Our daughter has a friend whose green job requires him to shinny
up through the innards of 300-foot wind turbines, checking and
adding components and wire.
He climbs 3,600 feet a week. In a month, that's about the same
distance as going up Pike's Peak or halfway up Mount Everest.
This is not sissy work. He's climbed in 100-degree heat. He's
dodged irate wasps. When he's standing on metal and sees lightning
he follows one rule: Descend faster than a bat out of hell.
So far, his job's taken him only to Texas and Kansas although
Oklahoma has plenty of wind turbines. What Oklahoma does not have is
plenty of green jobs. It ranks a lowly 48th in the nation in that
job category, according to an Economic Policy Institute study
released last month.
In terms of green intensity - the share of total jobs that are
green - Oklahoma needs to catch up but the potential is there,
says Ethan Pollack, EPI senior analyst. Some of the bottom 10 states
have enormous opportunities for improvement if government and
private industry get on board.
The fact that Oklahoma is primarily an oil- and gas-producing
state is not a deal-breaker for a greener economy. "The main thrust
of the green jobs concept argues that the transition from a fossil-
fuel based economy to a green economy need not cost net jobs,"
Pollack said.
Advantages of green
Oklahoma stands to gain from transitioning to a greener economy,
and here's why:
Industries with higher proportions of green jobs have higher job
growth than does the overall economy.
Projections for the future suggest continued job growth from
green intensity.
States with more green jobs during the recent recession generally
fared better.
"Transitioning to a greener and more sustainable economy is good
for the environment, but it also helps promote stronger economic
growth and opportunity," Pollack said. "And the seeds of this
transformation are planted throughout the economy, oftentimes in
unexpected places."
Here's one of those unexpected places: For years, Oklahoma
leaders have pushed for more college degrees. That's a noble goal
but one not easy to obtain quickly. What's promising about a greener
economy is that those jobs are accessible to people with a college
degree and those without one.
Jobs in the green economy tend to require less formal education
than jobs in the rest of the economy while paying better wages. "If
we want economic policy to work for the nearly 70 percent of
American workers without a four-year college degree, green
investments offer an option," Pollack said.
Who's green, who's not
The states with the most green jobs are Vermont, Pennsylvania,
Washington, Colorado and Oregon. At the bottom are Arizona, West
Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida and Nevada. What separates the two sets
of states? Often it's the state's industry mix.
The bottom 10 tend to have a dirtier industry mix.
What is sometimes overlooked is a good definition of a green job.
Pollack offers two examples:
A construction company and its workers can in one month retrofit
a hospital to make it more energy efficient and in the next month
build a strip mall that meets no green building or energy-efficient
standards. Is that construction company a green business?
By the same token is a manufacturer that produces parts for both
pollution-control scrubbers and weapons systems a green business?
Leading the way in green jobs are the federal, state and local
governments. Of the more than 3.1 million green jobs in the U.S., 73
percent are in the private sector; 5 percent are in the federal
government; 7 percent, in state governments, and 15 percent in local
governments.
Green jobs pervasive
Often, much of the commentary surrounding green jobs has focused
on jobs in the renewable energy industry, such as solar-panel
installers or wind-turbine manufacturers, "but this misses just how
pervasive green jobs are throughout the economy," Pollack said.
Occupations such as trash collectors, sewage workers,
construction crews, household-appliance manufacturers and bus
drivers are as integral to the green economy as solar-panel
installers or wind-turbine manufacturer, Pollack said.
Oklahoma's leaders need to keep in mind that a greener economy is
better for the state and not just in terms of the environment.
Oklahoma cannot and should not remain 48th in numbers of green
jobs. A greener economy here, a state so long identified with
nonrenewable fossil fuels, is possible and can exist right alongside
existing industries.
"The seeds of green transition are planted. The fundamental
structure of the economy will remain intact. So, the vision of a
greener world isn't so radical but rather it is something that
already is happening all around us," Pollack said.
