You can call anything a "green" job, and the more federal dollars that are available the more likely almost everything will be called green:
While the phrase "green jobs" evokes organic farmers and wind turbine repairmen, there is no clear, common definition of what a "green" job is. Without one, special-interest lobbying will transform even well-intentioned programmes. Consider corn-based ethanol, a technology with no redeeming features. Corn-based ethanol is bad for the environment, placing unsustainable demands on water supplies and increasing harmful farming practices. It is bad for people, raising corn prices for some of the world's poorest people. It provides little, if any, environmental benefit, with a net energy gain often close to or even below zero (the exact amount depends on the weather during the growing season, among other things). Yet corn-based ethanol has received billions in taxpayer support and continues to be favoured in so-called "green" energy legislation....
Via Nick Gillespie, who now works strictly for the Web version of his magazine: "You don't have to be The Amazing Kreskin to know that "green jobs" will become even more numerous the minute that money gets attached to any sort of definition, no matter how phony or fake. In fact, I think now that I no longer edit the tree-killing version of Reason, I'm a green jobber too, out here in the new media landscape where the cyber-birds and bees are buzzing and humming with nary an emission of greenhouse gases."
