Even a financial crisis has a green lining

The Greenwash Brigade

Wow, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch just fell in the blink of an eye. And other institutions may yet fall in the months ahead.

How can we climb out of this financial crisis — the worst since the Great Depression? While I can’t claim to know the whole recipe, I do believe I know one of the crucial ingredients: energy efficiency with a dash of renewables.

In case you haven’t noticed, Americans’ super-sized personal debt didn’t catch up with us until energy prices skyrocketed. Over the last few years, oil’s price has quadrupled, coal has tripled, and natural gas nearly doubled. We now pay more than a trillion dollars for energy every year, with hundreds of billions in new expenses due to these higher prices. It was hard for many Americans to keep up with their mortgage payment after gas bills went through the roof. While our struggling economy has helped to lower prices from extreme highs this past summer by lowering demand, supply constraints worldwide and robust demand from emerging economies dim hopes that energy costs will fall much further. And the fact is, if we try to emerge from the current economic downturn with a business-as-usual energy approach, oil and other fossil fuel prices may knock us back into the recession ditch as they rise along with our demand.

However, if we employ a sustainable energy revolution that creates green-collar jobs, then our economy can grow unrestrained by the physical limits of oil extraction and we can regain global leadership in the marketplace. These green-collar jobs can retrofit old inefficient buildings and design and manufacture state-of-the-art appliances, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels. This new growth would allow us to lower energy costs and carbon emissions at the same time as we increase our GDP. Such products have a reliable and growing base of demand worldwide as other countries share the goal of reducing their energy bills and climate pollution.

It’s clear that we can’t compete with China’s labor costs. But we can compete with their energy costs as long as we mobilize public and private innovation toward a sustainable energy revolution. The most effective first step is to become the leader in efficiency — something that Big Three automakers ignored far too long at their own peril.

But the story isn’t over for the Big Three and the rest of our country. We are reducing our oil consumption in 2008 and wind power is growing faster than anyone had imagined to now surpass oil as a source of domestic electricity. We can rise like a phoenix out of these financial ashes and be a model nation that inspires the world again. Rather than “drill, baby, drill,” a sustainable energy transformation based on efficiency and integrating our tremendous wind and solar resources can bring an end to the recession ahead. I hope the crash of such large institutions will help people wake up to the new reality: green is the only way to grow long-term.

September 15, 2008 by Dennis Markatos
3 comments

tags: green energy Lehman Brothers Merrill Lynch oil solar wind

Comments (3)

Harold Satterlee | Respond
September 16, 2008 6:37 AM PT

Mr. Markatos, your point is well said. The only reason to stay with the old carbon fuels is that lots of powerful influence buying people are invested in oil and have a financial interest in protecting their old investments.

Oil people critisize the push for clean and renewable alternatives by saying the free market does not choose clean green alternatives. The truth is, the free market does not choose oil. Oil is so heavily subsidized that, like you said, it took up until the current oil price shocks to make our family budgets feel the pain.

The true costs of our oil is hidden in the income tax. These costs include aircraft carrier battle groups patrolling Middle Eastern oil shipping lanes. Troops gaurding oil pipelines. Foreign aid to oil exporting countries. Military bases in oil exporting countries. 2 Middle Eastern wars. Domestic renewables do not have these costs.

The cost of oil is giving us a huge federal budget deficit, with loans from foriegn governments and interest payments on that debt. This also fuels inflation. Domestic clean renewables do not have these costs.

Oil leaves our economy vulnerable to hostile Middle Eastern governments. Domestic clean renewables do not.

Oil leaves our economy vulnerable to unstable world markets. Domestic clean renewables do not.

Oil gives us a huge foreign trade deficit which fuels inflation. Domestic clean renewables do not.

Oil contributes to climate change, which threatens our last great export, agriculture. Domestic clean renewables do not.

The only cost for domestic clean renewables are a fraction of the tax credits and subsidies that oil currently gets. Pretty cheap in the long run.

xogray industries | Respond
July 4, 2009 8:27 PM PT

Since the big green push is wind mills and they don't really work, ie: they require full capacity reserve spinning and dedicated at all times, then I must assume you work for GE or another company that stands to gain big for building useless infrastratures.

Spain has focused on green jobs, and a new study there shows they cost up to 1.3 million dollars per job, while leaving the economy with 18 percent unemployment after other jobs were lost due to the green initiatives.

Most green technology beyond conservation and geothermal has yet to actually be proven to provide the benefits claimed. (DOE "studies" based on scant or shadow science don't count.) Implementation now at break neck speed during this economic climate could cause serious derailment of what's left.

As prices for energy climb because of artificial scarcity created by climate scares, are you prepared to see millions in this country alone struggle with the costs forced on the poor by the pie-in-the-sky dream world of socialized energy and central government dictates on the economy. My Soviet economics class served me well in the lesson "It doesn't work".

Sometimes the best action is no action at all.

Go green all you want, but do it without government mandates if you can. Edison didn't need a mandate for his electric light bulb. It was a no brainer. If all this green non-sense really works,let it stand alone on merit.

R. Tugwell,III
Xogray Industries

Dennis Markatos : responding to xogray industries | Respond
July 5, 2009 1:14 PM PT

Ask the people of Iowa, North Dakota, or Germany whether wind works. It does. That's why the industry is 25 GW/year strong and growing quickly.

The Spain study you mentioned has been discredited by people who have taken a serious critical look at it.

I'm glad you are encouraging people to go green. And I urge you to support economically efficient government policy to reduce the future costs of dangerous greenhouse gas emissions. Here's to passage of federal climate policy by the Senate this summer!

Onwards-

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Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

NOTE: The opinions expressed by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of American Public Media or its employees. American Public Media is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers.

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