Green Mirage?

"The notion that green investments would be large, permanent net creators of jobs is mostly a mirage. Somehow these investments must be paid for. If that happens through higher prices, higher taxes or cuts in other government programs, then most green jobs will substitute for other types of jobs."

Robert Samuelson, "Obama's Economic Choice," Washington Post, December 1, 2008

Nothing like an economist throwing cold water on a fashionable idea. But I have to admit that sometimes when people talk green jobs they are really talking about government training programs or subsidized jobs, which certainly have their place, but do not represent a market-based explosion of green. And I think the green jobs movement now recognizes that a green plumber is a plumber.

But economies do grow over time with the right kinds of investments. Different types of infrastructure, whether roads, ports, or the internet, do provide platforms for private sector innovation and growth -- and thus job creation. These longer term effects in a world of global warming and diminishing oil suggest larger payoffs and job creation from smart investments in energy independence. But in the here and now? We need to put in place the policy framework, prioritize key investments, and innovate on the ground.

Public Service Jobs

"As a dreary Thanksgiving comes and goes, one answer is to mobilize Generation O tohelp the nation's struggling nonprofit sector...Of nearly 1 million nonprofits up and running, as many as 100,000 will fail over the coming six months...[Obama] wants to expand Americorp to 250,000 members. A million might be a better target, especially as part of an economic stimulus package."

Paul C. Light,"Obama Must Mobilize Supporters to Help Nonprofits," Washington Post, November 28, 2008

In spring 1976, I turned down a VISTA position in rural Missouri to take a job with a start-up community development corporation (CDC)in the Pilsen neighorhood of Chicago that paid even less. We rebabbed abandoned buildings while training young people in the trades. Over the next few years we used CETA Title Vl, Public Service Employment (PSE) slots to pay wages for this construction training as well as for a few administrative positions. I recount some of this experience in Nonprofit Leadership.

I'm not sure that I was the targeted beneficiary of CETA at this time, but in my experience these slots combined opportunities for low-income, unemployed young people in inner-city neighborhoods along with newly-minted college graduates who wanted to do good. In the process, a whole generation of nonprofits got started or strengthened along with a generation of people who went on in their careers and lives to contribute in many ways.

One opportunity today for this type of public service employment is to help build the grassroots infrastructure for energy conservation and urban agriculture. A Green Corp strand of expanded public service could help weatherize homes, build community gardens, launch agricultural/food enterprises, scale up farmers markets, and provide technical assistance to residents and businesses. This kind of human resource could help build out community-wide plans for local food and energy.

Green Jobs Truth

"'A job training program that's not linked up to specific industries with documented demand for labor 'never works,'says Dan Kammen, director of the University of California-Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory...But if you have a federal mandate for clean energy,and you have job training in association with industry, there is a big success route...' But in the US where industrial job training policy is haphazard?"

David Roberts,"The Truth About Green Jobs," Mother Jones, November/December, 2008

So much insight in so few words. Link job training to industry and demand; leverage federal mandate for clean energy for job training. US job training is a mess. I was beginning to think that environmentalists and green jobs advocates were reenacting the old, failed scenario of first the job training program and then the jobs. Doesn't work that way. Of course, green stuff does provide a good venue for public or transitional jobs.

We need a whole bunch of workforce intermediaries or partnerships (See my: Workforce Intermediaries for the 21st Century) on the ground in regional economies that bring together industry, community colleges, labor, and other key actors. Building these partnerships requires capital and some industry-specific "community organizing." The new National Fund for Workforce Solutions (NFWS) offers one mechanism to build these partnerships in conjunction with local, regional, and national philanthropy. It's purpose is to align funding streams around partnerships that meet the needs of industry and workers.

But these partnerships need the demand-side kicker for clean energy at all levels to stimulate the job creation. Timing is critical and we often get this wrong in the world of job training.

Pork Planning

"The United States is one of the few countries in the world to make the majority of its transportation investments without first conducting any kind of economic analysis to determine whether these investments will have any practical benefits...The results are telling."

Mary Peters, Secretary, Department of Transportation, quoted in David Leonhardt, "Monuments of Waste Pile Up in Scattershot Infrastructure Spending System," New York Times, November 19, 2008.

That doesn't speak well for the ready-to-go $18 billion of infrastructure projects as part of the next economic stimulus, much less the trillions of needed infrastructure investments. We currently spend about $400 billion per year, still not up to rates of the 1950s, and $100 billion more projects may be ready.

"The current system is so inefficient that even a minimal amount of change would represent progress."

I suspect the pressure to act may make "a minimal amount of change" seem out of reach. I like the threshold requirement that proposed infrastructure projects must serve a documented goal.

Sometimes economists just nod their heads and say, "It's all in the multiplier. No need to worry about the details." Well, we're at a point where having infrastructure projects also serve a purpose would get us more bang for the buck. My experience tells me that some infrastructure projects create more of the kinds of jobs we want than others. President-Elect Obama and Congress should include an infrastructure goals review as well as linkages to workforce training.

Green Agenda

"From the South Bronx to South Dakota to South Central LA, the tender shoots of a new economy are pushing up through the cracks of the asphalt. The reality, however, remains sobering. Encouraging and instructive as they are, these early signs of hope simply are not succeeding at the scale necessary to secure the future for vulnerable communities--or for the Earth itself."

Van Jones,The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems

This is Van Jones at his best -- inspiring but pragmatic. The second half of the book offers a tour of promising initiatives and a fairly specific agenda for action for the local and federal governments. It offers a policy roadmap for President-Elect Obama and anybody else taking the time to listen.

