Green Jobs Growing by the Millions Worldwide
by Stacy Feldman - Dec 8th, 2007
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The UN announced yesterday that solving climate is creating millions of brand-new green jobs worldwide and exceeding layoffs in other areas of the economy. It is the latest positive economic indicator that climate action pays.
Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), called the "millions of new jobs...among the many silver, if not indeed gold-plated, linings on the cloud of climate change."
Take a look at the findings:
- Measures to promote ethanol in Brazil have created 500,000 jobs.
- In China, 150,000 jobs were created in solar heating, a sector with sales revenues in 2005 of $2.5 billion.
- Renewable energy programs in Spain and Germany have created several hundred thousand jobs.
- By the year 2020, Germany will have more jobs in the field of environmental technologies than in its entire automotive industry.
- In the US alone, the environmental industry in 2005 generated more than 5.3 million jobs.
A recent report by the American Solar Energy Society found that the growth of renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors could create 40 million US jobs by 2030. It also claims that the clean tech industry already provides 8.5 million green collar jobs in the US.
Compare these figures with the number of individuals currently employed in the coal industry in the US: about 80,000 and shrinking. As Jeff Goodell explains in his book "Big Coal," there are more florists in America than there are coal-miners.
His prescription sounds mighty familiar:
"A full-blown push for clean energy could unleash a jobs bonanza that would make what happened in Silicon Valley in the 1990s look like a bake sale."
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