How Can You Argue with Logic Like This?
So much for criticism that California's environmental leadership "” notably AB 32 "” kills jobs: The state has the most green-collar jobs of any in the nation, and San Francisco leads the Golden State with 42,000 positions. For a city with a population of 809,000, that's pretty impressive.
I think of my father-in-law when I read something like this. He was a lifelong environmentalist as well as a PHD physicist and a researcher at MIT's Lincoln Labs. While we often disagreed on various issues, he always tried to bring both science and the scientific method to environmental issues. I wonder what he would think about this bozo.
Not that this quote really deserves further attention, but here are a couple of random thoughts:
- While AB32 has been law for a number of years, the CARB has made only limited progress actually setting up the enabling regulations and carbon trading schemes. In effect, AB32 is largely un-implemented at this point, making its lack of effect on job growth fairly unsurprising
- Wow, what a surprise -- the state with the largest number of workers has the largest number of workers in a particular employment category. My guess is they have the most car mechanics in the country too, and the most SUV owners. So what?
- The whole definition of a "Green collar job" is total BS. Basically it means you work in a job that has been deemed to be in a politically correct energy related field. But why are solar executives green jobs but hydro plant workers not?
- The implication in the post is that this is some kind of public policy victory, but of course there is no evidence at all of why these jobs exist or are located in California
- Even if these jobs are the result of some kind of California public policy initiative, how much did they cost? How many jobs were lost when the government shifted resources around by fiat? In Spain, its been calculated that more than 2 jobs were lost for every green job created.
There used to be a joke in Texas during the 80's oil bust -- "How do you make a million dollars in oil? Start with $10 million." The same likely applies here -- "How do you create 42,000 green jobs? Start with 100,000."
