Green jobs: environmental red tape cancels out job creation

As mentioned, Spain has likely destroyed more jobs than it has created with its extensive subsidies for wind and solar. Its unemployment rate, nearly 19 per cent, is double that of the US and does not suggest that green jobs can create prosperity. In Denmark (PDF 3.14MB), each wind energy job has cost $90,000 to $140,000 in subsidies, which is more than the jobs pay. In Germany (PDF 337KB), the figure is as high as $240,000. And the experience in Spain, Denmark, and Germany is that most of the green jobs created are temporary ones.

The global experience - that market interventions increase green employment but hurt the overall economy - may also apply in California. California stands out among the states as moving more aggressively in imposing a green economy. It also has unemployment considerably higher than the national average. Although several factors play a part in California's economic problems, its environmental and energy policy - global warming measures, alternative energy mandates, other regulations that raise conventional energy prices - are likely part of the reason for the state's overall economic malaise.

To a large extent, the green jobs agenda represents the Europeanisation and the Californiasation of the American Economy. That is bad news for job growth.

Is the Boxer-Kerry Cap-and-Trade Bill a job creator?

Global warming legislation has also been also touted as a green jobs measure, including the Senate's pending Boxer-Kerry cap-and-trade bill. (The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, S. 1733, 111th Cong., 1st Sess.) However, a Heritage analysis finds job losses from this bill reaching 2.5 million in some years, including 1 million in the manufacturing sector. These are net job losses - after any green jobs are taken into account.

Cap and trade works by raising fossil energy costs high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of them. Cap and trade would contract the economy and destroy jobs. It is true that, in the wake of reduced use of affordable fossil fuels - the coal, oil, and natural gas that provides America with 85 per cent of our energy - more expensive alternatives would fill the void, with the resultant increase in green jobs associated with them. But the increased energy prices would cost jobs elsewhere in the economy, cancelling out the increase in green jobs.

There are better ways to create jobs

The solution is not more environmental red tape but less. Due to regulatory restrictions, America has access to only a fraction of its oil and natural gas reserves, both onshore and offshore. By one estimate (PDF 812KB), a reinvigorated offshore and onshore energy program could create 113,000 to 160,000 new jobs by 2030. Bills such as the No-Cost Stimulus Act (S. 570 and H.R. 1431), the American Energy Innovation Act (H.R. 2828), the American Energy Act (H.R. 1431), the American Conservation and Clean Energy Independence Act (H.R. 2227), and others seek to streamline the process by which domestic energy production can expand.

And, unlike wind, solar, biofuels, and other alternatives that need billions in tax dollars each year to survive, the energy companies that wish to expand domestic oil and gas production are willing to pay the government many billions of dollars for the rights to do so. Whether they are deemed green jobs or not - and given the proven record (PDF 223KB) of the offshore drilling industry in reducing natural seepage of oil into the sea and the many environmental benefits associated with using natural gas, they arguably ought to be - they are real jobs created without taxpayer dollars and thus devoid of offsetting job losses elsewhere.