What is a green job?

[classical_hero]

Link to video.

REP. ISSA: If I asked you a question. You know the answer. Would you please answer it. If you sweep the floor in a solar panel facility, is that a green job?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: Thank you. If you drive a hybrid bus — public transportation — is that a green job?

MR. GALVIN: According to our definition, yes.

REP. ISSA: Thank you. What if you’re a college professor teaching classes about environmental studies?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about just any school bus driver?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about the guy who puts gas in the school bus?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: How about employees at a bicycle shop?

MR. GALVIN: I guess I’m not sure about that.

REP. ISSA: The answer is yes, according to your definition. And you’ve got a lot of them. What about a clerk at the bicycle repair shop?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

REP. ISSA: What about someone who works in an antique dealer?

MR. GALVIN: I’m not sure about that either.

REP. ISSA: The answer is yes. Those are — those are recycled goods. They’re antiques; they’re used. What about someone who works at the Salvation Army in their clothing recycling and furniture?

MR. GALVIN: Right. Because they’re selling recycled goods....

REP. ISSA: Does the teenage kid who works full time at a used record shop count?

MR. GALVIN: Yes.

So it looks like green jobs for all after all., especially considering there are so many out there.

 

[Silurian]

It is not a black and white question, or green and ...

There is more of a sliding scale.


If the hybrid bus is on a route with very few passengers it most likely is not green.
If it is full of passengers most of the day taking cars off the road and enabling car drivers to drive more efficiently due to lower car numbers then it most likely is green.

 

[Old Hippy]

i just don't know whether the questions or the answers are the most stupid...

 

[Cutlass]

Green jobs generally refers to jobs that have an environmental impact which is much more positive that the conventional way of doing business. But I don't think there is a hard and fast demarcation where one ends and the other begins.

 

[Murky]

It'd be easier to define what isn't a green job. Oil rig worker, Coal miner and Lumberjack are definitely not green occupations.

 

[Silurian]

A Lumberjack would be green where the trees are chopped at the rate they grow, not clear felled etc.

 

[strijder20]

What an odd article and what a great example of taking things too literally.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

A Lumberjack would be green where the trees are chopped at the rate they grow, not clear felled etc.

So a lumberjack would chop down 1 tree per century? Seems fair to me. Of course, it would take a long time to do it by hand, since he's being "green" and using only tools powered by the strength of his own body.

 

[Silurian]

Valka@

No.
There can only be a few Lumberjacks not lots of very slow ones.
The tools would be powered by the trees.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I wasn't envisioning lots of lumberjacks. Since trees grow at different rates, I was imagining maybe one or two.

What kind of tool is greenest? Sure solar-powered ones don't need fuel or electricity, but they do need those to make in the first place.

But Stone-Age axes? They need no more power than the strength of a human and the skill to work the stone.

 

[Silurian]

Well you can use wood powered steam winches to drag the trees to a road or river.
The steam engines could also generate electricity to power saws.
You can use unmanned balloons manoeuvred by winch to pick trees out of the forest so you can select the best ones.
If there is not a river to take out the trees (less the branches and brash that have been burnt for power) then they would be transported by a larger balloon powered by biodiesel.

Lumberjacks could work in a green way.

 

[Quackers]

You tax the productive areas of the economy and due to the general public wanting enviromentally friendly policies, the government subsidies and creates jobs in the energy inefficient sector, like wind power though subsidies. (Cue Arwon).

 

[Silurian]

You tax the productive areas of the economy and due to the general public wanting enviromentally friendly policies, the government subsidies and creates jobs in the energy inefficient sector, like wind power though subsidies. (Cue Arwon).

Well how energy inefficient each sector is depends on what costs you attach to each method of generation.

 

[Arwon]

Yeah they don't even wear green clothes ho ho ho what nonsense.

 

[Arwon]

OK have woken up properly and read the quote now. I actually don't get the point here, is there something I'm missing?

Most of the stuff listed there clearly falls under the rubric of "green jobs" assuming green jobs are the jobs which are compatible with a low carbon and low wastage economy.

Is the point some sort of surprise that yeah, significant chunks of the activity in our economy is actually sustainable when you look at it? "Greening" economies is partly about changing habits but really in terms of carbon reduction it's mostly about weaning ourselves off about 2 dozen industrial activities... rather than living in caves or 80% of people building and maintaining solar panels.

When people hear about "mining jobs" or "smelting jobs" they realise the maintainance staff, the cleaners and the drivers are included in that, right?

 

[Defiant47]

It's much more meaningful to assess whether an industry is green, rather than any single job. The same janitor job could be green as grass if it's helping a solar company, or black as oil if it's helping a corporation that has no regard for environmental consequences.

The way to deal with non-green industries is through tax subsidies and governmental regulation. Of course, if you're against that sort of thing, then please be ready to pay the money out of your own pocket (metaphorically), since these extraneous environmental costs will be incurred by the populace, not the corporation, if there is no government intervention.

 

[Oerdin]

Issa Moderator Action: <snip> --- just loves, loves, loves to put Federal earmarks on his own private property effectively transferring government money to himself. Another famous one is he road blocks federal highway funds so he can shift the geography of where the new highway goes so that it personally financially benefits himself. He had the entire highway 78 -Interstate 5 interchange moved over a mile north just so that the parcels of land his company owned would suddenly become right next to the freeway and perfect for building stripe malls and office buildings. Oh, yeah, he then added in several new exits which only parcels he personally owned benefited from them.

Issa is such a corrupt piece of trash on so many levels as well as a proven liar so I have no idea why anyone is interested in what that P.O.S. says. His vote is for sale to the highest bidder and he'll say exactly what he's paid to say and you want to know what is worse? All of his corruption, all of his personally enriching himself at the taxpayer's expense, it's all perfectly legal because in America the criminals get to write their own laws. In any other other western country crooks like Issa would be in chains and rightly so.

Moderator Action: 7 day ban, no matter how colloquial or jocular.

 

[Atticus]

Moderator Action: Moved to the Tavern because of lack of specific discussion points in the OP.

 

[LucyDuke]

Well I guess this proves that environmentalism is all stupid!

 

[holy king]

If the hybrid bus is on a route with very few passengers it most likely is not green.
If it is full of passengers most of the day taking cars off the road and enabling car drivers to drive more efficiently due to lower car numbers then it most likely is green.

individual transport is simply not feasible as it is on a global scale. before long, we will only see the very rich have cars on their own.