Getting the facts straight on green jobs

Image: Climate ProgressCross-posted from Climate Progress.

The past few weeks have seen a perfect storm of misinformation on green jobs: What they are, how many there are, how much they contribute to the economy. Many of those throwing numbers around have relied on one source, a recent report from the Brookings Institution, which worked with Battelle's Technology Partnership Practice to attempt to define, evaluate, and count green jobs as a part of the economy from 2003-2010.

It is clear to those of us who have been deeply engaged in making the case for green jobs for years that the Brookings report has been almost universally misunderstood. Hence this post to try and clear up some of the details. But first, a digression about green jobs.

The phrase "green jobs" does not stand for, and in fact has never stood for, one specific set of occupations that can be set aside and easily counted. In this, green jobs are not unique. Think about "high-tech jobs," for instance. There are jobs in inventing and developing software, to be sure. But there are also jobs in using software to make existing companies more productive and efficient. There are manufacturing jobs associated not only with the hardware in our computers, but with the servers we use to store data. There are construction jobs that would not exist were it not for the need to build server farms. All the jobs that have come about because of the invention of the computer, and the transformation of our economy from a low-tech to a high-tech one, are arguably "information technology jobs."

Similarly, "green jobs" go way beyond the obvious jobs, like the wind turbine operators. They span huge numbers of industries and occupations, and touch nearly every sector of the economy because they can include all those who use cleaner or more efficient energy and fuel, as well as those who invent, manufacture, install, operate, and maintain those things. Just like the phrase "high-tech jobs" has come to stand for an entire economic transformation toward computerization of nearly everything we do, so does "green jobs" stand for a huge transformation in the kinds of energy we use to underpin our long-term economic growth.

So, back to the Brookings report. In that report, Brookings researchers tried valiantly to pin down at least some of the industries and occupations that are most clearly associated with the green economy transformation. They did an admirable job, and here's what they actually found:

A lot of people already have green jobs. Brookings found that there are currently 2.7 million jobs in the clean economy, as broadly defined to include not just mature industries like manufacturing, transportation, and public services, but also emerging industries like solar, wind, and battery technology. It also includes conservation and restoration jobs. That's 2.7 million people who have jobs because their employers, cities, or states -- or their country, through the Recovery Act -- prioritized moving away from dirty fossil fuel use and toward mass transit, or clean energy, or energy efficiency services -- or because they have realized they need to clean up the mess left by generations of fossil fuel use.
Green jobs are part of a growing, not a shrinking, sector of the economy -- and some green industries are growing incredibly fast. Broadly defined, the clean economy -- again including transportation, restoration, efficiency, clean energy, etc. -- grew at 4.3 percent from 2003-2010, adding half a million new jobs. Pause to think about that: That's half a million people who now have jobs in these sectors, and might not have jobs at all if their companies, cities, and states hadn't decided to become a little cleaner and greener. The part of the clean economy sector that is focused on clean energy in particular -- the wind, solar, fuel cell, smart grid, biofuel, and battery companies -- grew far more quickly, at an average rate of 8.3 percent, which is nearly twice the growth rate of the economy as a whole.
The overall clean economy grew during the recession, but was not exempt from its impacts. Given the huge growth in clean energy and fuel sectors, you'd think we'd see a higher overall growth rate for the clean economy as a whole. What kept that growth from being more explosive? The same thing that brought down the economy as a whole and threw us into recession: the housing crisis. A lot of green jobs are in construction, because green building and energy efficiency retrofits are such a fantastic way to bring down energy costs and lower our carbon footprint. Just like the rest of the construction sector, this part of the clean economy suffered when the bottom fell out of the housing market. But even given that fact, we still saw 4.3 percent growth, because not all green jobs are construction jobs.
That gets us to the next point: Green jobs are spread across industries and occupations. You can find them in everything from research and development, to manufacturing, to construction and installation, to operations and maintenance, to retail and service. Unlike jobs in the much-touted real estate and finance sector, they are not all concentrated into a relatively small set of occupations. That means that when the bottom fell out of the real estate and finance markets, there was still growth across all green jobs sectors. Similarly, when gas prices went up this past summer, as they invariably do, the parts of the green economy that are focused on alternative vehicles and fuels were suddenly a hot spot for growth. This diversification across occupations and industries makes the green economy smarter, more secure, and more sustainable than the economy as a whole.
Green jobs are spread across regions, too -- also unlike a lot of jobs in the financial sector, which tend to be concentrated in big cities on the coasts. Brookings found that of all regions in America, the South has the highest concentration of jobs in the broader clean economy.
Green jobs are good jobs for all Americans, not just the small number with college degrees. Finally, Brookings found -- as we and others have found in the past -- that a lot of green jobs are in what are sometimes called "middle-skill" occupations, meaning that they require education and skills beyond high school, but not necessarily up to the four-year college level. Twenty-six percent of clean economy jobs are in manufacturing, which is a sector where workers with specific technical skills, but no bachelor's degree, can make a solidly middle-class living. Why do we care? Three big reasons: First, nearly 70 percent of our workforce lacks a four-year college degree. That's a lot of people shut out by high-skill industries. Second, middle-skill jobs have always been the key to America's middle class. Build an economy that only creates high- and low-skill jobs, and you build an economy with vast income inequality. And third, when we build up the manufacturing sector here in America, we can export our products to other countries, making us competitive in the global economy.

Those are some of the facts about the new clean economy. It goes beyond clean energy, though that is probably the most exciting and high-growth sector. A green jobs growth strategy spans industries, occupations, skill levels, and geographic regions, making these businesses and workers less vulnerable to price spikes, extreme weather events, recessions, attacks -- you name it.

And most important, the clean economy is real. It employs real people in real jobs with real salaries -- something at I bet the 14 million Americans who are currently unemployed sure wish they had.

Kate Gordon is the Vice President for Energy Policy at American Progress. Most recently, Kate was the co-director of the national Apollo Alliance, where she still serves as senior policy advisor.

