Recently, a spate of bad news on the “green economy” front has led former advocates of the idea to some soul searching. The bankruptcy of Solyndra; the lack of sales of the GM Volt; the withering of wind and solar power installations as subsidies dry up … suddenly, former green job boosters are having an epiphany:
Over at the New York Times, David Brooks writes:
A few years ago, it seemed as though the Green Economy could be a big part of the answer.
New clean-energy sources could address environmental, economic and national security problems all at once. In his 2008 convention speech, Barack Obama promised to create five million green economy jobs. The U.S. Conference of Mayors estimated in April 2009 that green jobs could account for 10 percent of new job growth over the next 30 years.
Alas, it was not to be. The gigantic public investments in green energy may be stimulating innovation and helping the environment. But they are not evidence that the government knows how to create private-sector jobs.
This should have come as a surprise to absolutely nobody, since the fundamental fallacies of the whole “green economy” myth have been known for over 150 years. The entire idea is simply a form of magical thinking:
Governments don’t have money: They can only create jobs by taking job-creating money out of the another part of the economy. Government “job creation programs” destroy jobs on net, they don’t create them.
Governments can’t predict the future: They have zero knowledge about what technologies will work, will find a willing market, and will create jobs.
Governments suck at picking winning technologies: With no market restraints on reckless gambling, planners simply pick whatever technology that they happen to love, and bet taxpayer money on spreading it. Sure, every so often, the planner gets lucky, but more often, they make bad bets and simply hide the losses and the negative side-effects.
As much as I love my name, calling something “green” won’t magically turn a dog into a pony: The “technologies” repackaged as “green” are serial failures in the world’s free-enterprise economies. Wind power; solar power; battery cars; fluorescent lighting; super-efficient (and super-expensive) cars, homes, appliances; smart grids that let regulators control your water heater; mass transit; forced high density living; all these supposedly “green ideas” have failed dozens upon dozens of times. The only mystery left is why people are pretending to be surprised.
In the ideal world, this latest stupendous failure of the push for a planned-energy economy will be the end of the matter, and governments will embrace a free-enterprise energy economy. Of course, we don’t live in that world. Instead, watch for the re-branding, where “green” becomes “clean,” and the same failed ideas are offered up as the new panacea.
Time to make homes ready with solar panel engineer like GM volt.
Yeah, but all those green jobs/factory subsidies are a great way to launder taxpayer money back to your high rolling supporters and your party…
“The only mystery left is why people are pretending to be surprised.”
It’s called “Demnesia.” It’s a particular symptom of the magical thinking you describe.
You’d be surprised at how often people are surprised by things that they know but don’t want to know.
Indeed.
Mr. Brooks has become the poster boy for the class of high-functioning dupes. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.
Minor pedantic point:
Governments don’t have money
Governments don’t have capital. Of course governments have money; they extract some from me everyday. However, they don’t have capital; wealth combined with effort, land, and/or management to produce profit. Taxes are not capital. Taxes shouldn’t and can’t be used effectively to make profit or enhance private companies’ balance sheets.
We love magical thinking because it’s much easier than work. A diet pill that magically lets me shed weight while I sit on my couch and eat potato chips is a much more attractive alternative to cutting calories and going out to exercise. Borrowing a boat load of money to buy a huge house and then taking home equity loans to buy cars and vacations is much easier than working and saving. The only problem is it doesn’t effing work for long, and when we finally realize that, we’re in a much bigger hole than we would have been otherwise. Of course, politicians NEVER realize that because their short term career interests are based on catering to people who think it does. All they need is a plurality of idiots to believe in unicorns and they have a job for 2, 4 or 6 years. The Barack Obama formula of 2008, and here we are in a bigger hole than we would have been otherwise.
Stoop Davy Dave is exactly right. It’s the very same reason that unemployment numbers are “unexpectedly high” every single month.
A large lack of critical thinking led to a large group of intelligent people to be caught up in the idea that green jobs were a pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow. No one bothered to consider how simply arbitrarily changing the fuel in the engine of our economy would make it run better. If green energy was a better solution, the government wouldn’t need to so involved to make it happen.
Here are my thoughts:
http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2011/09/we-seem-to-have-misplaced-your-green.html
THANK YOU for posting this. We cover similar topics on Common Cents regularly…
Steve
Common Cents
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
The market works. If any of these green ideas had merit there would be no shortage of private investment. Alternative energy sources are the holy grail so any idea that has half a chance will get funded without government interventions and the rest of the nonsense that comes with it.
And to make matters even worse, a new article today about how almost $900 million of porkulus money for green energy projects are sitting there untouched. Way to go Department of Energy.
http://hosted2.ap.org/COGRA/e109e277e48c4e219e07a1d4710177b3/Article_2011-09-07-Stimulus-Energy%20Funds/id-8ee3bb8cc0bd4ad5be8e2869e59d0472
Job creating going to be reduce every year, government and multinational companies should take it very serious.