Posted by Nick
The New York Times ran a beautifully written, balanced story on the “green jobs” revolution.
Central to the green-collar jobs debate seems to be the question of whether these jobs are “additive”, meaning they are new jobs that did not previously exist before the green revolution, or whether green-collar jobs are merely displacing blue-collar and white-collar jobs in a zero-sum game.
As ever, the answer seems to be halfway between additive and zero sum. Though we’ve observed new jobs being created in response to government mandates and entrepreneurial activity, we’ve also seen a number of jobs suddenly take on a green hue just because they happen to be “environmentally” focused. Moreover, many “green” organizations are expecting their new eco-employees to become more labor efficient themselves, oftentimes doing the jobs of two or more people while their green initiative is built out.
The article linked to above looks beyond these immediate questions and posits that “The development of a green economy creates a broad new set of opportunities…many people commented on how this will be as big as the Internet. But this is so much bigger than the Internet. The only comparable example we can find is the Industrial Revolution. It will affect every business and every industry.” Fingers crossed….
lets see what plays.
I read that article yesterday about comparing it to the Industrial Revolution and I’ve actually read that comparison in other articles as well. You’re blog looks great, can we work on driving traffic to each others sites as the green wave picks up momentum.
Sean
http://www.greencollareconomy.com