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Who’s behind the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance and why it matters

Photo: USFRAOn Thursday, Sept. 22, the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a new trade association made up of some of the biggest players in the food industry -- including the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, Dupont, and Monsanto -- hosted what they called "Food Dialogues" in Washington D.C., New York City, U.C. Davis, and Fair Oaks, Ind.

The USFRA describes the Food Dialogues, and their broader multimillion dollar media campaign, as an effort to amplify the voice of farmers and ranchers and help consumers know more about "how their food is grown and raised."

Sounds good, on first blush.

Most of us are in the dark when it comes to the story of our food. And, farmers and ranchers -- the people working hard every day to bring us our food -- are nearly invisible in mainstream media. But dig into the Alliance's membership, and its impetus for forming, and you start to wonder whether it truly represents the voices of grassroots food producers or whether this well-funded media campaign is agribusinesses latest attempt to push back against well-documented and well-publicized concerns about the environmental and health consequences of industrial agriculture.

When I asked a rep from Ketchum -- the public relations firm hired by the Alliance -- what motivated these groups to come together, without skipping a beat, he answered: Food, Inc. and movies like it. "People see Food, Inc.," he said, "And think everything in that movie is accurate." But, he continued, the film only presents one side of the issue and USFRA members feel they didn't "have a voice in it." Now, as the Ketchum rep put it, USFRA wants to "clear the air" and "get a national dialogue, a conversation, going."

There are two big holes in this argument: Robert Kenner, the director of Food, Inc. did try to get industry voices into the film. And, while USFRA members may not like it, Food, Inc. is an accurate, if unpleasant, account of our industrial, toxic food system.

When I mentioned that Kenner approached many food companies to get their perspective, and they refused to go on camera, the PR rep said: "I'll be honest with you: this is a change with how they've done things in the past. They're trying to open their doors up."

While these industry players may be saying they want to "open their doors up," it seems only on their terms. Certainly the Food Dialogues event gave a semblance of impartiality: Highly credentialed journalist Claire Shipman of Good Morning America moderated from a satellite location in D.C. and celebrity chef John Besh hosted the panel in New York City.

But the reality was an orchestrated framing of the message about "modern agricultural production" from the perspective of big business. In the staged kitchen set at the New York City, the questions from the "audience" included only one: a prearranged question from the head of the National Pork Board. In D.C., Jay Vroom, from the agrochemical trade association CropLife America, was handpicked to join in the "conversation" and lob a softball question to John Besh about chefs and portion control.

Earlier this year, a trade publication explained that this image campaign, and others like it, not only aims to counter Food, Inc.'s "misconceptions" about food, but also to convert all those "Pollan-ated" minds. (Reading Michael Pollan is apparently unnerving to the food industry and it should be to the rest of the public, too.)

This media campaign, the industry publication continued, is also intended as a "preemptive strike" against "a long list of new regulations and restrictions coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food & Drug Administration, ranging from tighter rules on pesticide applications to a potential ban of routine, preventative use of animal antibiotics."

Take a look at the policy priorities of USFRA members and you'll see exactly that: Most of its affiliates are hard at work, lobbying on Capitol Hill to weaken the very regulations that the consumers the USFRA itself surveyed say they care most about: Pesticides and antibiotics, for instance, as well as artificial hormones in animal production, and air and water pollution.

One of four "Food Dialogues" broadcast live on the USFRA site last Thursday As one of its current policy priorities, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA), a USFRA board member and the marketing organization and trade association for the beef industry, is fighting for the Defending America's Affordable Energy and Jobs Act. If passed, the Act would limit the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet, as many in the environmental community have pointed out, the EPA's regulation of carbon dioxide pollution is key to addressing global warming in the absence of strong climate policy. This USFRA member attack on climate legislation shouldn't be surprising considering the Alliance is working with Frank Luntz, the political strategist who has helped foster climate change skepticism. In a strategy memo leaked to the media in the early 2000s, for instance, Luntz advised congressional Republicans that the best tactic to undermine public support for climate legislation is to cast doubt on the "scientific certainty" surrounding the issue.

To give you another sense of where USFRA membership stands, consider that the NCBA, along with other Alliance members, is actively fighting a policy that would reign in antibiotic abuse in livestock production. Called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, and sponsored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the Act, according to the Cattlemen's Association, is unnecessary: The industry already uses antibiotics "judiciously" to prevent disease.

Slaughter and other backers of this policy stress that research shows most antibiotics in livestock production are not given for disease prevention, but delivered at "sub-therapeutic levels" to speed growth -- and therefore increase profit. And, as experts at the Government Accountability Office reported earlier this month, the inaction of the USDA and FDA to regulate antibiotic use, especially in animal production, is a serious threat to public health. It was chillingly ironic that the study came out on the heels of another major recall of Cargill ground turkey linked to antibiotic-resistant Salmonella.

Lest you think the Cattlemen's Association is out on its own on this fight, other USFRA affiliates that are vocal opponents of regulating antibiotics in livestock production include the Dairy Farmers of America, National Pork Producers Council, American Egg Board, U.S. Poultry & Egg Association.

Another USFRA affiliate and board member, the National Corn Growers Association, is also battling policies that would help us protect public health. In a May 2011 statement delivered to the House Committee on Agriculture and on Natural Resources, Rod Snyder, the Corn Grower's Policy Director and chair of the Pesticide Policy Coalition, dismissed the use of the Endangered Species Act's to control toxic pesticides, describing the policy as "dysfunctional."

He called for the administration to "immediately suspend implementation" and continue with business-as-usual, regulating pesticides under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). But stress the importance of using the Endangered Species Act, explaining that FIFRA is "notoriously weak" and "industry-friendly." According to advocates, the pesticide lobby, including USFRA members like the Corn Growers, wants to keep regulation under FIFRA because they know how to "sidestep and subvert it."

