Any Green Collar Jobs in Your Area?

Lots of green collar jobs here.........that would be our friends from south of the border constantly walking around with leaf blowers, right? Keeping things tidy.

On a happy note, the current administration, just yesterday, I believe, shut down all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for a minimum of seven years. I guess eliminating dirty jobs would be the same as creating green jobs, right?

Can't you just mandate clean, green energy, and have it happen overnight?

Everybody will soon be working in a green collar job, we just haven't spent/borrowed/printed enough money to make it happen yet.............but just wait, it's going to be a beautiful, green new world, with the US, (_taxpayer), leading the way.

The current administration has saved us all from the brink of disaster, but there is still much, much more to do.

Is exporting coal green?

http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/3cc-7da-b-16

It is rather the due to the failure of technology side to satisfy the demands of green demand or sustainability. The goal or promise being a broad perspective one, what really failing the same is incompetency of present state of technologies.

The crying baby of sustainability never compromise for false promising alternatives.

While dreamers dream of new technologies that will produce clean energy for free, the real engineers work on increasing the efficiency of what already exist.

Improving on what we have is the best solution in most cases. There will always be a few dreamers that will chase the exotic solution with a very low success rate. That is fine with me, I encourage them but we should not place all our hopes on their success.

Like in nature, evolution is a series of small steps. Drastic turns happen rarely and are usually caused by extremely painful events.

I bet on the slow road of product evolution and waste reduction.

Actually, current theory on evolution is leaning towards most evolutionary advances in species occurring due to major incidence, large scale changes in atmospheric CO2/O2, global temperature swings, meteor strikes, volcanism, flooding, desertification, etc.. There has to be some impetus for change for evolution to occur. apparently this leads to a cascade of evolutionary events, one species can not compete in the new environment, dies off and a niche becomes available a new species evolves to fill the niche apparently very rapidly, e.g Polar bears evolved from grizzly bears in the last 50 ky.

I think you are correct about this (punctuated equilibrium), but for those of us in the developed world the implications are not very comforting. It should be possible for rational people to make adjustments in the way they do things to voluntarily change course (less pollution, more efficiency, etc.) rather than wait for a cataclysm. Many parts of the world are already doing this. In the US we have turned this into an ideological dispute about 'freedom' and 'liberty'. I don't see how this will help. If we 'debate' ourselves into poverty and irrelevance surely our freedom and liberty will become extinct.

The downside is well possible best stated in the idea that the worst disasters most frequently arise from the best intentions. Take the whole forest controlled burning debate. One side claims controlled burning destroys some habitat, etc. (their arguments seem to be very loose and indirectly tethered to some personl aesthetic or fear of loss of control). The other side claims controlled burns remove overgrowth that would get bruned cyclicly allowing new growth and better habitat, plus if reduces risk of the more disastrous wildfires that can not be controlled and destroy property (frequency seems a little high for many of these people seem more tethered to protecting their properties that lie on the fringe of these areas). Some intermediate area is probably the best until we dial it in, because one extreme or the other is likely to have substantial adverse effects. Same thing with any environmental practices, best to take things slow, because the effects of a radical change are frequently actually worse than a reactionary change, in part because we know where we have been and what pitfalls to avoid as well as how far is far enough, radical changes you do not know as everything is totally new. It can be far more dangerous to run forward into the unknown blind folded, than backwards into the known. Since there are a fair number of people in the US who don't even understand any science (physics and chemistry) that has been discovered since 1900 (probably 1700 for physics) due o the critical thinking skills necessary. It should be clear that most people depend on others to tell them the answer to critical thinking problems. With out those ciritical thinking skills, they really have no capacity to adequately evaluate the validity of the psuedoscientific discoveries or engineering related to the environment, atmosphere, biology, social stuff. they depend on their belief that others know better than they do, and many of the others also lack those critical thinking skills but feign it to gain public support for their agendas, politicians, businessmen, enviromental activists, actors, etc.. It is hard to move forward when there are so many paths available, and so many underqualified people that the general population are willing to trust because of their own fears or hopes for opportunity (greed) and lack of thinking skills.

