CleanTech and the Job Market

From this piece on jobs and the environment:

President Biden announced a goal to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 – and the Biden administration says its $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan will help the country achieve Biden’s climate goal of cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030 by building green infrastructure. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh says, “This is a once in a generation opportunity to rethink and recreate the infrastructure for the American worker and how we create pathways for the American worker back into the middle class.”

This idea has been around for decades, but it’s good to see it finally happening.

It’s been clear, at least for the last decade, that cleantech is destined to become the defining industry of the 21st Century, simply because we have no choice.  As the Earth becomes hotter, and thus more prone to hurricanes, wildfires, floods, desertification, water shortages, and loss of land mass due to sea-level rise, the value of climate solutions increases accordingly.

This is why some smart people are looking at methods to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The very best that can be said about this enterprise is that it will be incredibly expensive, but when a civilization has its back to the wall, it will come up with some pretty wild ideas to head off catastrophe.

My interview with Dr. Robert Pollin at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for my second book, Is Renewable Really Doable? (nine full years ago) covers this in great detail.  I left the discussion quite confident that the greening of our energy and transportation sectors would be a boon to the job market, and it’s great to see this taking place.