While I believe the majority of our nation's ranchers and farmers are respectful stewards of the land with the public's best interest at heart -- they're working hard to reduce their environmental impact and address pesticide, artificial hormone, and antibiotics overuse -- the USFRA clearly is not representing them. Instead, a look at the Alliance affiliates reveals that it is made up of, and funded by, the biggest players in the food industry, including those who profit most from toxic agricultural chemicals, polluting farming and food processing practices, and concerning animal welfare policies. No wonder, then, that that limiting protections from toxic pesticides and pushing back against antibiotic regulation are just two of the current policy priorities of USFRA affiliates.

The USFRA is working hard to present itself as a voice of farmers and ranchers interested in a conversation with consumers. I'm all for open, honest conversation, but let's not be duped by polished PR into thinking that's what the Alliance and its inaugural Food Dialogues is intended to be.

This post originally ran on Civil Eats.

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Can the wind industry survive without federal tax credits?

Wind turbines in Iowa, which leads the country in wind energy consumption.Photo: Theodore ScottCross-posted from Midwest Energy News.

Minnesota wind developer Dan Juhl has seen the scenario before.

The wind production tax credit -- seen as a key incentive to bringing new wind energy projects online -- nears its expiration date, expires without legislative action, and then comes barreling back, reviving the industry after a period of stagnation.

It's a sequence of events that has played out three times in the last decade, most recently in 2003, and is unfolding again today. The current tax credit, which provides developers with 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity produced from utility-scale wind turbines, is set to expire at the end of 2012.

Industry officials have called for a long-term extension, but so far no action has been taken. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently said he was "not confident" it would pass given the mood in Washington, and wind energy proponents said they would not hazard to guess at its fate.

You would think that Juhl, the chairman and chief executive at Juhl Wind Inc., would be carefully tracking the issue. His company is behind four of the 15 new wind energy projects expected to come online in Minnesota before 2012, and has longer-term ambitions.

But Juhl said he no longer relies on the whims of Congress when thinking about the future. The need for alternative energy, he said, is simply too strong to be tempered by tax policy, he said. And besides, the tax credit has always returned.

"The tax credit has been extended many times, and many times it's at the very last minute or a month after," Juhl said. "You can't really throw in the towel; you just have to keep moving ahead."

Others aren't so confident, however.

Wind energy proponents are making the case that the credit needs to be extended for a decade or more. The issue has risen to the top of the wind energy agenda, and urgency grows with each month that passes without action.

"Without a doubt, the expiration of the production tax credit is of great concern to our industry," said Jeff Anthony, the director of businesses development at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). "It has expired three times in the past, and each time it has resulted in major disruption."

"It puts a big hiccup in the industry and just continues the boom and bust cycle that we're trying to break," he said.

Momentum lost

According to AWEA, 35 percent of all new generating capacity added in the United States over the last four years has come from wind turbines. The organization reported in August that there had been 2,151 megawatts of new wind energy capacity installed in the first half of 2011, up 72 percent from the same time period a year before.

Officials are forecasting continued growth, too. In Minnesota, now the country's fourth-largest wind-energy-producing state, wind power is seen as the primary way to meet the state's renewable energy standard.

Minnesota's wind farms currently have a load capacity of 2,518 megawatts, enough to power 700,000 homes at a given time. The capacity will need to more than double for the state to obtain a quarter of its energy supply from renewable resources by 2020, according to a 2006 report [PDF] by the EnerNex Corporation. The model assumes energy consumption will increase 1 percent annually. The state aims to get a quarter of its energy from renewable resources by 2025.

In Iowa -- which now leads the country in wind energy consumption -- officials hope to get 30 percent of the state's energy from wind by the end of 2012. Companies around the state are scrambling to get their projects completed by the end of next year, a rush that is playing out around the country as the tax credit deadline looms.

"There's a huge rush to get every project in the ground right now," said Harold Prior, the executive director of the Iowa Wind Energy Association, which is pushing for a 10-year extension of the tax credit.

But the momentum that has been building could come to an abrupt halt if the production tax credit is allowed to expire, industry officials say.

They point to previous instances when the tax credit was allowed to expire as evidence. In 2004, the last year after the production tax credit lapsed, just 389 new megawatts were installed nationally -- a 76 percent drop from the year before.

Such a drop-off hurts manufacturers who make component parts, leads to job losses in the construction field, and could slow progress for several years as companies adjust, officials say.

"Any smart business is going to have a plan for multiple scenarios, and most companies probably have a plan in place, but there is still likely to be a downturn as companies adjust," said Josh Gackle, a policy manager at Wind on the Wires.

"That [adjusting] will be harder for some companies, easier for others," he said.

Standards in play

State renewable energy standards, which require utilities to buy a set amount of energy from renewable resources, have helped support much of the wind industry's growth in recent years. The standards are designed to create a market incentive for renewable resources, making them competitive with traditional energy supplies such as coal.

But the standards only work if alternative sources are reasonably priced, officials say, and losing the tax credit is almost certain to make buying wind energy more expensive. If allowed to lapse, the costs for new projects could be pushed to ratepayers, which could in some cases trigger cost-containment measures that would relieve utilities of their renewable-energy requirements.

In Illinois, for example, the state has called for 25 percent of its energy to come from renewable sources by 2025. An estimated 75 percent of that energy is expected to come from wind.

But rates can increase no more than 0.5 percent above the previous year -- a limit officials say could be exceeded if the production tax credit disappears, and costs are pushed on to consumers.

"If the [production tax credit] were to go away, would the cost of complying go beyond that? Probably," said Kevin Borgia, the co-founder and executive director at the Illinois Wind Energy Association.

Borgia and others say such a scenario is all the more frustrating given that fossil fuels have enjoyed near-permanent subsidies, making it difficult for renewables to compete on costs.

A recent report by DBL Investors, for example, found that the oil, gas, and nuclear industries received substantially larger subsidies than renewables in the early years of their development, as measured as a percentage of federal spending.