BTW the terms freedom and liberty are loosely defined philosophical concepts, no one person has the same rewards to effort ratio, expectations, opportunities, or capabilities that others might be granted by our societies.

There are plenty of green jobs being created. Why, just this past year they gave GE $16B of our money to create jobs building wind turbines...in CHINA!

I'm in California, which is implementing its own cap-and-trade system for reducing CO2 emissions. California is also bankrupt and in the middle of a severe unemployment crisis. The "green jobs" created will be for the carbon offset traders and others who will find a way to turn the economic misery from a cap into money for themselves.

Otherwise, "green jobs" of the type which involve manufacturing are not happening because startup companies (where most job creation historically has been generated) find themselves shut out of ARPA-E grants because of the 20% cost-sharing requirement, and from SBIR because they must already have a full-time PhD on their payroll to be principal investigator. "Small business" to the federal government means <500 employees, which is a weight class in which startups can't hope to compete for any available federal help. So as they struggle through the Valley of Death, green startups also have to find a way past federally-created roadblocks designed to benefit big business by increasing the mortality rate of green startups.

Are you stating that most valid (not the whole con artist thing about over unity energy sources) green energy startups do not have the technical staff on board or the initial captial to begin their business. A 20% match is nothing, most agencies have to have at least a 50% match with federal government unless they are impoverished communities, and as an investor I really would not believe in any start up that didn't already have some highly qualified technical staff on board already. I would want to know they can do what their sales and marketing people say they can do before I invested, and would hope that the federal government would take at least some steps to make sure they had qualified technical staff before financing these ventures.

It seems like <500 employees is pretty small when you compare to GE and others in the industry, especially when you consider the technical staff, the engineering staff, the field labor, the administrative and financial staff. It would be easy in a well structured organization at start up to have 50 to 100 employees.

RCE -- Your view is probably representative of investors, and as you state the case, a new company with no money or employees should just quit and save everybody a lot of heartbreak.

An angel investor or venture capitalist is looking for a quick exit (~2 years) with at least ten times his money back then (10X). This might have worked back during the tech bubble (which ended in 2001), but it is not working now for cleantech -- other than measuring and software. Established technology companies, who could afford the 20% cost sharing for ARPA-E and PhD employee for SBIR, would of course give you a comfort level in meeting those expectations, but they probably will be working on the old ideas and hostile to new ones.

So how does a new company get to the position where you might invest? What might the federal government do to get cleantech startups past the Valley of Death?

Maybe the "start-up" scams that have no invested capital of their own and no qualified technical staff should not get past as you call it the valley of death. If they are unwilling to do the work and take on the risk to generate the capital and validate their projects, then why should the federal government fund projects that are unfunded and not scientifically sound where the company owners themselves are unwilling to take on any of the risk. ( I know a guy looking for funding for hexagonal water system that they claim has helped chinese women get pregnant with stronger babies and reduces pollution in the environment including greenhouse gases.)

Alternately if the government takes all the risk and fully funds the projects, then the scientific and engineering validation should be through the government and the US should own the technology (which they could license for a fee).

I like your idea about the federal government taking an equity share of funded cleantech projects (as they did with AIG and the banks), and I agree with what you say about the need for project validation and owner engagement. But just because the owners are not already millionaires does not mean that the little all they have invested and sacrificed to build a new company is unworthy of respect.

Even if the federal government doesn't put up any money, at least it could provide a forum for candid discussion regarding soundness, even if the idea is not presently being produced in a marketed product. That validation would supplement the vetting that goes on with private venture investors (e.g. Keiretsu Forum) with the technical resources available to the federal government, and the validation would provide some grounds for confidence to attract private investment. Or the State of California could do this. There would have to be thorough and open vetting of new ideas, with ample opportunity for moderated comment and response, before deciding on anything. Deficiencies in a proposal, such as lack of qualified principal investigators and lack of manufacturing capacity, might be remedied with a technical social networking program sponsored by the federal government. Team-building for cleantech might now be an idea whose time has come.