The first half of the book is a different story. Its outrage at environmental destruction and inequity sometimes is at odds with the notion that anything can be done. Yet, it needed to be said. And the green agenda sometimes reads like a hopeful recipe for resurrecting the Left. We need a broader coalition.

At the heart of the book is the deep concern about "eco-apartheid," that low and moderate income communities of color will be left out of the new green economy. The green economy offers a win/win/win for many Americans. Van Jones is outfront showing the way.

Philanthroemperors

"In this new economic, political, and intellectual environment, the "emperor" has retained much of his clothing but has lost his crown, no longer the sole figure in a triumphal procession towards the permanent supremacy of the market. Those of us lining the streets must keep a careful watch on what happens next, and be prepared to enter the fray if we see Napoleonic tendencies returning."

Michael Edwards, Philanthropcapitalism:Old Myths, New Realities, November, 14, 2008.

An extremely useful summary and interpretation of reactions to Just Another Emporer: The Myths and Realities of Philanthropcapitalism concludes with the above enigmatic exhortation.

Let me give it a try. I understand the economic downturn and new presidency; I'm not sure of what's new intellectually (more books to read). The "emperor" (philanthropcapitalism) has lost its crown (money,prestige)and is no longer the "big cheese" in the march to market supremacy (so, we don't have any options left, really). As spectator citizens we go to the parade to watch (the triumphal march to market supremacy)but stand ready to join a fight against "hyperagents" in a war that we have already lost.

It is a confusing time.

Green Break Up

"[W]e should see this whole process as a "break up" situation. When you break up with your lover, it is tough at first. But the next weekend you start going to the gym, you quit smoking, you buy some new clothes. You can use the energy unleashed by one big change to positively transform your life for the better. Well, we in America are about to break up with oil. Why not break up with poverty and discrimination too?"

Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems


Another "metaphor" car crash. I always thought that "breaking up was hard to do," but maybe I'm just too sentimental, not about oil, of course. Rarely can all the untangling be done by the weekend, especially if you share space, kids, and a mortgage. After all, oil is a long-term relationship, not a one-night stand, except, I guess, in the long sweep of history.

So, following the easy-to-break-up idea, we are then asked -- as America, I guess -- to break up with "poverty and discrimination" as well. A very good idea.

At the individual level, maybe even community level, we can shoulder some modest pain to live different lives related to consumption, transportation, waste, recycling, etc. I fear, however, that breaking up with oil will be a long, messy, vindictive, lawyer-driven divorce.

Greening Vampires

"Right now, we are still scurrying about our planet's surface, eking out our living as part of a vulture society--living off the dead. Out of the Earth we suck the liquefied remains of dead organisms. We burn our ancestor's remains in our engines, without ceremony. Then we go back to the Earth, like vampires, to suck out even more oil. Our coal-fired power plants munch daily on the the black bones of the ancients -- and belch out death."

Van Jones,The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems

We do have a big problem and Van Jones's advocacy and ideas are certainly pointing toward viable green solutions. But this statement of the problem reads more like an introduction to the Dark Lord Sauron and Mordor than an inspiring pitch to build a broad coalition for a green economy. All that burning, munching, and sucking of dead things -- and "without ceremony."

It's a tough moment for a new book that argues that escalating oil prices produce stagflation and the ultimate death-spiral of the economy. With oil at $55 a barrel and the economy tanking, I think we need a more complex analysis. But I agree that in the longer term than this summer oil prices will continue to climb.

I believe that Barack Obama has the communication skills to help us see through the present to the need for energy independence. We need a different rhetoric than apocolypse. I read on.

Writing Power

"Among full-time students, 29% said they had written four or fewer papers of any length during the current school year."

Mary Beth Marklein, "Report: Community Colleges Must Expect More," USA Today, November 16, 2008.

The Community College Survey of Student Engagement shows a mixed bag of experiences across 343,000 students at 585 community colleges.

"Colleges that keep expectations high also need to create an environment that enables success."

"The real story is that good writing assignments are definitely a good thing. When courses provide extensive, intellectually challenging writing activities...students engage in a variety of positive activities. They are more likely to analyze, synthesize and integrate ideas from various sources. They grapple more with course ideas both in and out of the classroom. And they report greater personal, social, practical and academic development."

"Faculty who encourage writing multiple drafts are also likely to emphasize approaches to learning that call on students to think critically and reflect on their learning."

Writing is thinking so first drafts, for most of us mortals, are usually very messy things. It took me too many years to recognize and practice the art (and pain) of drafting. What a miraculous idea for teachers to reward the drafting process. We need to become a nation of writers.

Recent Site News: Links, JARC Newsletter and Rutgers Interview

A few quick updates...

First, the Rutgers Initiative for Regional and Community Transformation has published an interview with me on community economic development. You can learn more here or download the mp3 here.

Second, the Jane Addams Resource Corporation has thanked me in their latest newsletter. As you may know, all profits from Nonprofit Leadership are donated to JARC. Here is a clip from the newsletter:

And Finally, I'd like to thank the sites who have linked here in the past few weeks. If I left anyone out, please let me know:

• http://philanthropy.com/giveandtake
• http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/poverty/2008/10/new-blog-and-ne.html
• http://www.nonprofitboardcrisis.typepad.com
• http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/poverty/2008/11/08-mayors-actio.html
• http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/6/3964313.html
• http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/weekend_links_philanthropy_maps_green_business_and_more