"This [uncertainty] doesn't happen with oil and gas industries, where the tax incentives have been permanent for 100 years," Borgia said. "That provides clear, consistent signals for an industry. If we want to boost renewable energy, we need to provide stable signals to the market, and the current situation has really been this start-stop, constant uncertainty, and that needs to stop."

Strong enough to stand on its own?

Whether or not the industry is capable of standing on its own without the tax credit is a question that only time will tell.

Prior, of the Iowa Wind Energy Association, said favorable purchase agreements, uncertainties over coal, nuclear, and natural gas energy supplies, and the prospect of stable long-term wind energy costs are all working in the industry's favor, with or without the tax incentives in place.

"There will be a point with this industry where we won't be dependent on the production tax credit, and I think we're getting close," he said. "If it doesn't get renewed, we're going to learn a lot about whether we've reached that tipping point or not."

Given the growth of the industry, Prior said, the money could more appropriately be used to upgrade infrastructure. Deficiencies in the country's transmission system, he said, is one of the biggest obstacles to new development, he said.

"If they wanted to redirect the money, it should be directed to transmission projects," Prior said. "There haven't been a lot of upgrades in 50 or 60 years, and as more sources of generation come up, that's something that really needs to happen."

Others say there may be more effective incentive structures than tax credits.

John Farrell, a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, advocates for a cash grant system that would allow investors with less capital, nonprofits, and governments to participate in the wind energy build out, and a feed-in tariff system that ensures stable purchase prices.

Cash grants were approved as part of the stimulus package, but are set to expire at the end of this year. And the tariff system, while popular in Europe, has been a nonstarter in the United States. The tariffs would guarantee developers a set rate per kilowatt hour, paid by utilities under a regulated, long-term contract.

"We have advocated for that because it takes a lot of the risk and red tape out of the wind energy process," Farrell said. "The tax credit is probably the most difficult incentive to use."

Still, Farrell and others say extending the production tax credit remains the most politically acceptable means of supporting the industry, and that they would like to see it extended before tackling the larger, structural issues that exist.

Juhl, the Minnesota wind developer, says wind is the only energy supply that offers a long-term fixed cost, can be generated domestically, and does not rely on fossil fuels.

"Hopefully our country is smart enough to realize we need to do everything we can to develop our own domestic resources of energy, and that wind is a part of that."

Drew Kerr is a Minneapolis-based freelance reporter who covers the Twin Cities and beyond.

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Republicans pursued clean energy loans, too—and good for them!

As I predicted, Solyndra's bankruptcy is serving as the new Climategate -- it's giving conservative politicians who once felt the need to grope for some sort of muddled centrist-sounding position (e.g.,"the science is uncertain," or "all of the above") the pretense they need to transition to full-on oppositionalism.

We see this now as Republicans decry clean energy loan guarantees that they were begging for a few years ago. I had some fun with Mitch McConnell a few days ago, and ThinkProgress has a great post nailing Daryl Issa -- who even now is investigating Solyndra -- for pleading with DOE's Steven Chu to fast track a loan guarantee to Aptera Motors, an electric car manufacturer.

The hypocrisy charge is legit, as far as it goes, and it's catnip for the media and for activists. But let's not forget: the main problem with Issa's effort to cripple the clean energy loan guarantee program is not that he did something contrary earlier, but that it's a bad idea to cripple the clean energy loan guarantee program.

I worry that the hypocrisy attack makes it look like Republicans were doing something embarrassing or unseemly by pursuing loans for clean energy companies in their districts. Quite the contrary! If I were one of Darryl Issa's constituents, I would be most pleased to hear that he was angling to get some advanced manufacturing in my district. Electric cars are are a booming market and it would be to a region's great benefit to establish an early foothold as a center of research, skills, and experience. Issa was serving the people who elected him.

This gets at a weird schizophrenia in public dialogue about energy policy. In an economist's dream world, all units of carbon emissions are priced equally. The government does not pick winners or otherwise interfere in the market. The carbon price creates demand for new low-carbon options, which pulls new competitors into the market. Lots of left pundits seem to have convinced themselves that this is the only thing they can credibly advocate for. Anything else is vaguely malodorous.

This is pure mythology, though. For one thing, a carbon price wouldn't be enough to spur innovation (see here or here). Putting that aside, though, it's not like a price on carbon would, in and of itself, make energy markets "free" or "fair." There are no markets in the world more riddled with state intervention, collusion, price-fixing, subsidies, tax breaks, cartels, monopolies, etc. etc. The government is always and already involved in energy markets, always and already "picking winners and losers." (Brad Plumer has a good post on that today.)

Yet this mythology, that an agnostic price on carbon is the only respectable carbon policy, has made many pundits and advocates on the left shy, even ashamed, about forthrightly advocating that the government explicitly favor clean energy with specific programs, regulations, loans, tax exemptions, and cash grants.

Yet that's the real fight -- the one taking place on the ground. Not the abstract fight over what looks best in an economist's modeling spreadsheet, but the concrete fight over who gets the favors and funds available to the energy industry. In the real world, the location and nature of commercial activity in any particular state or region is subject to a dense thicket of regulations, incentives, and political forces. The purpose of a loan guarantee program is to channel resources to innovative work on socially beneficial technologies and products. The fact that political representatives are competing for those loans is not some embarrassing revelation -- it's a sign that the program is working.

David Roberts is a staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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Change GDP, change the world

It is taken for granted by just about everyone that the developing world is going to grow like gangbusters over the next few decades. Population will grow, GDP will grow, and consumption of energy and other resources will grow. Look at this, from the BP Energy Outlook 2030:

This expectation -- nay, this certainty -- shapes all our forecasts, fears, and plans for the coming century. Just as certainly, we are approaching several biophysical thresholds:

Yikes! A collision of humanity and ecology seems inevitable. It's no wonder there's such a fervent desire for a "miracle" energy technology breakthrough. It seems only a deus ex machina can get us out of this pickle.

