Green-Powering the US Economy

Thomas Friedman has the most interesting perspective on how terrorism, climate change and strengthening the us economy come down to one thing: energy policy. In his way of looking at the world, it's quite simple: The US needs to get behind a visionary energy policy as a way to:

1) Save the planet, and reduce the United State's world-leading contributions to greenhouse gases.

2) Starve our enemies of the money they use to attack us at home and attack our friends around the world. (Take note, some portion of that $50 of gasoline you're putting into your car is going to support radical Islam in Saudia Arabia, Iran or elsewhere).

3) Give the US a solid economic footing for the 21st century. Right now, our economy is largely driven by consumers (who spent the last 10 years taking out home equity loans and going into debt to buy bigger houses, more cars and more electronics).

How to do it, green technology of course. The US Government needs to do something on the scale of what it did for the space program-- fundamentally structure the economy to get behind one big thing.

Thomas Friedman has a great column about how this plays to the strength of the US economy, and is not something that other nations can easily beat us in. Who, I wonder, is the leader with enough courage to do something like this?

What can many U.S. companies still manufacture? They can manufacture things that are smart -- that have a lot of knowledge content in them, like a congestion pricing network for a whole city. What do many Chinese companies manufacturer? They manufacture things that can be made with a lot of cheap labor, like the rubber tires on your car. Which jobs are most easily outsourced? The ones vulnerable to cheap labor. Which jobs are hardest to outsource? Those that require a lot of knowledge.

So what does all this mean? It means that to the extent that we make ''green'' standards part of everything we design and manufacture, we create ''green collar'' jobs that are much more difficult to outsource. I.B.M. and other tech companies are discovering a mother lode of potential new business for their high-wage engineers and programmers thanks to the fact that mayors all over the world are thinking about going green through congestion pricing systems.

OP-ED COLUMNIST; The Green Road Less Traveled