中庸第一篇原文 年3月高口阅读上半场第一篇原文(新东方版)

年3月高口阅读上半场第一篇原文(新东方版)  

阅读第一篇原文出自新闻周刊（News Week），查看原文>>
Growing Green Jobs
Beware politicians promising to put millions to work in a new 'green economy.' They can't deliver.
There is no more fashionable answer to the woes of the global recession than "green jobs." Leaders including American President Barack Obama
Gordon Brown of Britain
Nicolas Sarkozy of France
and Hu Jintao of China have all gotten behind what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a "green New Deal"— pinning their hopes for future growth and new jobs on creating clean-technology industries
like wind and solar power
or recycling saw grass as fuel. It all sounds like the ultimate win-win deal: beat the worst recession in decades and save the pla from global warming
all in one spending plan. So who cares how much it costs? And since the financial crisis and recession began
governments
environmental nonprofits
and even labor unions have been busy spinning out reports on just how many new jobs might be created from these new industries—estimates that range from the tens of thousands to the millions.
The problem is that history doesn't bear out the optimism. As a new study from McKinsey consulting points out
clean energy is less like old manufacturing industries that required a lot of workers than it is like new manufacturing and service industries that don't. The best parallel is the semiconductor industry
which was expected to create a boom in high-paid high-tech jobs but today employs mainly robots. Clean-technology workers—people who do things like design and make wind turbines or solar panels—now make up only 0.6 percent of the American workforce
despite the matrix of government subsidies
tax incentives
and other supports that already exists. The McKinsey study
which examined how countries should pete in the post-crisis world
figures that clean energy won't mand much more of the total job market in the years ahead. "The bottom line is that these 'clean' industries are too small to create the millions of jobs that are needed right away
" says James Manyika
a director at the McKinsey Global Institute.
They might not create those jobs—but they could help other industries do just that. Here
too
the story of the puter chip is instructive. Today the big chip makers like Intel employ only 0.4 percent of the total American workforce
down from a peak of 0.6 percent in 2000. But they did create a lot of jobs
indirectly
by making other industries more efficient: throughout the 1990s
American panies saw massive gains in labor productivity and efficiency from new technologies incorporating the semiconductor. Companies in retail
manufacturing
and many other areas got faster and stronger
and millions of new jobs were created.
McKinsey and others say that the same could be true today if governments focus not on building a "green economy
" by which they really mean a clean-energy industry
but on greening every part of the economy using cutting-edge green products and services. That's where policies like U.S. efforts to promote corn-based ethanol
and giant German subsidies for the solar industry (which is losing ground to China)
fall down. In both cases the state is creating bloated
unproductive sectors
with jobs that are not likely to last. A better start would be encouraging business and consumers to do the basics
such as improve building insulation and replace obsolete heating and cooling equipment. In places like California
30 percent of the summer energy load es from air conditioning
which has prompted government to offer low-interest loans to consumers to replace old units with more efficient ones. Consumers pay back the loans through their taxes and pocket the energy savings
which can often cover the cost of the loan within a month or o. The energy efficiency is an indirect job creator
just as IT productivity had been
not only because of the cost savings but also because of the new disposable ine that is created. The stimulus effect of not driving is particularly impressive. "If you can get people out of cars
or at least get them to drive less
you can typically save beeen $1
000 and $8
000 per household per year
" says Lisa Margonelli
director of energy-policy initiatives at the New America Foundation.
Indeed
energy and efficiency savings have been behind the major green efforts of the world's biggest corporations
like Walmart
which remains the world's biggest retailer and added 22
000 jobs in the U.S. alone in 2009. In 2008
when oil hit $148 a barrel
Walmart insisted that its top 1
000 suppliers in China retool their factories and their products
cutting back on excess packaging to make shipping cheaper. It's no accident that Walmart
a pany that looks for savings wherever it can find them
is one of the only American firms that continued growing robustly throughout the recession.
The policy implications of it all are clear: stop betting government money on particular green technologies that may or may not pan out
and start thinking more broadly. As McKinsey makes clear
countries don't bee more petitive by eaking their "mix" of industries but by outperforming in each individual sector. Green thinking can be a part of that. The U.S. could conceivably export much more to Europe
for example
if America's environmental standards for products were higher. Taking care of the environment at the broadest levels is often portrayed as a political red herring that will undercut petitiveness in the global economy. In fact
the future of growth and job creation may depend on it.