Andrew Stuttaford of National Review Online examines the latest data on so-called “green” jobs.
I’ve never been — how to put this — entirely convinced that the “sustainable” economy is going to be quite the jobs machine that its proponents like to claim. It’ll be good for regulators, and it will be a bonanza for the consultants who will be hired to guide companies through the maze that the regulators will create. But other than that, the case for job creation is . . . unclear. To take a key example, as currently envisaged, the transition away from fossil fuels is almost certain to increase the cost of energy (and, in all likelihood, decrease its reliability). That is not an obvious recipe for job creation.
Nor, for that matter, is severely constraining (or even phasing out) entire industries. Of course, some — maybe even many — new jobs will be required in replacement technologies, but will there be enough of them to replace the jobs that are going to be lost, and how well will they pay? …
… [N]ow from Joe Miller, in the Financial Times, there’s this:
“Half a million jobs would be at risk under EU plans to effectively ban combustion-engine cars by 2035, according to European auto suppliers, the latest in a series of stark warnings about the costs of a rapid transition to emissions-free technology.”
“More than two-thirds of those 501,000 roles would disappear in the five years before that date, according to a poll of almost 100 companies for the European Association of Automotive Suppliers, Clepa, making it difficult to mitigate the “social and economic impacts” caused by mass unemployment.”
Of course, the European Association of Automotive Suppliers may be assumed to be somewhat biased when it comes to this topic. Nevertheless, they ought to know what they are talking about.
