How green is your job? The government wants to create two million green jobs by 2030, and in 2020 it followed the well-worn path of magical thinking and set up a task force “to set the direction for the job market as we transition to a high-skill, low-carbon economy.”

At the time, the UK already had 526,000 so-called green jobs. What do you mean, you hadn’t noticed? They are all around you. Dustmen, other waste disposal operatives, forestry workers, teachers, those planting all those offshore wind farms (and picking up dead birds round them), makers of electric cars, gardeners and landscape consultants, everyone in the water industry, any routine process change that uses less energy, repair men, hundreds of greenish charities…They all count towards the total, and that’s before adding the other British growth industry: writing reports.

 The total of jobs created will have included the 17 members of the Green Jobs Taskforce. While they were deliberating, we were treated to the “Ten point plan for a Green Industrial Revolution” from the government, which unkind souls might have considered undermined the whole point of setting up the taskforce in the first place.

Still, with remarkable speed, they published in July 2021, their report welcomed by the government for its “rich evidence base and comprehensive recommendations”. The Net Zero Strategy followed later in December 2021. Since then we have had two “green jobs” updates from the Office for National Statistics. We’re due another one any day.

As will be apparent by now, defining a green job is nigh-on impossible. The ONS has had a stab, and come up with: “Employment in an activity that contributes to protecting or restoring the environment, including those that mitigate or adapt to climate change.” Do traffic wardens protect the environment? How about farmers? The scope for fiddling the figures is almost limitless, and besides, the pledge was for two million green jobs, not a net increase in numbers employed. 

The steelworkers at Port Talbot who are kept on after the plant has been greened with ÂŁ500m of government grants will undoubtedly qualify. Unfortunately, 3,000 of their colleagues will have had to be sacrificed to get there. The car plants making subsidised electric cars will need fewer workers, while the North Sea oil industry faces a death sentence.

No political party is prepared to face the cost of a green transition, pandering to the convenient fiction that living without oil and gas will be a painless generator of high-skilled, well-paid jobs. This is not sensible planning. It requires breaking the laws of physics, and is a panglossian fantasy. The most difficult question of all is: why do so many people (with votes) believe it? We definitely need a task force to find out.

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