But what if the developing world didn't need to grow quite this much, quite this fast? What if social and political change -- changes in government policy, economics, cultural norms, etc. -- can do for demand what technological change can do for supply?

One has to be careful here. Obviously the people of the developing world deserve a decent standard of living just as much as anyone in OECD countries. But we're too quick to equate GDP, a measure of economic activity, with quality of life. Improving life for the people of the developing world need not look like the kind of GDP growth on the chart at the top.

Which brings us to my new hero: Niu Wenyuan, adviser to the Chinese state council, chief scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and director of the Chinese Ecological Economics Society.

Eight years ago, Niu tried to introduce a "green GDP," but it never took off. In China, provincial leaders have long been rewarded for GDP growth and they're terrified that a new system of measurement would undo their gains.

But Niu is back to try again, with at "GDP quality index." Quoting an excellent piece from Jonathan Watts:

Niu’s formulation combines five elements: Economic quality, which considers the amount of resources and energy needed to generate each 10,000 yuan of GDP; social quality, which includes differences of incomes between rich and poor that might led to destructive riots; environmental quality, which assesses the amount of waste and carbon generated per 10,000 yuan of economic activity; quality of life, which figures in life expectancy and other human development indicators; and management quality, which measures the proportion of tax revenue used for public security, the durability of infrastructure and the proportion of public officials in the overall population.

Niu stresses that unlike green GDP, the GDP quality index uses data the government already collects, so it's much easier to understand, calculate, and administer. He plans to release it annually, refining it as he goes.

There are efforts not that different from Niu's going on the U.K. and France (and Bhutan) -- I wrote about them a little bit here. But it strikes me as significant that Niu's effort is native to China. The country needs to forge a new model of development or all is lost.

How much can quality of life and GDP be pried apart? Who knows. Efforts to do so seem fitful and slow so far, a long way from actually changing government policies. Rethinking how society measures value is a difficult thing. Nevertheless, it's crucial, and we shouldn't give up on it.

More broadly, we should not give up on social and political change. People tend to be very cynical about it, especially those who have endured prolonged exposure to contemporary U.S. politics. This is understandable; technological change seems to come constantly, quite visibly to the naked eye, as it were, whereas social change can often take the form of what Jay Gould called punctuated equilibrium: Things can move only slowly and incrementally, or not at all, for a long time -- and then, whammy. Every sudden lurch in social or political life is preceded by a long period of what seems like futile struggle. Change is unpredictable, even by those working on it every day.

Nonetheless! We still ought to be boring those hard boards, as Weber would say.

David Roberts is a staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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Environmental leaders to Congress: Don’t stop funding conservation on farms

Photo: eutrophication&hypoxia The message is loud and clear: The environmental community wants to get out ahead of the 2012 Farm Bill debate.

Yesterday, a group of 56 leadership organizations representing over a million members across the nation sent Congress a very public memo. The groups ranged from the Environmental Working Group to the World Wildlife Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Their message: Industrial farming has no place in this country without parallel measures aimed at stopping soil erosion, lessening pesticide use, and cleaning up the air and soil on and around farms. The statement reads:

The progress farmers have made is real, but pressing problems remain unaddressed; we will lose the ground we have gained if Congress fails to ensure that conservation intensifies in lock-step with production.

The bulk of the deliberation about the next Farm Bill isn't supposed to begin until next year, so why the rush? There's been speculation that the congressional Super Committee currently strategizing about the national debt might start making cuts to conservation programs early. As Don Carr of the Environmental Working Group writes in his latest article, Americans' Views of Industrial Agriculture By the Numbers,  "Many informed observers believe the committee will effectively re-write the farm bill this fall, a full year ahead of schedule." (For more context, read the EWG's primer, Why the Farm Bill Matters.

Since the last Farm Bill, conservation programs have been funded at a baseline of $6.5 billion a year. That might sound like a hefty sum, but it's only 7 percent of the total funding the Farm Bill allocated in 2008 (the bulk of it -- around 73 percent in 2008 -- went to funds for nutritional programs such as SNAP, and around 16 percent went to other farm programs, including direct payments and crop insurance). The coalition of 56 organizations has made a list of recommendations, including (first and foremost) that Congress maintain that 6.5 billion amount. They're also stressing the importance of linking other types of farm subsidies and insurance payouts to efforts to improve land, water, and air quality. 

A new David & Lucile Packard Foundation poll released in concert with the statement reflects American's attitudes about agriculture, the environment, and the federal budget. (And they didn't just speak with enviros and sustainable foodies either: The pollsters surveyed to around 1,200 random people around the nation.) Among other findings, the results reveal that:

 Americans value conservation programs with environmental benefits more than programs with economic benefits such as job creation or recreation dollars.75 percent said helping family farmers stay in business should be a top or high priority in agriculture policy78 percent said making nutritious and healthy foods more affordable and more accessible should be a top priority in the next Farm Bill.57 percent did not agree with cutting funding for farm conservation programs, saying they save money by preventing pollution.

At a time when much of the interest in food and farming can seem self-interested -- we want to know how that pesticide residue will impact our own personal health, or whether there will be wild salmon available in our neighborhood grocery store -- it's heartening to know that the public is also prioritizing our shared natural capital. 

Those numbers also suggest that the grassroots organizing around the bill in 2008 may have had more of an impact on Americans outside liberal coastal cities than many of in the food movement initially suspected. Four years ago eaters and policy makers put forward a positive vision of a holistic "food bill" that will one day balance healthy food with healthier farmland.

Claudia Emken, a conservation policy advocate for the Illinois Stewardship Alliance -- one of the 56 organizations behind yesterday's recommendations -- did well to reflect this holistic vision by tying the need to support non-commodity (or healthy "specialty crops") in her statement on the issue.

It is critical that the 2012 farm bill funds programs that show proven soil and water conservation benefits and that are open to all sectors of agriculture production, including fruit, vegetable, and organic growers. Local foods production and delivery is a growing industry and needs to be treated equally.

