In a post that is primarily concerned with a debate (or, more accurately, a pissing match) on the Solyndra scandal, Mickey Kaus identifies the basic fallacy of the “green jobs” concept – it can be green, or it can produce jobs, but it is unlikely to be both at the same time:

One way to look at it is to note that there’s an obvious tension between the “green” part of a “green jobs” agenda and the “jobs” part. If all you care about is 1) promoting solar power, then solar cells manufactured in China are as good as cells manufactured here–even better, if they’re cheaper and therefore more likely to be installed. But if that’s the case then Nocera hasn’t shown that you need government financing to achieve your goals because private financing is unavailable. Grove doesn’t speak to this problem.

But if 2) what you care about is promoting jobs, then it will take a whole lot more than government loans and loan guarantees to keep green manufacturing and engineering jobs in the U.S.

However, citing Walter Russell Mead, Kaus discerns a way to square the circle and make both the “green” and the “jobs” parts of the equation cohere:

I’d always figured “green jobs” backers were focused on goal (1) and resigned to creating lots of Chinese manufacturing jobs. After all, there’d still be jobs that could only be performed here in the U.S., like installing the damn things. Nocera seems to suggest that’s not enough–or that when the time comes to try to rationalize a disastrous Obama boondoggle, it’s OK to quietly switch to goal (2).

P.S.: The alternative long-run strategy for goal (2), giving the market play while keeping the manufacturing jobs here, was I believe suggested by Walter Russell Mead: make it as easy as possible to start manufacturing enterprises in the United States, using our own recently acquired supply of productive workers willing to work cheap–for $10-$14 an hour, say. That means protecting firms from Davis-Bacon-style high-wage mandates and Wagner Act unionism, and from new “protected classes” of potential plaintiffs–a conservative goal.  It may also mean relieving them of health care and pension costs by having government shoulder that entire burden–a liberal goal. Plus, of course, lower taxes (achieved in part by cutting government to the essentials) and simple, predictable regulations.

This is, of course, the key to a successful politics – recognizing that both sides have important goals and giving something to each in order to accomplish a larger goal.  Unfortunately, both primary ideological camps in the US today are convinced that they must try to steamroll the opposition and forgo all such compromise.

Terrific whiteboard presentation from the Offshore Marine Service Association.

Any jobs/deficit reduction program that does not feature America’s vast mineral wealth is simply not a serious plan.

This can be done responsibly and with sensitivity to environmental concerns.  It is not an all or nothing choice.

There will be no new posts until late Tuesday (Sept. 6), at the earliest.

The current issue of World Politics Review is definitely worth reading, whether you fully agree with the various authors or not.  Articles are behind a subscription wall, but non-subscribers can gain access to individual articles on a pay-per-view basis.

From Daily Tech:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are in the midst of developing a process called capillary condensation. The project is being led by Melanie DeBusk, research staff member of the Physical Chemistry of Materials group in the Materials Science and Technology Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Using the fuel that the military burns in Humvees, generators and tanks could provide additional water for soldiers since fuel oxidizes and produces carbon dioxide and water after combustion. According to DeBusk, one gallon of diesel fuel should create one gallon of water, but not all of this water is usable. But with capillary condensation, DeBusk figures she can recover 65 to 85 percent of this water for military use.

Walter Russell Mead has a typically excellent blog post on employment patterns in the 21st century.  Short version:  Lost industrial jobs are not coming back, and even in the rosiest scenarios will stay flat in the near and middle terms.  Growth is to be found in service jobs, and that doesn’t necessarily mean dead-end retail work.  There are a number of people in my personal social circle who make very good, middle class to upper middle class livings offering services:  Masseuses, yoga instructors, personal coaches, landscape architects, etc.

Mead recommends Michael Spence’s essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.  I tweeted a recommendation to Spence earlier this month, but I did not blog about it.  I recommend it now, along with this recent Chatham House research report which serves as an excellent companion piece to both Mead and Spence.  I am going to excerpt a chart from the Chatham House paper.  The first shows why service jobs are growing – because American consumption is exploding, while consumption of durable goods has been relatively flat for decades while consumption of non-durable goods has been declining.

breaking news, not much detail . . . the Chief of Staff and the individual commanders of the Land, Sea and Air forces have all quit.

Via Truth About Cars:

After being devastated by the unprecedented triple disaster in March, Japanese automakers have shown terrific resilience and are nearly back to pre-disaster production and export levels mere months after the earthquake/tsunami/meltdown triple threat.  Congrats to our courageous and persistent allies.

back in two weeks

thanks to all visitors for their support

With a few exceptions, I don’t usually do politics on this blog, at least not directly, but two of my regular reads are Walter Russell Mead and Mickey Kaus.  After reading Mead’s latest this morning, it suddenly occurred to me that if the Democratic party ever embraced a platform crafted by Mead and Kaus, they would probably achieve a supermajority in both houses of Congress and hold the presidency for a decade.

As an aside, take the time to read Mead’s The Jacksonian Tradition.  I think our non-American readers who puzzle over the choices the US makes in foreign policy will find this especially enlightening.

The Atlantic has a terrific photographic feature today featuring the jury rigged weapons of the Libyan opposition.  The photos, only a few of which I post below, evoke the post-apocalyptic world in which Max Rockatansky scrabbled to survive in The Road Warrior and Mad Max:  Beyond Thunderdome.

In response to an emailer’s question:  The US consumes approximately 19% of the world’s energy and with it accounts for approximately 21% of the world’s economic output.  China now consumes a bit over 20% of the world’s energy, and with it creates less than 8.5% of the global economic output.

Sources:  IMF for GDP, BP Statistical Review for energy.

Draw your own conclusions

Some stories I have collected over the past few days:

Can motor oil be a renewable resource?

Signs of possible failure in the world carbon market

An update on efforts to extract the energy of methane hydrates (methane hydrates, aka “combustible ice,” is potentially an abundant energy source, but also, potentially, a dangerous one)

Tumbling natural gas prices put pressure on the renewables industry