Among the conclusions of
The Myth of Green Jobs by Gordon Hughes, Professor of Economics at Edinburgh University, are:
1. “Green jobs” are a chimera. Though diverting taxpayers money into the renewable energy sector may indeed “create” jobs in the renewable energy sector, it will cost many more jobs in the broader economy.
2. Policies to promote renewable energy will add 0.6 to 0.7 per cent per annum to core inflation from now till 2020. This is equivalent to a rise in the same period of the Consumer Price Index by 6.5 per cent. if the Government sticks to its inflation targets and applies restrictions on speed of growth through higher interest rates, then the “sacrifice cost” – ie what the economy could have made, but was prevented from doing so by monetary policy – is £250 billion.
3. These same policies will, on top of that £250 billion cost, reduce GDP by 2 per cent to 3 per cent for at least ten years. This will cost Britain the equivalent of 60 per cent of the amount the government spends each year on primary and secondary education.
4. Renewable energy will cost £120 billion – making it 9 to 10 times more expensive than energy from conventional sources.
5. Claims about “innovation” and the development of “new industries” are a nonsense. “Almost every country in the world wants to claim the same benefit so the numbers do not add up….For the longer term, there is little doubt that the primary beneficiary will be China. That is already apparent from the way the market is developing.”
6. Not only is there no evidence to support lobbyists’ and government ministers’ claims that green “investment” will create green jobs, but also such a policy will result in lower real disposable incomes and higher prices. Little thought appears to have gone into considering the real consequences of this government policy. Indeed, all these claims about green jobs “seem intended to divert attention from the consequences of setting arbitary and poorly considered targets for renewable energy.”
Not, of course, that we didn’t know all this already. I’ve written before about those non-existent “green jobs”
here,
here (the one where we learned that for every “green job” created in Britain 3.7 jobs are lost in the real economy) and
here (my evisceration of the beyond-dismal Climate Change minister Greg Barker). What’s more significant, though, surely, is that for all the overwhelming evidence out there of the environmental and economic damage being done by the Government’s green policies, the Government is making no effort whatsoever to change course.
The story is the same in Obama’s America, as described in this
brilliant piece by Walter Russell Mead. HT Chris Horner. The examples he cites of Obama’s green jobs quest – what he calls “feeding the masses on unicorn ribs” – almost
beggar belief.
150 green jobs created in Southern Michigan, at a cost per job of $2 million.
$700,000 city and state investment in Green Vehicles in Salinas, CA, which has failed to produce a single car
