At Bill Clinton's press meeting yesterday, a particularly interesting discussion concerned using the stimulus -- as well as other forms of economic policy -- to avert the imminent global warming catastrophe. The former president argued, citing his own organization's Empire State Building initiative as an example, that retrofitting buildings is an example of the way in which stimulus funds can be used productively in terms of both job creation and environmental benefits:
For every billion dollars you spend on a coal-fired power plant, it creates about 870 jobs. Every billion dollars you spent on solar power – depending on whether it's photovoltaic cells or a solar thermal power plant, a big centralized location which you can only build in a few places – gives you between 1,850 and 2,000 jobs. Every billion dollars you spend on windmills, wind energy – if you manufacture the wind mills in the country where the windmills were put up, gives you 3,300 jobs. Every billion you spend on building retrofits, gives you 6,000 jobs.
This was embedded in a larger discussion about how many questions of environmental adoption do not involve trade-offs between economic and environmental benefits per se, but rather require the alignment of short-term and long-term economic benefits. Making buildings more energy efficient, for example, is good for the environment and -- in the long run -- for the property owners and tenants, but doing so requires both an infusion of capital and longer time horizons. Government programs that guaranteed loans to owners who retrofitted buildings all to be paid back out of utility savings is an example of a policy that could produce significant environmental benefits without placing a substantial burden on either the taxpayers or economic growth.
[Thanks to Amanda Terkel -- who was far-sighted enough to bring a tape recorder -- for the direct transcription.]
--Scott Lemieux