying it is all bunk..Unless, of course, you are a creationist, or someone who is waiting for the rhapsody..And I don’t mean the Wagnerian rhapsody..

Careful, Trace.  Nashville isn’t too far from Dayton, TN, the former home of John T. Scopes.

[Trace One]

yeah, Rob, it would be funny to compare these posters to that 

1925 evolution trial, but somehow it ain’t….funny, that is.. ..

thanks for the effort, anyway…

[Robot]

I hope you realize that was a bit tongue-in-cheek.   I know you can’t compare the two.

Just my little attempt at humor when I find it extremely disheartening that there seem to be so many that, in your words:

are unwilling to participate in a societal attempt to be less damaging to other species in the world we share.

[Author]

Posts