Van Jones, Green Jobs Czar

Longtime readers may remember this post about Van Jones from last fall ("A Green New Deal?"). At the time, I didn't know he'd be picked by the Obama Administration to be a 'green jobs czar', but I figured his ideas would have some valence with team Obama. Now he has gotten into trouble for some past statements and actions unrelated to his green jobs advocacy (See The New Republic: "Is Obama's Green Jobs Guru In Trouble?". HT: Ta-Nehisi Coates). In a way, this is unfortunate, because it detracts attention from the weakness of his "green collar economy" thesis. How can a robust, job-creating economy be built on winterizing homes and installing more expensive sources of energy?

"Tilting at Green Windmills"

In a post last fall ("A Green New Deal?"), we mentioned Van Jones's explication of the idea, advocated by many progressives, that government subsidies for solar and wind energy would spur job creation. In his Washington Post column yesterday ("Tilting at Green Windmills"), George Will draws on research from a Spanish economist who suggests otherwise. An excerpt:

WASHINGTON -- The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating "green jobs" in "alternative energy" even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent -- more than double the European Union average -- partly because of spending on such jobs?

Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report which, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.

Calzada says Spain's torrential spending -- no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources -- on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies -- wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation -- sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency -- of capital. (European media regularly report "eco-corruption" leaving a "footprint of sleaze" -- gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.) Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs from elsewhere in Spain's economy.

'A Green New Deal'?

In a recent post ("The Election") we speculated on some investment implications of Obama's victory and noted the conventional wisdom that this was bullish for green tech. In Barnes & Noble yesterday, I leafed through the book pictured above, by Van Jones¹. Van Jones sees green tech as a jobs program for blue collar workers, who can be employed building windmills, putting up solar panels, retrofitting buildings, etc.

I'm skeptical of how much of America's energy needs can be filled by solar and wind, but Jones seems to have a handle on the zeitgeist of today's progressives (i.e., liberals). Below is a short video of Jones giving the elevator pitch for his idea.





¹Van Jones is an attorney by profession, as is Robert Kennedy Jr., who wrote the forward to Jones's book (Kennedy became an environmentalist after he was busted for heroin possession in the early 1980s, and did community service for Riverkeeper as part of his plea bargain). In fact, most of the blurbs praising Jones's book come from those without science backgrounds. The tendency of environmental advocacy groups to be run by non-scientists was one noted by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear.