The pro-market buzz around the shift to sustainability is the rise of the “green-collar job.” Attempting to draw the price of emitting carbon into closer alignment with the environmental costs it represents will probably harm significant portions of the US economy, leading to lowered production and layoffs. Many say that work in the clean energy sector will mitigate or completely eliminate these losses, but I’ve got to wonder—is this a reasonable claim?

A recent proposal by environmental groups, progressive think tanks and labor unions suggests that a $100-billion-dollar investment on the part of the United States government could yield the creation of some two million green collar jobs. While that figure sounds impressive, it represents only a fraction of the 9.4 million Americans currently unemployed. 

Factor in the number of Americans likely to lose some or all of their income through carbon restrictions and other environmental measures, and green collar work hardly seems the economic savior it was made out to be.  But considering the widespread adoption of another wave of groundbreaking technology on the economy of the nation—and for that matter, the world—can provide a little more context with which to view the issue. 

Automation and digitization led at first to layoffs and economic downturn within many US industries in the period immediately following their widespread adaptation. But within a few years, the workers and work-hours freed up by the advancing technology had reintegrated themselves into the larger economy, resulting in an unprecedented period of economic boom and technical advances. The prosperity brought by this economic sea change went on for half a decade, before low interest rates and irrational exuberance cooled things substantially in the early years of the 21st century.

While perhaps neither as revolutionary as digitization, the widespread adaptation of cleaner technologies could potentially have a similarly far-reaching effect. In addition to jobs created by retrofitting existing auto plants and building the new vehicles, conversion from a fleet of gasoline-powered cars to electric or hydrogen would bring about an almost immediate change in the air quality and general health of nearly every American city.  

This in turn would result in fewer work days missed to illness, and less employer money spent on health care. Similar benefits could be reaped from the reduction of airborne pollutants created by fossil fuel combustion at power plants and industrial sites.  Cleaner forms of travel, such as California’s proposed high-speed rail system would additionally decrease hours lost to congestion, and allow workers almost uninterrupted productivity during their voyage.

So while the immediate numerical considerations of green-collar jobs may not seem large in relation to the money spent creating them, their improvement of the general economic picture over time has an excellent chance of recouping and exceeding any loss that a conversion to more sustainable economy would create.