Can green jobs save us?

By JEANNE CUMMINGS | 10/14/08 4:51 AM EDT

This may be hard to believe, but John McCain and Barack Obama actually agree on something: An explosion of new green jobs is the way to get the U.S. economy back on track.

“We can move forward and clean up our climate and develop green technologies and alternate — alternative — energies for hybrid, for hydrogen, for battery-powered cars so that we can clean up our environment and, at the same time, get our economy going by creating millions of jobs,” the Republican senator from Arizona said in the presidential debate last week in Nashville, Tenn.

A few moments later, the Democratic senator from Illinois asserted that “if we create a new energy economy, we can create 5 million jobs, easily, here in the United States.

“It can be an engine that drives us into the future, the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades.”

The remarks seemed like lifelines tossed out to a nation drowning in red ink and panicked at the thought of opening 401(k) retirement statements.

But can either candidate’s plan really create a green sector strong enough to rescue us?

The political climate has certainly improved for such an initiative, and Congress has made some headway in the past two years.

Last year’s energy bill boosted the minimum gas mileage standards for automobiles to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. It also mandated greater use of biofuels in gasoline blends and included incentives to encourage energy efficiency.

Extensions of several renewable fuel tax credits for businesses and consumers were included in the package of sweeteners added to the $700 billion economic rescue plan just signed into law.

But several experts remain skeptical that the candidates’ plans are sweeping enough to bring about dramatic change or politically balanced enough to be approved by Congress.

In addition, the very economy they seek to save is likely to make it harder for them to come up with the cash needed to accelerate growth in the green sector.

“Before the financial bailout, I would have said I’m 100 percent sure we are in a significantly better situation today — politically and policy-wise — than we were a year ago,” said Andrew Light, director of George Mason University’s Center for Global Ethics.

Obama’s promise of millions of new jobs stems largely from his proposal to pump $15 billion each year into research and development of cleaner fuels. “Our goal should be, in 10 years’ time, we are free of dependence on Middle Eastern oil,” he said.

Michael Lenox, a specialist on environmental sustainability at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says that’s “optimistic.”

But Lenox is sympathetic to Obama’s overarching argument — that pumping billions into R&D will produce new technologies and new businesses.

“Who in the 1970s would have said, ‘Microsoft will become a huge firm and big employer?’” he asked. “There might be somebody out there now that could grow and become that.”

Lenox also agrees with an entrepreneurial approach rather than a Big Government project to create new fuels. “I’d fear a Manhattan-type project might pick the wrong technology,” he said.

But his UVA colleague, Darden Dean Robert F. Bruner, cautions that reluctant private investors also need to get on the green wagon to spur swift change.

“They’re guarded in their optimism about the economic boom in this area,” Bruner said. “The problem with state-of-the-art green ventures is their payoff horizons are further in the future than was the case with the technology sector.”

Bruner believes Obama’s $15 billion annual program might prompt new interest from private investors. Compared with federal research into health and defense projects, it’s a small sum, Bruner said, but “it is a material step up. It would help to draw talent into universities and private enterprise. It would be a signal of serious intent for venture capitalists to follow along.”

McCain’s jobs program comes mostly in the form of nuclear plant construction. He wants to see 45 new plants built by 2030 and, ultimately, 55 more nationwide.

“We can work on nuclear power plants. Build a whole bunch of them, create millions of new jobs,” he said during the Nashville debate.

It’s a plan that experts say would surely reduce carbon emissions nationally and help combat global warming.

Its practicality is another matter.

The nuclear industry is heavily regulated, and it can take nearly a decade to simply get all the permits and paperwork done to break ground on a new plant.

And McCain skips over the prickly problem of where to put the plants’ radioactive waste or how it would be reprocessed. He also dismisses safety concerns, noting that the Navy has been safely operating nuclear-powered ships for decades.

Light says McCain’s campaign rhetoric glosses over troubling realities. “There have been accidents on U.S. ships,” Light said. “There has been environmental damage. And there are ample examples from other countries that show loss of life.”

Michael Lubell, professor of physics at the City College of New York, says the best and fastest way to improve our financial and environmental situations may be to do something that doesn’t cost a penny: use less energy.

The American Physical Society, an organization of physicists, issued a report last month concluding that energy efficiency “offers the cheapest, fastest way to wean ourselves off foreign oil and reduce global warming.”

And Lubell notes the other benefit is that “you are not putting money into technologies in which we are simply generating more energy. You are saving the supply you have.”

The downside to that, of course, is that a candidate can’t boast about jobs and, worse, could face real risks of ridicule.

That’s what happened to Obama when he urged town hall attendees to save gas and money by keeping their tires properly inflated. (The Bush administration urges the same thing.)

McCain supporters began handing out tire pressure gauges labeled “Obama’s Energy Plan.” For a time, the campaign was even using them to raise money: an Obama tire gauge for every $25 contribution.