Second, as already noted, politically feasible alternative energy probably has to be cheap. Many of the most important technologies appear to be not very labor-intensive by their very nature. You don’t need workers out there, egging on the sun to shine more brightly. Installing solar panels is likely to be labor-intensive, but once they are up and running, the sector will be letting nature do most of the work.
Third, economists should speak the truth about jobs and green energy, even if politicians will not. There are plenty of people in politics, probably too many, worrying about what is going to be popular with voters. Economists do not typically have expertise in that area, but even if they understand that matter well, their voices are needed elsewhere, namely to identify what makes the best economic sense. If professional economists do not speak up for that, then exactly who will?
I was thus disappointed when Paul Krugman endorsed “making climate policy about job creation not just a carbon price.” Such policies remind me of the “make-work” fallacy, namely the view that the deliberate creation of domestic jobs (for instance through tariffs) will lead to a better economy, a view he dismantled so convincingly in his 1997 book “Pop Internationalism.” More accurately, we will wind up with more good jobs in total if we seek to lower green energy prices, not raise them.
Too many Republican economists endorsed or at least tolerated Trump administration policies for reasons of political exigency. Let us hope that Democratic economists do not continue down that same slippery path, for at the end of that road lies a tattered American economy that hardly anyone will speak up for, with climate change problems still up and running apace.
Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.