The 'Green Jobs' Myth

European workers aren't believers.

From today's Wall Street Journal Europe

The United Nations is huddling in Poznan, Poland, this week to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, but the real news is that part of the global "consensus" on climate change seems to be unraveling. To wit, the myth of "green jobs."
In Brussels last week, some 11,000 metal workers clogged the EU quarter to protest global-warming policies. They worry that their industry could be harmed and their jobs forced overseas; some of them carried coffins as props. Most of the marching workers were from Germany, where auto makers are also still fuming over new emissions standards. Audi and BMW and other carbon-using industries have argued both for shallower emissions cuts and a longer phase-in period.
Meanwhile, Poland is threatening to veto a new EU climate-change accord unless restrictions on its coal use are eased. And Italy's government complains that new green policies could cost its industry up to €20 billion a year over the next decade. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared at Poznan by video, asserting that green measures "will also revive our economies."
But not everyone is buying it. As Stefania Prestigiacomo, Italy's environment minister, has noted, "Some people claim environmental measures are a way to relaunch industry, but we have to be realistic. Resources are limited, and they will be even more so because of the economic crisis."
This is certainly a new tune for the Europeans, who have lectured Americans for more than a decade to sign Kyoto because the planet is in peril. Their happy talk of a painless 20% reduction in emissions by 2020 has been mugged by reality. Carbon emission regulations come at a high price in lost jobs and lost competitiveness.
No wonder, then, that the Europeans are delighted over the pledges by the incoming Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress to adopt similar legislation to tax U.S. industries. The EU members may differ on their own limits. But they all agree that the U.S. should "show leadership" by committing to meet the same target they're setting for themselves -- reducing emissions by 20% to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020. Never mind that most European countries aren't close to meeting their Kyoto goals, and in all likelihood will fall short of any new targets. The point is to impose those same burdens on the Yanks.
China and India, two of the globe's biggest carbon emitters, have even called Mr. Obama's goals for combating climate change "inadequate" and have advised the U.S. to speed up its time table for carbon reductions. And why not? They would be first in line to gobble up the jobs and production lines that the U.S. would lose if energy costs rise sharply in America.
We hope the incoming Obama economics team is paying attention to the worker and industry backlash in Europe. Mr. Obama is still embracing the line from Greenpeace and the Environmental Defense Fund that cap and trade can generate five million "green jobs." If you throw enough tax subsidies at something, you're bound to get some new jobs. But if the money for those subsidies comes from higher energy taxes -- and a cap and trade regime would amount to as much $1.2 trillion of new taxes -- millions of jobs in carbon-using industry are also going to be lost.
The Europeans once believed the "green jobs" myth too. Now, as blue-collar workers take to the streets, they have learned that climate-change legislation means green unemployment.