Of course, whether or not those in Washington will heed any of these recommendations is a big question. Grist will be doing more to dig in to the conservation debate -- and to explain why it matters -- in the coming weeks. But this much is clear: Farm Bill 2012 has swiftly gone from an abstract concern worth pontificating about to a very pointed demand: Whatever you do now, Congress, don't stop funding conservation on farms.

Twilight is the food editor at Grist. Follow her on twitter.

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Feds help GMO salmon swim upstream

Photo: Isaac WedinAquaBounty Technology's genetically modified salmon just got a hefty financial boost from the USDA: On Monday, the agency awarded the Massachusetts-based company $494,000 to study technologies that would render the genetically tweaked fish sterile. This would reduce the likelihood they could reproduce with wild salmon, should any escape into the wild -- a scenario that has many environmentalists concerned.

The Atlantic salmon, which is branded with the name AquAdvantage, has been genetically altered with a growth-hormone gene from a Chinook salmon and a "genetic on-switch" gene from an ocean pout that will allow the fish to grow all year round, reaching market size much faster than traditional salmon.

In mid-2010, AquaBounty's salmon appeared to be on the fast-track for approval by the FDA, which would have made it the first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption. But the process has since been stalled. Lawmakers in states like California and Alaska have been actively introducing legislation that requires the fish to be labeled as a GMO product or to prohibit its production entirely. Then, this June, the House of Representatives voted to prohibit the FDA from using funds for approval of the salmon.

The same bill the House voted on (an Agriculture Appropriations amendment) is currently stalled in the Senate. Now the USDA grant is raising eyebrows. Upon FDA approval, the company would sell salmon eggs to aquaculture operations looking to farm the fish. The majority of farmed salmon are raised in open-net ocean pens, a practice environmentalists have condemned for years because of escapement, pollution, and disease. So it's no surprise that the issue of reproductive ability is being closely scrutinized.

The FDA released a Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee report in September 2010 saying, "we have reason to believe that the population of triploid, all-female AquAdvantage Salmon will be effectively sterile," and AquaBounty's own website promotes the sterility of the fish. In an email to Grist, however, Ronald L. Stotish, CEO and president of AquaBounty acknowledged that their technology is not yet 100-percent effective -- thus the need for the FDA funding.

Stotish says AquAdvantage Salmon are currently rendered sterile by a "pressure treatment process that has been validated to 99.8-percent effectiveness." The fish are also all female, and will be raised in physical containment. "Because the company realizes that our detractors do not respond to reason and science," added Stotish, "we are developing a genetics-based process that will allow us to breed 100 percent sterile offspring. That is 100 percent sterile, guaranteed."

That certainly sounds responsible, but GMO salmon fact sheet released in June by the advocacy group Food and Water Watch suggests that the numbers may not be so airtight. According to their research, which cites an environmental assessment from the FDA briefing packet on AquAdvantage salmon, "up to 5 percent of these fish may be fertile."

But even Stotish's .2 percent number worries Ocean Conservancy director George Leonard, as a handful of escaped fish every year could make a big difference over time. "If AquaBounty hasn't yet figured out how to make the salmon fully sterile, then they shouldn't be applying to the FDA to deploy the fish," he says. "Let's fix the problem first, not after the salmon get out."

Colin O'Neil, regulatory policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, an environmental advocacy group focused on genetic engineering, says this is the first time they've heard of the USDA being involved with the genetically engineered fish.

"If the FDA was so assured of the scientific merits of this application, they would have approved it by now," he says. "The mere fact that it has taken this long tells me that the jury is still out."

The grant comes on the heels of the company's interim report released on Friday, which announced a net loss of $2.8 million, and a reduction of three board members. In other words, it's clear that AquaBounty is under the gun to roll out their business and begin "literally own[ing] salmon farming," as Paul Greenburg put it in a recent article.

Stotish says the delays in approval are because of groups who have "intimidated regulators with threats of lawsuits" and "misled the public " He adds that the company remains optimistic that congress will will not shrink from what he calls "their commitment to science-based regulation," and that it will "stand up to the pressure from the anti-technology groups."

According to O'Neil, however, a great deal of the scientific community is actually weighing in on the side of caution. "It would be reckless for the FDA to approve genetically engineered salmon given the large number of environmental, human health, animal welfare and economic risks that have been raised by scientists, members of Congress and members of the FDA's own Advisory Committee," he says.

Clare Leschin-Hoar covers fishing and sustainable seafood. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Scientific American, Eating Well, and many more. In May, she was selected as a 2011 Seafood Champion by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Follow her on Twitter.

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How is Obama’s overall record on the environment?

Obama's cave on smog regulations has lots of people mulling his administration's overall record on climate change and air pollution. A friend wrote recently to ask how I'd rate that record "relative to Bush, relative to the ideal, and relative to what seems realistic politically."

And that's just it -- relative to what? Turns out I have no simple answer. But of course that won't stop me from blabbing on for a while.

Like much in American politics, Obama's green record has become a collective Rorschach blot. Depending on what frame of reference is imposed, he could end up with an A, an F, or anything in between.

Bear with me as I share four bits of background that are important to help contextualize how Obama has performed relative to expectations. My new puppy Forest will help keep you interested:

Meet Forest!1) U.S. environmental law has a crucial if oddly unremarked feature: it is designed to evolve. The Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other landmark laws from the 1970s contain within them provisions that mandate they be updated to keep pace with the latest science. This has given them extraordinary power and durability. Politically, they are not unlike Social Security and Medicare: conservatives can slow them down, bedevil them at the margins, interfere with their enforcement, but they can't seem to get rid of them. (There's a very good paper about this phenomenon of "Green Drift" if you want to dig in -- I wrote a bit about it here.) Point being: unless someone actively interferes to stop it, U.S. environmental law automatically progresses. And as political observers know, that's a good position to be in -- it makes the intense status quo bias of American politics work for you rather than against you.

