Green Jobs

There's always been a lot of confusion around climate change and green jobs, not least of which is propagated by the administration, but listening to some otherwise seemingly knowledgeable business people discuss it on multiple CNBC type shows, it's apparent that the confusion is not just politically motivated obfuscation.

There are two basic narratives that tend to get argued.

1. Climate change is a wonderful opportunity to create green jobs, and creating jobs spurs economic growth. Yay!

2. Climate change is a terrible, unbearable toxic drain on our economy that will cause higher taxes that will hurt the economy.

Both views have bits of truth and bits of confusion. The best way to think about climate change is analogous to a giant meteor hurdling towards the Earth. Many scientists expect the meteor is expected to hit the Earth in about 100 years. But there's lots of problems. The meteors far away, so it's not totally clear when it will actually hit the Earth or how much damage it will due. It's not clear we even know for certain it will hit us at all. What if we there are gravitational fields we don't know about that will save us or objects we don't know about that will change its course.

So, we decide to start preparing just in case, which is pretty reasonable if you think the probability is high enough or the worst case scenario is bad enough. We get scientists and engineers to try to create new meteor stopping technologies. We employ construction workers to build some of their designs. Jobs are created. But it should be obvious that the best case scenario would be not to have to ward off the meteor attack. We'd rather have those workers doing other things, I mean, otherwise we could just sign a treaty with China to have nukes fire at each other in 100 years and spend a bunch of money trying to figure out ways to stop them.

But it should be just as obvious that the second view is wrong. The meteor IS coming. The "meteor jobs" and taxes aren't a drain on the economy; the meteor is. I understand that if you think the meteor is a low probability event or won't be that bad, you won't want to spend much stopping it, but then your argument should be about the probability of the meteor hitting, not the cost of the taxes.

There's a final argument that says. I think the meteor is coming, but I just want to let the free market decide how to stop it. It's actually possible that would work, but it could also fail. People's best strategy is to donate as little as possible, but still have the meteor stopped. So inevitably less resources go into the project, it might still be enough, but it might not. I've heard people state this argument, but I've never heard them articulate why its a good trade-off to make.

This analysis leaves open all possible views for what we should do about climate change (or meteor attacks), but there are coherent arguments and incoherent arguments, let's argue better.