There are lots of out-of-work PhDs out there, and lots of rusting factories, because America can't find a way to connect resources with needs and ideas. Let the proponent put his idea out there (after having it "reduced to practice" such that the IP is preserved and clear) for open comment and get a discussion started on it. Maybe his idea is not the solution, but an improvement might be. The GAO found that DOE, unlike other technical agencies such as NASA, has no program for technology assessment, so probably DOE is not the place, and maybe NIST or some new mission-driven federal agency should be responsible for maintaining an open blog for technology assessment and shopping for components of cleantech projects such as manufacturers and venture capital. It shouldn't take a lot of money to do this, especially when we consider what has been wasted on such ostensibly vetted projects as corn ethanol and CO2 sequestration in deep saline aquifers.

exactly, lots of PhDs out of work, so you have identified one supposed problem that isn't really a problem except in that the start up doesn't want the technical labor (or possibly the technical review). A cost effective PhD in the field should be easy to find and employ at some reasonable salary, if the market is that fat with them.

I don't think the State of California can really afford to atart paying for every off the wall start up scheme, they are actually broke and have most of their current staff working on part time.

I also do not see where the millionaire thing comes in as the government funds on a 20% match. Thus you put in 20%, there isn't a flat m inimum capital requirement here (except for that you need to show to demonstrate viability). You assume at least 20% of the risk. Many federal grants allow some type of labor/service in-kind for funding. Of course that has to be extremely documentable, and because of the degree of corruption this can create there are limitations ofn whose labor is eligible and what types of labor.

It sounds like the problem is that you want to dream of huge projects and lack the capital or do not wish to take the risk yourself, of course it is easy to gamble on unproven technologies when someone else is paying the bill. Just because someone has a idea doesn't mean it should be funded, for every million ideas there is one good cost effective viable idea. So if the idea was really that good taking 20% of the financial risk for 100% ownership should be more than worth it, if it really is a good idea. I would suggest that however, the Federal Government should hold all grantees accountable for implementing the ideas fully as planned, or return the investment. That would probably make them think through and master plan the entirety of the project (and also head off a lot of those HHO, over-unity, hexagonal water, etc.. schemes).

Hiring an employee and paying a salary, healthcare, payroll taxes, liability insurance, etc. etc. is a big step for a startup, especially when all available resources are needed for product development and IP. Maybe from your perspective the amount is trivial, but from mine it is a mountain. The 20% cost-sharing requirement might make sense for weeding out the non-serious contenders, but that amount of money puts ARPA-E out of reach, even with validation. I doubt that Hewlett and Packard could get started in their garage today. You did not comment on the government vetting and cleantech teambuilding ideas, so I suppose you find no merit in them. Sorry to have wasted your time.

Government already reviews and qualifies projects they own. So if the government is paying for everything, then they should own everything. Where is the R&D business venture in that if the government ownes it they can license it to whoever they want, much like they did when they had willy's design the Jeep and then had multiple manufacturers construct them.

The problem with clean technology is that for every good idea out there, there are 10,000 marketers trying to sell some new scheme, they don't employ the scientific or engineering staff to develop a solid concept, and they don't seem to want to take any personal financial risk. Just on this site alone you could find 50 different HHO schemes, let alone the over unity schemes people introduce on here to look for investors or technical employees. If you ever watch the tv show about the dragons, you can see people who really know how to get a start up going and people who have an idea but no concept of business. The financial and scientific review aspects of funding are to make sure there is 1. a valid technical concept, and 2. some personal investment involvement from the proponents. Many green tech guys seem to misconstrue the government money is free or it should be for them, but that money comes from the taxes the governemtn takes from each persons pay check. You want some one to invest develop a proposal that shows 1. it is a technically sound idea (for non-technical people this requires a technical review they can trust, 2. that it is a financially sound business plan, and 3. that you believe in it enough to take a substantial portion of the financial risk upon yourself.

Go to http://www.worleyparsons.com for energy resource jobs, both green collar and otherwise. We are growing them here in Washington State, and elsewhere in North America and the world.

Government is working on it!!! $ Shortage = too many people! WAR... ( Worked in the past.)