I know that everyone's already bored with me saying this but it still is true. Green jobs are a cost, not a benefit, of various Green plans. If we need to have four people generating our energy, instead of one (or 2 million instead of 30, any number larger than the current one in fact) then this is 3 (or nearly 2 million etc) people who cannot be off doing something else, wiping bottoms, curing cancer or just relaxing with a nice frothy pint.
So all of the shouting that we get about this plan for windmills, or that for recycling, the other for insulation, about how many jobs they will create, is nonsense. Those shouting are parading their ignorance, insisting that one of the costs of their plan is a benefit.
However, yes, it does get worse than this:
A study of renewable energy in Scotland shows that for every job created in the alternative energy sector, almost four jobs are lost in the rest of the economy.
We've now got a UK study to accompany that Spanish one that showed that 2.2 jobs are lost (as a result of higher energy prices etc) for every green one generated, the German study which showed the maths going similarly the wrong way.
So not only is the argument about Green jobs wrong in theory, it's also not even correct in its own terms. Diverting resources from productive areas of the economy to unproductive ones destroys jobs, not creates them.
Sadly, it won't stop the idiots bleating about how many green jobs their proposals will generate but can we at least all start laughing at them as they do so?
