One of our local papers did a better job of reporting this issue than I have seen from any of the big guys, in part because the reporter started with the question that I think everyone should be asking: what does it mean to create a green job? Here’s what I said:

If you have two people making the same amount of energy that one person used to make, would you want to describe that as creating one new job? I would say no, you’re significantly reducing productivity. Ultimately, creating jobs has to do with promoting productivity….
We might well make a decision that we want to be promoting economic growth in a way that’s more friendly toward the environment. That’s a fine decision to make, but I don’t think we ought to be doing it under the pretense we’re creating jobs for people.

Last 5 posts by James Hamilton

• Yes the future deficits are worrisome - November 25th, 2009
• Factors in local house price declines - November 22nd, 2009
• Receiver operating characteristics curve - November 18th, 2009
• Commodity inflation - November 15th, 2009
• Will rising oil prices derail the recovery? - November 10th, 2009