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-> President Biden has identified cutting greenhouse gas emissions linked to rising global temperatures as one of his top priorities, insisting that a shift awa

-> President Biden has identified cutting greenhouse gas emissions linked to rising global temperatures as one of his top priorities, insisting that a shift away from fossil fuels and to cleaner forms of energy also could create needed U.S. jobs. This argument that green energy creates new jobs... is this not a version of the broken-window fallacy?

graeme 5y ago
Not quite. It’s more of a political salve. “Look those jobs are going away, but we’ll also have other jobs with this new green energy”. Cutting carbon jobs can hurt specific areas quite a bit. A broken window fallacy would be more like “Let’s adopt this new green energy because it is currently less efficient on a cost basis and so will create new jobs” Or saying “green energy won’t cost anything because it will create new jobs”. Some people may be saying that one, but I think most people spouting the jobs line are trying to build political goodwill on places currently dependent on carbon jobs.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
If you replace a "perfectly good" coal plant with alternative energy, yes that's broken window fallacy. However, the coal plant is not perfectly good -- it has a massive amount of externalities that outweigh its benefits.
- engineer_22 5y ago
  -> it has a massive amount of externalities that outweigh its benefits. Can you support this claim?
  - adrianN 5y ago
    You realize that coal plants produce CO2, right?
    - engineer_22 5y ago
      As well as poor people... So which is better, Hydrocarbon Power or Poor People? Forgive me for being facetious, but to make my position more clear: I think electrifying the country has had demonstrable benefits to our society. To claim the costs outweigh the benefits is dubious and requires support.
      - adrianN 5y ago
        Electrifying the country happened a long time ago and had clear benefits. Continuing to emit GHGs happens today and has clear negatives. Alternatives are available, and switching does not increase the number of poor people. The cost of CO2 today outweighs the benefit of having to invest less into new infrastructure. Poor people, by the way, are those who are most affected by climate change.
      - bryanlarsen 5y ago
        You make a really good point. There's a very clear link between electrification and well-being. 1) Coal pollution kills 10,000 people a year, most of them poor because no rich person would live close to a coal plant. So that's a massive cost weighing heavily on the benefits of coal electrification. 2) Wind & Solar power are cheaper than coal, and not just by a little bit. So much so that in some places the capital and operating costs of wind and solar are cheaper than just the operating costs of coal. In those places abandoning the coal capital is still a win. 3) Much of the capital costs of a coal plant are in it's steam plant and in its grid interconnects. That makes them superb places to turn other heat sources into electricity and great places to inject non-heat sourced green electricity into the grid. So we don't lose all the capital investment into our coal plants. 4) mitigation costs of a tonne of CO2 at $50-$300/tonne make it a no brainer. adaptation costs for climate change would be even higher. Bill Gates argues your point very strongly in his book. Before he was a climate change activist he was an activist for the health and welfare of the global poor. He understands the importance of electricity to the global poor and firmly rejects any solution that stops the progress of getting it to them.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
kbutler 5y ago
Similar. It's more an example of the apocryphal economist anecdote - "if it's jobs you want, you should have them dig with spoons instead of shovels." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ "More jobs" for the same production of goods/energy is less efficient and produces less total prosperity. You're better off using the most efficient means of production, and letting the other people produce something else of value.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- engineer_22 5y ago
  Well put. Nicely articulated. Perhaps... The moneyed participants in the Renewable Energy industry are economic frontrunners - preparing for what they see is an inevitable future of expensive hydrocarbons. While the Green Jobs are less efficient today, they speculate they will become more efficient tomorrow, and make them all rich. But this is hardly a marketable proposition to the millions of taxpayers who are being asked to stabilize their less-efficient market offerings, and so baser arguments are made.
Glench 5y ago
"Based on an extensive industrial and engineering analysis, our new report demonstrates that an aggressive national commitment to electrify all aspects of our economy would create up to 25 million good-paying American jobs over the next 15 years and 5 million sustained jobs by mid-century. This is the first analysis of the job opportunities that would result from a rapid and total decarbonization of the economy as a whole. Unlike other approaches, which tend to see climate change policy as primarily environmental in nature, the study also imagines the electrification of America as fundamentally infrastructure designed to power America and its economy in the 21st century." https://www.rewiringamerica.org/jobs-report https://www.rewiringamerica.org/jobs-report
- engineer_22 5y ago
  Thank you for providing this detailed and thoughtful analysis. "Job creation on this scale and at this pace is not without precedent. The U.S. followed avery similar path in mobilizing for WWII. Winning the war for the Allies had a total cost ofaround 1.5 1939 GDPs. Transitioning to a completely decarbonized energy system probablyhas a cost closer to just 1 2019 GDP of $22 Trillion. Recognizing the terrifying realities on the front lines of battle, and the deprivations at home, is this a fair comparison? "In the most simplistic analysis, only considering jobs in the energy industry, we cansee that decarbonization will produce at steady state a few millions more direct jobs thanwhat we are doing today with fossil fuels. In a more complete economic analysis based onthe typical methodologies for modeling economy-wide job creation we see the net creationof around 23 million jobs at the peak settling at around 4-6 million more jobs at steadystate (2040 and beyond)" 4 million net jobs represents an increased cost of $200 billion per year for the same level of service ($600/yr per US citizen). The article estimates the capital costs of decarbonization to be approximately $3 trillion ($9,000 per US citizen). Very good. We have a baseline understanding of the real costs of the project. Now what is the cost of the null alternative? Could we realized a decarbonized society without government intervention? Is this the most efficient use of capital?

