CouleeConservatives.com

What is a Green Job Anyway?

Yesterday, lawmakers received a memo from 41 of Wisconsin’s business and community organizations outlining their opposition to Governor Doyle’s Global Warming Bill.  Manufacturers, convenience store and restaurant owners, retailers and representatives of the agriculture, construction, transportation and housing industries united in an attempt to prevent the enormous costs and devastating economic impacts of the proposal.  They were joined by chambers of commerce from Eau Claire, Fond du Lac, Janesville, Fox Cities, Green Bay, Kaukauna, La Crosse, Marshfield, Menomonee, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Racine, Wausau and West Bend.

A few days prior, bill author and co-chair of the Assembly Special Committee on Clean Energy Jobs Spencer Black (D-Madison) told attendees of a Madison energy conference that he will unveil changes to the 174-page bill soon.  Co-chair Soletski (D-Green Bay) followed that up by telling the Daily Reporter that the committee will not hold a hearing on the reworked proposal.  More important to the authors than public input is a quick vote so that the bill is available for consideration by the full Assembly when it returns on April 13.

Reps. Black and Soletski haven’t informed me or the other Republican committee members, Rep. Phil Montgomery (R- Ashwaubenon) and Rep. Scott Gunderson (R-Waterford), of what the amendments will be or whether we will have the opportunity to review them before a vote.  They have never sought our input about necessary revisions or taken the time to discuss our concerns.  I think it’s safe to assume that the 41 organizations who urged defeat of the Global Warming Bill have not been consulted either.

In their March 11 memo, business and chamber representatives expressed concerns about the bill’s three core requirements.  They pointed to the extraordinarily expensive requirement that 25% of energy used in Wisconsin must be generated by renewable sources by 2025 (approximately $15 billion according to Wisconsin Public Service Commission data) when Wisconsin already has a huge energy surplus of 30.9%.  They called a $700 million annual stealth energy tax to fund efficiency programs staggering and said history shows that Wisconsin can reduce its energy consumption without this unprecedented increase in utility bills.  Finally, they said that new energy codes for home construction are unnecessarily rigid and will increase the cost of housing.

To date, Reps. Black and Soletski and the Senate authors haven’t felt the need to respond to these concerns and I do not expect this will change as they rush the bill to a vote in order to manufacture a legacy for Governor Doyle.  They will undoubtedly parrot the promise that the proposal will create 15,000 “green jobs” over 15 years and somehow save electric customers money.  There’s not a cost benefit analysis or any data from others states that back up these claims.  In fact, thanks to President Obama’s green jobs agenda, American manufacturing jobs have been lost while thousands of new ones have been created overseas.  Just this week, California’s independent Legislative Analyst’s Office said that state’s 2006 climate change law will cost jobs.

In the end, any so-called green jobs created are almost exclusively temporary construction positions.  The Doyle Administration admits that only 2,000 of the 15,000 jobs it has promised are permanent manufacturing positions.  Robert Murphy, a Senior Fellow in Business and Economic Studies at the California-based Pacific Research Institute, points out that there is no real definition of a “green job” and that politicians have unfairly raised expectations.

He writes in the Daily Caller that “By their very nature, government-created green jobs are unsustainable. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t take government mandates or billions in taxpayer subsidies to create them in the first place—and it certainly wouldn’t take billions more to sustain them.”

President Obama has touted Florida Power and Light’s DeSoto Solar Center as a green job success story.  Billed as “the largest solar power plant in the United States,” it employs a full time staff of only two, according to Mr. Murphy.  Constructing the project temporarily employed 400 construction workers.

He says, “Therein lies the inconvenient truth about green jobs: to keep people at work, we’d have to continuously install additional solar plants. That means more government subsidies, mandates and ratepayer increases, and ultimately, the next economic bubble and burst.”

If Reps. Black and Soletski continue to write off those of us with concerns and successfully fast-track the governor’s bill, they will send Wisconsin over that economic cliff. I’m hopeful that their colleagues will heed this week’s warning by 41 community and business organization and give the Global Warming Bill the scrutiny it deserves.  If they don’t, every Wisconsinite will pay the price on their utility bills and far too many will pay with their jobs.