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America’s Green Collar Future
A friend of mine recently turned me onto the new (to me) buzzword “Green Collar,” as opposed to “white collar” (office jobs, essentially) and “blue collar” (manual labor). Reading around about it online, green collar is being used to describe “environmental and agricultural jobs.”
A green-collar worker is a worker who is employed in the environmental sectors of the economy, or in the agricultural sector. Environmental green-collar workers satisfy the demand for green development. Generally, they implement environmentally-conscious design, policy, and technology to improve conservation and sustainability. Formal environmental regulations as well as informal social expectations are pushing many firms to seek professionals with expertise with environmental, energy efficiency, and clean renewable energy issues. They often seek to make their output more sustainable, and thus more favorable to public opinion, governmental regulation, and the Earth’s ecology.
I’d like to pull together a few different strands of research and conversation we’ve had on this site and offer a semi-formal prediction of things to come. Popular themes here have been:
- Green business, marketing & branding
- Economic collapse, a new depression, devaluing of the US dollar
- Revitalization of interest on popular level in things like permaculture, sustainability, traditional (or “primitive”) lifestyles
- Global warming, environmental/ecological shifts
- Oil, alternative fuels, etc
If you look back at the first American Depression, you’ll see that this is the era under which the US government originally expanded its role into all kinds of social programs, the so-called alphabet agencies, etc. Unemployment skyrocketed and the government stepped in to mobilize the workforce for all kinds of crazy projects.
Let’s assume for a minute that something similar happens in the US over the next few years. Maybe it won’t be as dramatic or drastic as the First Great Depression. Or maybe it will be. Who knows? But I’m beginning to see the outlines of a “perfect storm” amongst the issues outlined above. The economy worsens. Global warming propaganda amps up. “Peak oil” is on everybody’s lips as gas prices shoot through the roof. Suddenly everybody is up shit’s creek. Or whatever - this is just hypothetical. But alongside those trends, the emerging “green collar” labor market seems to be the missing ingredient for social re-organization on the person-to-person level. Green collar is where the rubber hits the road, I think. What will it take for the average blue collar worker to re-envision themselves as a green collar worker with a direct stake in the health and well-being of a planetary ecology? This will be the question on everybody’s lips in the years to come, and whoever comes up with the most successful answer to it basically wins because they will be the ones defining the terms of the debate itself.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
There is something about some chinese symbol for disaster and its the symbol for chaos and opportunity combined.
So thats what I think is happening. This perfect storm will provide amazing opportunities for people prepared.
I guess I look at it not so much in terms of “green collar workers” but in terms of “Green Corporations” forming “Green Market States”
But that is who will employ all these Green collar workers. What I think it will look like is multinational corporations running everything, but running things better and better socially and ecologically. Better than governments have. And I see the public having stock in these corporations.
I think bankrupt governments will play a big part in the Green future. It will get government out of the way of business. When there is no taxes or Government regulations you get massive investment. Look at Dubai. Huge skyscrapers blooming in the desert, massive massive wealth creation.
I imagine cities like Dubai only green. Actally even though Dubai has a huge carbon footprint, one of the largest green skyscrapers is in the works there.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Imagine a city like this springing up out of a desert wasteland only all the skscrapers are Green and made from recycled steel, and the land surrounding the city is all reforested and filled with permacultural organic farms.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Dubai_night_skyline.jpg
April 9th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
One thing I want to add is that the Green Future will not be in America so much as it will be in the developing World.
Here is an article I just wrote:
Build a Green Market State from Scratch
April 10th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I’ve been thinking about this though Ted, what part of making a natural desert into an unnaturally flourishing spot is either natural or sustainable?
April 10th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Well, Most deserts used to be a lot greener. Its called “desertification” its a result of deforestation and agricultural practices that take too many nutrients out of the soil and destroy the topsoil which blows away.
But besides that, here is my train of thought, humanity already makes these huge, sprawling, often ugly cities all over the place. Why not make them green and sustainable?
Like we are being futuristic and going around terfaforming dead planets? Almost like that. Make life flourish with abundance where ever you go. Johnny Appleseed and that kind of thing.
But as far as sustainable, I am interested in sustainability, but that is not to say natural life can;t be increased just because it was formerly a blighted landscape doesn’t mean restoring it to how gren it was a thousand years ago is “unnatural”
April 10th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Another thing to consider is that human beings are natural and we a re a very dominant species on this planet. I am thinking of solutions that don’t somehow pretend this isn’t true. You know like wanting huge areas to always be “untouched by man.”
Its actually a fallacy anyhow.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Tim,
let me just make another analogy. Take dogs and wolves. You said you “don’t see me studying wolves” actually I’ve studied wolves first hand quite a bit. Not as much as a biologist, but more than the average person. I’ve lived in areas where they live. I have tracked them, I’ve seen them in the wild. I’ve listened to wild wolves howl.
Plus I have lived with wolf like sled dogs.
Wolves are awesome. But they aren’t dogs. But does that mean dogs are no good? Dogs have a symbiotic relationship with mankind.
I think dogs like people. I think in whatever capacity they can, probably other domsticated plants like people. Not so much in factory farms, probably, but still I think plants and animals like people.
I would like to see more humans and plants and aniomals living in direct symbioticrelationships. I would like to see more of a blending between nature and humanity. Not seperate but equal, but integrated.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
“Dogs have a symbiotic relationship with mankind.”
You and Tim have both had symbiotic relationships with dogs.
BTW you can have this type of relationship with dogs in a city but it is different. I grew up in a bad neighborhood and the dogs understood that and communicated with us very clearly on security issues. Now that so much of the city has gentrified you see dogs behaving as social markers for their owners and having a role to play in helping people mix and mingle with others. This must be weird for the dogs. People who’s dogs don’t play by these rules have to scoot their dogs away from the rest thereby excluding themselves from a newly formed social group.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:30 am
the average blue collar worker isn`t sophisticated enough to see the pattern and so would find themeselves doing the same or similar type of work for a different boss.
certainly many corporations have re-badged them selves green without changing thier fuction one iota.
garbage and waste management companies are all called something heroically environmental now, and everyone is trying to fit the eco prefix into thier name whether they make weapon systems or sell insurance.
meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Its not that grim, actually. I mean it will be grim for the greenwashed companies because they will be outcompeted by the real green companies. Because The Green future is the only future not just some bullshit fad.
Capitalism is about, when you have your competitor by the throat, the next thing you do is pull the trigger and blow their head off.
Thats what I see hapening a lot of companies being weeded out and the ones that know how to adapt dominating and the memes that made them successful mutiplying.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
What it will be is a “memetic bottle neck” You know, like there is a Western liberal democratic free market capitalist monoculture?
So anyway, these are dominant memes. So memes that create wasteful exploitative corporations will have reached their limit. So the meme complexes based on forming profitable sustainable companies will win out. Then they will replicate themselves and mutate in different ways.
It will be like a bunch of genes being removed from the gene pool because they couldn’t keep up. Only its memes. Change of the guard.
Almost like forest succession.
But it will still be corporate, because that is what works and that is what people want.
Even if food distribution becomes all decentralized and egalitarian and rhizome like, people will still consume other things that they will buy from corporations. Media and Entertainment will be huge still. The internet is actually a good use of electricity.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
you forgot about the volunteer sector.
or if you like, the moral slave labour pool.