The Climate Debate: It’s All About Jobs Now

By Keith Johnson

The big debate over climate legislation seems to be boiling down not to polar bears, ice sheets or light-switch taxes, but simply to jobs.

Take Repower America, the group that aims to put into practice former vice president Al Gore’s renewable-energy dreams. It has another national ad out now—not featuring that gruffy, jeans-wearing farmer who railed against foreign oil, but a regular Joe in his kitchen just itching for one of those 1.7 million green jobs we keep hearing about.

“I’m not looking for a bailout, just a good-paying job. That’s why I like this clean-energy act,” he says in the spot. That sounds eerily like the argument the White House green-jobs boss Van Jones is making these days. And like thearguments coming out of the Apollo Alliance, a group dedicated to promoting so-called green jobs.

On the other side of the aisle, opposition to the Waxman-Markey bill—and whatever the Senate does—is zeroing in on the very same question. The Heritage Foundation figuresthe cap-and-trade plan will end up hurting economic growth and destroying—not creating—millions of jobs. Even many Democrats are worried about the potential for environmental regulation to whack U.S. manufacturing industries.

To that end, opponents of congressional legislation appear set to take a page from the health-care debate and plan to organize anti-climate bill rallies across the country later this month; the fliers planned for the rallies start off by arguing the climate bill will cost two million American jobs.

As the political theater raises the curtain, the clash could obscure a more fundamental issue: Does the U.S. have a long-term energy vision? If so, what is it?

 

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