The National: Warming up to green jobs

As snow attacked the East Coast earlier this month, right-wing spinsters hit TV screens and radios as fast as they could with icy ammunition. Fox “News,” along with Sean Hannity, implied that such horrible snow could only debunk Al Gore’s global warming theory, while Glen Beck utilized his famous chalkboard to illustrate his global warming thermometer, a circular version emphasizing a lack of sense.

Somehow, something as neutral as a scientific theory has become extremely politicized.

No matter how inaccurate the Hannitys and the Becks are on the issue, in the end their politicization of this theory has only proved to hurt us as a nation by preventing us from seeing the big picture—and moving forward in the direction we need. Global warming calls for many changes in society, perhaps changes that politicians hesitate to make and that the public may be reluctant to consider. In the end, the answers to global warming are more universally beneficial than taking petty political sides.

Perhaps it’s time to check our political pride and games at the door and get to work. What America faces on a global level is a turnover to the next generation of technology and industry—while at the same time, our economy presents a mounting concern.

With an MBA from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, and as an associate with the marketing firm From the Rooftops, Caleb Bushner is in the business of sustainability.

“We’re talking about a disruptive technology that will take us where we need to go until the next disruption. If we don’t pioneer alternative energy systems…someone else will. Then where will we be?” Bushner said. “Why should we keep pushing a VHS economy when the DVD era is upon us?”

Consider transportation, consumer and commercial upgrades to new technology and the new energy sectors themselves (such as wind, solar and biomass, among others). Bushner is correct when he says that all these areas will require designers, production, transportation, installation and maintenance. Add that together and what do you get? Jobs, business and growth.

“There is no reason for a capitalist economy that prizes innovation to cling to jobs in dying sectors…Germany is not a sunny place, yet they’ve got tons of installed solar capacity,” Bushner said. “We’ve got amazing solar and wind resources in the American Southwest and what do we have there? Rusty oil pumps that time has nearly left behind.”

The times certainly are changing and as the old saying goes, “out with the old and in with the new,” a phrase that I don’t always adhere to, but on this issue, it holds true.

On the ground of this industry is Kevin Charap, operations manager for NW Wind & Solar out of Seattle, Wash., a one-stop shopping center for both consumer and commercial users of renewable solar and wind energy.

“When we’re talking about renewable energy we’re not just talking about solar and wind,” Charap said. “I’m talking about geothermal, bio-digesters…and small impact hydro, solar thermal for water heating. It’s one piece of an energy mix.”

Energy is but one aspect of what global warming believers consider, and what deniers ignore. Though they both begin with differing stances on the issue, the actions in the end benefit both parties considered—so much that the issue over global warming really becomes moot. In this case, the environment, business and economy are all in the same boat.

After mentioning climate change only once during his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama was met with a wall of Republican boos, invoking the response, “Here’s the thing even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future…the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.”

Like it—or him—or not, the president offered a sobering logic. Whether or not global warming fits well with your political leanings, new energy production is here and more is to come. It is a major emerging industry. We can either take it or leave it, but know this: If we miss the boat for new energy, someone else will jump on it and they will be the leader in this field with its technology and jobs, not us.

“I don’t know when it will be, but there will be a day when, for all intents and purposes, we run out of oil,” Bushner said. “Do we want to suddenly have to play catch up behind the Chinese and Germans?”