America's Green Policy Vacuum

February 11, 2008, 12:01PM EST

America's Green Policy Vacuum

Without a fully funded, federal alternative energy policy, the U.S. risks squandering the potential of a powerful economic engine and will continue to depend on foreign energy resources

by Jessie Scanlon

It's been a year since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth packed theaters and won an Oscar. And a good year it has been for the green movement. Venture capital firms poured a record $2.6 billion into clean tech startups in the first three quarters of 2007. Meanwhile, the green buzz has only grown louder. This year, green building construction starts are projected to reach $12 billion. And both Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama have made a greener economy a key plank in their Presidential campaigns.

It's enough to make you believe an optimistic report that estimates the green economy could produce as many as 40 million jobs and $4.53 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. To put those numbers in perspective, consider this: In 2006, according to a November report commissioned by the American Solar Energy Society (hardly a disinterested body), companies in renewable energy and energy efficiency industries accounted for 8.5 million jobs and generated $970 billion in revenues. The report based that scenario on "aggressive, sustained public policies at the federal and state level during the next two decades." (It also included growth scenarios based on current government spending levels and on a moderate increase.)

Despite the undeniable green momentum, a $4 trillion-plus U.S. green economy is far from likely—even in 22 years—because there simply is no "aggressive, sustained" federal policy. The federal government has failed to create and adequately fund the programs that would make the U.S. a world leader. And that's what the government should be trying to do, for reasons that go far beyond rising carbon levels. The U.S. risks falling way behind other countries in the development of green technologies. On its current course, this country could trade oil dependence for reliance on alternative energy products built by other nations already far ahead of it.

State and Local Leadership

"The need to reinvent, retrofit, and reboot the entire nation is the biggest economic opportunity in a generation," says Van Jones, director of the Oakland (Calif.)-based nonprofit Green for All, an organization that aims simultaneously to fight poverty and help the environment by creating green jobs for people from disadvantaged communities. But it's an opportunity that's not being seized in Washington. "We have all this work that needs to be done, and we have all these people who need work," Jones says. Moreover, he points out, many of the jobs considered "green" can't easily be outsourced: "You can't put a house that needs to be weatherized on a boat to China."
...