It used to be that when governments announced they would be “buying us out of recessions”, it was all about building roads. In this new era of awareness of the cost of environmental destruction, a new trend has appeared.
Starting with the announcements by Barack Obama about intent to include investments in renewable energy as part of the bailout package “infrastructure renewal”, the canadian government is being urged to create up to 160,000 new jobs in the environmental sector as part of its new budget.
What we see now is “smart investing” being urged to accomplish several tasks, the most important of which is to create jobs which will be sustainable in a “new economy”. Now we’ve heard this “new economy” before with the internet boom…and then bust! What we are experiencing in the solar industry right now, with the credit crunch coming down hard on solar projects financing, is exactly the same with one big difference…the energy angle is far more important for the future of our planet in the HEARTS and minds of consumers, than is the internet.
This is the angle to be used by governments in justifying such massive intervention on behalf of renewable energy. It will not only create jobs, it will help reduce carbon emissions, reduce energy costs in the long run and dependency on oil from the middle east. It hits all of the sweet spots that politicians love to be seen as heroes for, yet they are all real and true. So I do hope that the Harper government takes the advice of those proponents of investment in renewables to heart, no longer because they are truly green (which conservatives are not by nature) yet because it will create the sustainable jobs that our economy needs to replace the “old indusry” jobs which are probably lost for a very very long time.
Sass