Recession: Will it help or hurt green causes?

[Peter]

Do people think the recession/depression will help or hurt the greater green cause? There's this headline in today's Times: "Economic Slump May Limit Moves on Clean Energy." But if people are spending less, traveling less, etc., maybe it will help? And I can't see a better way to create jobs than by investing in alternative energy, as Barack has promised.

[Dina Elkan]

It's gonna be tough. Falling prices will be the excuse for oil, coal and natural gas interests to push their products. They'll claim that we can't afford to develop new tech, that they're providing jobs, that green is too expensive, etc. Also in the Times today: an article about Greenhouse, a new green nightclub bucking for LEED certification. That's cool and all, but the owner also mentions that he spent 33% more than he would have setting up a conventional club. This just reinforces the notion that green means prohibitively expensive.

Obama is supposed to reveal more of his economic plan today. Hopefully it'll be robust on green jobs, infrastructure and alternative energy.

[Peter]

Dina Elkan said:

It's gonna be tough. Falling prices will be the excuse for oil, coal and natural gas interests to push their products. They'll claim that we can't afford to develop new tech, that they're providing jobs, that green is too expensive, etc. Also in the Times today: an article about Greenhouse, a new green nightclub bucking for LEED certification. That's cool and all, but the owner also mentions that he spent 33% more than he would have setting up a conventional club. This just reinforces the notion that green means prohibitively expensive.

Obama is supposed to reveal more of his economic plan today. Hopefully it'll be robust on green jobs, infrastructure and alternative energy.

[Peter]

Dina-I read that article on green nightclubs in Green Inc. And yes that nightclub was really expensive to build. But another article in that blog that ran a few days ago said that a new study showed that the median cost increase for building green is 1.6%, which can be made up in a few years by energy and water savings. Still that means more money up front.

A lot of people have been calling for a WPA-type jobs program that would rebuild infrastructure (god, let's hope they start with the NYC subways) and seriously and hugely support renewable energy and green building. If Barack does something like this, then the up front costs aren't as big a hurdle as, say, trying to convince my co-op board to install solar panels or wind turbines. I'm not an optimist by nature, but maybe something good could come of the grim debacle of the last eight years.