Posted on 08/18/2011 11:58:53 PM PDT by Wayne07
Flanked by a cadre of local political leaders, Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose used a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a solar power company last week to talk up the promise of the green economy.
Mr. Reed called the opening of the new headquarters of SolFocus, which produces large, free-standing solar panels, an enormously important development for the citys economy.
Clean technology is the next wave of innovation that Silicon Valley needs to capture, the mayor said, noting that the San Jose City Council had committed to increasing the number of green jobs in the city to 25,000 by 2022. San Jose currently has 4,350 such jobs, according to city officials.
But SolFocus assembles its solar panels in China, and the new San Jose headquarters employs just 90 people.
In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream.
I wont say Im not frustrated, said Van Jones, an Oakland activist who served briefly as Mr. Obamas green-jobs czar before resigning under fire after conservative critics said he had signed a petition accusing the Bush administration of deliberately allowing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a claim Mr. Jones denies.
A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more 2.2 percent in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Who, WHO I ask, could POSSIBLY have predicted this?
Perhaps if we all get together and hope like we've never hoped before, even MORE change will come our way...
Isn’t the ‘market mechanism’ which ‘helps drive new technology’ supposed to be a little thing called DEMAND?
Non-partisan Brookings Institute
Peace-loving Palestinians
Objective Journalism
Bi-partisan support
Internally consistent oxymoron
Journalists will say the darnedest things.
Would love to know what Job titles fall into this 2%, I'm guessing Trash Man is one, which is probably 80% of the 2%. Of course these jobs predate the Green initiative by about 100 years. Yep a staggering success. /s
Great point! It doesn’t make economical sense to outsource coal or natural gas jobs.
Green Jobs Fraud bump for later.......
Cash for Clunkers took a lot of them off the streets!
Mr. Brewster said huge job losses in construction had made it nearly impossible to place large numbers of young people in the trades. Because green construction is a large component of the green economy, the moribund housing market and associated weakness in all types of building are clearly important factors in explaining the weak creation of green jobs.
Et tu NY Times?
It all boils down to one prominent fact that distinguishes “green jobs” from other private sector jobs - the green sector can’t survive without subsidies!
How true! How true! We were on vacation in Vermont recently at a house on Lake Champlain. I asked a local if there were hydraulic power plants on the lake. The response - "Oh no, we don't have any power plants in VT. We are shutting down our nuclear plant and will buy most of our power from CANADA!"
Vermonters pride themselves on the state's minuscule production of wind energy (oooooh) and the cleanliness that results from buying the rest of their energy from another country.
Talk about hypocrisy!
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