He's so cute.2) For eight years, the Bush administration did everything in its power to weaken, delay, or block the natural evolution of clean air and water laws. Its mercury and smog standards were half-assed and rejected by courts, and it famously refused to open the email EPA sent to kick off the rulemaking process on carbon regulations. When Bush left, EPA was confronted with an enormous backlog of work -- regulations that, by law, had to be updated.

3) The Supreme Court's Massachusetts v. EPA decision, clearing the way for regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, completely shifted the tectonic plates of U.S. environmental policy, in ways not yet well understood by the political class. By bringing greenhouse gases under the rubric of the Clean Air Act, it folded carbon pollution into green drift, making action on GHGs the default rather than something that must be built from scratch. Regulations on CO2 will now go forward unless Congress intervenes to stop them. The Clean Air Act is not the ideal policy tool for the task, but it's a path forward when there don't seem to be many others.

Forest really wants you to keep reading.Taking those three together, it's clear that any Democratic president elected in 2008 should have been expected to make a considerable amount of progress, not only on conventional pollution but on carbon emissions too. All any president had to do is let it happen and protect it from interference with a veto threat.

However, it would not be fair to omit:

4) Obama inherited a truly sh*tty economy and a dysfunctional political system. (Breaking!) Those two things, more than anything specific to environmental policy, created a huge headwind.

So, with that background, how's he doing?

The best thing Obama could have done for any domestic priority is to appoint a liberal to run the Fed and loosen monetary policy a bit. That would create more jobs, more confidence, and more public openness to new programs. The second best thing would have been to mount a serious effort to get rid of the filibuster. But neither of those happened, and ever since Obama took office he's been juggling crises.

Nonetheless, he's had a few big wins. First, the stimulus package the administration helped assemble in early 2009 -- however inadequate to the ultimate economic task -- contained enough spending on green projects to qualify as the biggest clean energy bill in U.S. history. That's a significant accomplishment, though we won't know how significant until it's clear how much (or whether) the money spurred long-term growth in new, competitive industries. If it's just a one-time infusion and investment falls off after it runs out, the accomplishment will be downgraded a bit by historians.

Second, new fuel-economy standards the administration pushed through are a genuinely big deal. Economists are always whinging that they'd prefer a hike in the gas tax -- and I certainly wouldn't oppose such a thing! -- but CAFE standards are decidedly Better Than Nothing. They were deftly negotiated and will represent by far the largest reduction in greenhouse gases of any Obama initiative, not to mention reductions in smog and particulates, not to mention new jobs. It's also worth noting that the fuel-economy deal was brought to you by Obama's great industrial policy triumph, rescuing the American auto industry. (They owed him one.) Also, he more or less created a domestic advanced-battery industry.

Within the more traditional confines of environmental law and policy, Obama started off well by appointing Lisa Jackson to head the EPA and other green leaders to key admin posts, but his record has been mixed since.

Forest isn't daunted by MACT talk. He's still hanging on!A rule to cut mercury and arsenic from industrial boilers (the boiler MACT rule, in wonk parlance) was delayed indefinitely (and possibly illegally) despite being an overwhelming win for public health, potentially preventing upwards of 4,800 premature deaths a year.

Obama just delayed an ozone rule (possibly illegally) despite multiple scientific assessments recommending the same lower standard. The rule would have cut smog levels and prevented hundreds of premature deaths, heart attacks, and missed school days every year. But Obama's chief of staff bought the stupid logic that squashing it would help in swing states.

Now it's beginning to look like Obama will bow to pressure and delay rules on carbon emissions [$ub req.], even though, as noted above, Mass v. EPA cleared the way for him to move forward without approval from Congress. [UPDATE: Yep, rules delayed.]

Political "realists" keep telling us that he's doing these things (complete with concessions to conservative rhetoric on "regulatory uncertainty") to avoid political attacks he can't afford. In reality itself, however, conservative attacks have not diminished one iota, and no amount of compromise or capitulation will change that. Right-wingers are going after other EPA rules just as hard, and their narrative about Obama's "regulatory overreach" has not shifted a bit. There is no attack that would have taken place that won't take place anyway.

Forest doesn't know what grade to give Obama, but he gives Bo an A+.Looming behind all this is the failure of the Big Kahuna, the climate bill. The operative question there is, could it have been otherwise? Could different timing or different strategy or different policy or a different president have gotten an economy-wide price on carbon passed? I'm inclined to say No; others differ. Either way, Obama didn't do a heck of a lot to educate the public about the need for climate action or pressure Congress to make it happen.

So where does that all net out? Well ... relative to what? Better than Bush? Of course! Better than McCain would have been? Of course. Better than Hillary Clinton would have done? I think so; others differ; nobody knows.

Anywhere in the vicinity of what the U.S. direly needs to be doing? Not even close.

David Roberts is a staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist. We've just upgraded our comments section! Read more about this change here.

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Pedal pushers: Is Critical Mass bad for bikers?

A scene from the June 2007 Critical Mass bike ride in Vancouver.Photo: Tavis FordElly Blue is on a monthlong Dinner & Bikes tour around the western U.S., along with Portland bike filmmaker Joe Biel and traveling vegan chef Joshua Ploeg. This is one of her thrice-weekly dispatches from the road about bicycle culture and economy. Read them all here.

Phoenix, Ariz: I'm quizzing Nathan Leach, our host tonight on the Dinner & Bikes tour, about local bike culture. Leach is the main force behind the Rusty Spoke bicycle collective. He organizes the local version of Critical Mass, the monthly bike ride designed to claim a piece of the pavement for the human-powered set.

"Are there any other organized rides?" I ask. Not really, he says. There isn't even a local bicycle advocacy organization, though one guy keeps trying to start one. Critical Mass is it. A few times they've had 100 riders, though, which he says is huge for Phoenix. Still, it's barely a blip on the radar in this city of nearly 1.5 million.