graeme 5y ago

Not quite. It’s more of a political salve. “Look those jobs are going away, but we’ll also have other jobs with this new green energy”. Cutting carbon jobs can hurt specific areas quite a bit. A broken window fallacy would be more like “Let’s adopt this new green energy because it is currently less efficient on a cost basis and so will create new jobs” Or saying “green energy won’t cost anything because it will create new jobs”. Some people may be saying that one, but I think most people spouting the jobs line are trying to build political goodwill on places currently dependent on carbon jobs.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

If you replace a "perfectly good" coal plant with alternative energy, yes that's broken window fallacy. However, the coal plant is not perfectly good -- it has a massive amount of externalities that outweigh its benefits.

engineer_22 5y ago
-> it has a massive amount of externalities that outweigh its benefits. Can you support this claim?
- adrianN 5y ago
  You realize that coal plants produce CO2, right?
  - engineer_22 5y ago
    As well as poor people... So which is better, Hydrocarbon Power or Poor People? Forgive me for being facetious, but to make my position more clear: I think electrifying the country has had demonstrable benefits to our society. To claim the costs outweigh the benefits is dubious and requires support.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      Electrifying the country happened a long time ago and had clear benefits. Continuing to emit GHGs happens today and has clear negatives. Alternatives are available, and switching does not increase the number of poor people. The cost of CO2 today outweighs the benefit of having to invest less into new infrastructure. Poor people, by the way, are those who are most affected by climate change.
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago
      You make a really good point. There's a very clear link between electrification and well-being. 1) Coal pollution kills 10,000 people a year, most of them poor because no rich person would live close to a coal plant. So that's a massive cost weighing heavily on the benefits of coal electrification. 2) Wind & Solar power are cheaper than coal, and not just by a little bit. So much so that in some places the capital and operating costs of wind and solar are cheaper than just the operating costs of coal. In those places abandoning the coal capital is still a win. 3) Much of the capital costs of a coal plant are in it's steam plant and in its grid interconnects. That makes them superb places to turn other heat sources into electricity and great places to inject non-heat sourced green electricity into the grid. So we don't lose all the capital investment into our coal plants. 4) mitigation costs of a tonne of CO2 at $50-$300/tonne make it a no brainer. adaptation costs for climate change would be even higher. Bill Gates argues your point very strongly in his book. Before he was a climate change activist he was an activist for the health and welfare of the global poor. He understands the importance of electricity to the global poor and firmly rejects any solution that stops the progress of getting it to them.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

kbutler 5y ago

Similar. It's more an example of the apocryphal economist anecdote - "if it's jobs you want, you should have them dig with spoons instead of shovels." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ "More jobs" for the same production of goods/energy is less efficient and produces less total prosperity. You're better off using the most efficient means of production, and letting the other people produce something else of value.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
engineer_22 5y ago
Well put. Nicely articulated. Perhaps... The moneyed participants in the Renewable Energy industry are economic frontrunners - preparing for what they see is an inevitable future of expensive hydrocarbons. While the Green Jobs are less efficient today, they speculate they will become more efficient tomorrow, and make them all rich. But this is hardly a marketable proposition to the millions of taxpayers who are being asked to stabilize their less-efficient market offerings, and so baser arguments are made.

Glench 5y ago

"Based on an extensive industrial and engineering analysis, our new report demonstrates that an aggressive national commitment to electrify all aspects of our economy would create up to 25 million good-paying American jobs over the next 15 years and 5 million sustained jobs by mid-century. This is the first analysis of the job opportunities that would result from a rapid and total decarbonization of the economy as a whole. Unlike other approaches, which tend to see climate change policy as primarily environmental in nature, the study also imagines the electrification of America as fundamentally infrastructure designed to power America and its economy in the 21st century." https://www.rewiringamerica.org/jobs-report https://www.rewiringamerica.org/jobs-report

engineer_22 5y ago
Thank you for providing this detailed and thoughtful analysis. "Job creation on this scale and at this pace is not without precedent. The U.S. followed avery similar path in mobilizing for WWII. Winning the war for the Allies had a total cost ofaround 1.5 1939 GDPs. Transitioning to a completely decarbonized energy system probablyhas a cost closer to just 1 2019 GDP of $22 Trillion. Recognizing the terrifying realities on the front lines of battle, and the deprivations at home, is this a fair comparison? "In the most simplistic analysis, only considering jobs in the energy industry, we cansee that decarbonization will produce at steady state a few millions more direct jobs thanwhat we are doing today with fossil fuels. In a more complete economic analysis based onthe typical methodologies for modeling economy-wide job creation we see the net creationof around 23 million jobs at the peak settling at around 4-6 million more jobs at steadystate (2040 and beyond)" 4 million net jobs represents an increased cost of $200 billion per year for the same level of service ($600/yr per US citizen). The article estimates the capital costs of decarbonization to be approximately $3 trillion ($9,000 per US citizen). Very good. We have a baseline understanding of the real costs of the project. Now what is the cost of the null alternative? Could we realized a decarbonized society without government intervention? Is this the most efficient use of capital?