Since its inception in San Francisco in 1992, Critical Mass has been the hardy seed of the bicycle movement. Even in the world's least bike-friendly places, riders fulfill a vision of streets filled with bicycles. The event serves as an incubator for connections, leadership, and political pressure that have been the motivating force behind much of today's bicycle movement.

But in many places, the ride has developed a reputation for whipping up hordes of violent and confrontational young men who yell at people and blow through red lights. Earlier this year, a motorist plowed through a crowd of cyclists at a Critical Mass ride in Porto Alegre, Brazil. And some of the most vehement detractors are bicycle advocates, who argue that the event does more harm than good.

In response to this less-than-sparkly reputation, San Diego cyclists started a ride called "Courteous Mass." At Bike Party, a monthly ride in San Jose, Calif., that draws several thousand riders, participants are asked stop at every stop sign. One of Bike Party's founders, a young schoolteacher named Jo, told us that organizers began breaking up the event into several smaller rides when the group became so large it was hard to work everyone through traffic lights. She hadn't been as closely involved recently, but said she has been disappointed by Bike Party's recent anti-Critical Mass tone. "Why dump on Critical Mass?" she said. "This wouldn't exist without Critical Mass."

And in some places, at least, Critical Mass has made a difference. One of the films Joe is showing on our tour is the trailer for a feature documentary on the topic called Aftermass: A Post-Critical Mass Portland. The trailer features a former city commissioner saying that Critical Mass was hugely influential in giving Portland's bike-friendly leaders the political cover needed to start rolling out that city's now-famous bike infrastructure.

But riders are still frustrated. Earlier on our tour in San Diego, we met Samantha Ollinger, the blogger behind BikeSD.org. She has written about why she thinks Critical Mass continues despite its increasingly bad reputation in that city:

"San Diego's Regional Transportation Plan does call for increasing ridership, but without a concentrated effort to give the cyclists what they are demanding -- real estate -- cycling in San Diego will continue to be the domain of a select few. Thus, it is no wonder that cyclists continue to gather on a monthly basis to assert their right to be on the road demanding space that is repeatedly denied to them." (Read the full post here.)

Ultimately, Critical Mass's complete and utter loss of the PR war may be yet another contribution to the bicycle movement: It allows the bicycle advocates who denounce it to appear more sane. Which is great up to a point -- until Critical Mass destructs under the weight of its negative public opinion.

In Phoenix, that seems a long way off. Too small to be unpopular, the local Critical Mass ride is slowly and quietly building a movement of excited and empowered grassroots bike leaders. When the angry editorials start to appear, we'll know that the Phoenix bike movement has arrived.

Elly Blue is a bicycle activist living in Portland, Oregon. She has been the managing editor of BikePortland.org, the lead coordinator of the Towards Carfree Cities conference in Portland in 2008, and has been an active bike funnist since 2005. She publishes a feminist bicycle zine called Taking the Lane. We've just upgraded our comments section! Read more about this change here.

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In Solyndra’s wake, polling finds support for clean energy remains strong

I just received an interesting memo from a couple of polling firms that have done recent surveys to test the impact of the Solyndra faux-scandal -- a statewide survey in Ohio and some focus groups in California. The work was done by Public Opinion Strategies (a well-known Republican firm) and Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (a well-known Democratic firm).

The top-line result: Knowledge of the faux-scandal is mostly confined to news junkies, and public support for clean energy broadly, and solar power specifically, remains deep and strong.

In other words, Republicans have not yet succeeded in Climategate-ing Solyndra. Not that they've stopped trying!

Some interesting tidbits from the memo:

• People who had heard a "great deal" about Solyndra were "overwhelmingly conservative, male and older." Hm, that's the same demographic that watches Fox News and listens to talk radio! Surely a coincidence.

• The green-economy message really seems to be sinking in. This part is so interesting I'm going to quote it at length:

In dozens of focus groups we have conducted this month across the country on a wide variety of subjects, when voters are asked where they would like new jobs in their state to come from, the first words out of their mouths are almost always the same -- clean energy and related technology. Voters believe that the clean energy economy is here and is growing, and they want their state to have a part of it.

Their positive feelings about the clean energy industry translate into high regard for the leading companies in the industry. In focus groups in electorally important states that [Public Opinion Strategies] conducted after the Solyndra news story broke, voters consistently indicated that renewable energy companies are the types of businesses that they regard most positively and trust.

Similarly, in [Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates]’s California research, even a group of Republican male swing voters -- who expressed deep cynicism about government, business, and most other major institutions in American life -- voiced strong faith in the viability of the solar industry. These voters were quick to condemn the federal government for failing to do its due diligence in evaluating Solyndra’s business prospects, and for squandering taxpayer dollars on what they saw as a bad bet. But even the most hardened conservatives in that group strongly agreed that the solar industry is strong, growing, and worthy of future investment.

That's amazing -- nothing elicits that kind of pan-partisan positive feeling any more. There is a deep, strong core of support for clean energy that is not being translated well to policy and political momentum. That is the No. 1 dilemma climate hawks have to solve.

• The conservative argument, which tries to use Solyndra to tarnish the whole idea of public investments in clean energy, is failing. Ohio voters were presented with two arguments: One cast Solyndra as emblematic of clean energy investment and the other cast it as an anomaly that shouldn't dim enthusiasm for such investments. They favored the latter 62 to 31 percent.

• Opposition to clean energy investment is confined almost entirely to Tea Party voters. Republican women and non-TPers fall more in line with the rest of the public -- they support continued investment by 63 percent, whereas Tea Partiers do by only 36 percent.

• Insofar as Solyndra poses a problem for future public investments, it has little to do with clean energy or solar power specifically and everything to do with general skepticism toward public investment.

This is a crucial point to understand and can help explain the disconnect I mentioned above. People support clean energy but they are highly, highly skeptical of the government's ability to invest wisely. That bit of public perception is where the crucial battle is being fought.

David Roberts is a staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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