United States Diplomatic Mission to Germany

“Going Green – America in the 21^st Century”
Symposium on “Green Jobs and Education Opportunities”
Berlin, September 21, 2010
Ambassador Philip D. Murphy

Sehr geehrte Frau Fuchs,
Sehr geehrter Herr Simon,
Sehr geehrter Herr Staatssekretär Dr. Brauksiepe,
Sehr geehrter Herr Staatssekretär Professor Schroeder,
Sehr geehrter Herr Matecki,
meine sehr verehrten Damen und Herren,

Durable, sustainable economic and employment growth – fundamental goals of both of our countries – will require innovation.  Exactly one year ago today, on September 21, 2009, President Obama started a conversation on the topic of innovation with the American people.  On that day, the White House released the Administration’s Strategy for American Innovation.  The report outlined how the federal government could serve as a catalyst for breakthroughs related to national priorities such as clean energy and other “grand challenges” of the 21st century by creating the building blocks required for innovation and investment.  

Two and a half decades ago, Robert Solow won the Nobel Prize in economics by showing that advances in human knowledge and technology accounted for almost 90 percent of the growth in America’s output per hour in the first half of the last century.   Contemporary research confirms that basic finding.  Innovation remains by far the most powerful force for improving prosperity over the long term – and we cannot and dare not take it for granted.

The innovation process often begins with scientific research that creates new opportunities for technological change.  That basic research lays the groundwork for the development of new products, services, or processes.  To create value, however, new ideas must be implemented and new workforces must be trained and educated to meet these challenges.  In this way, innovation diffuses through the economy or in today’s world – through many economies.  It impacts various sectors and sometimes even creates new ones and the jobs that go with them. The full process obviously has many variables and many inputs.  Ideas often fail before they make it through the full chain – but those that do succeed create value and jobs while improving people’s lives.  For societies to prosper – both as producers and consumers of goods and services – innovation needs to flourish and progress along this chain.  

Government can play a fundamental role in these processes.   Arguments about too much or too little government involvement in innovation policy often lead to unproductive debates.  There are building blocks that only the government can provide.  They include ensuring an open and competitive environment for businesses and individuals to experiment and grow, and by providing extra catalysts to jumpstart innovation in sectors of national importance.  There is also much the government can do to support and train the workforce to take on these new challenges.  This is, of course, the topic of this very salient conference.

The Recovery Act provided over $100 billion to support groundbreaking innovation with investments in education and training, health IT and health research, high speed rail, smart grid, and information technology, energy, and advanced vehicle technology.  To encourage private sector investment in R&D, the President has proposed making the Research and Experimentation Tax Credit permanent.  To maximize the impact of this investment, support for university commercialization efforts have been increased, especially for high-risk – but potentially also high-return – research ideas that can move from the lab to the marketplace.  The overall goal is to create a national environment that is ripe for entrepreneurship and risk taking.  Never forgetting, of course, the advice of Ludwig Erhard at another critical juncture in economic history – and one that I, as a football fan, particularly appreciate; Erhard said, “Ebenso wie beim Fußballspiel der Schiedsrichter nicht mitspielen darf, hat auch der Staat nicht mitzuspielen.”

President Obama believes that grand challenges should be an important organizing principle for government innovation policy. One of those grand challenges is, without a doubt, energy and climate change.  In fact, as Energy Secretary Chu – another Nobel Prize winner – says, in order to meet the environmental challenges we face, “we will need nothing less than a second industrial revolution.”  The first industrial revolution supplanted human and animal power with machines powered by fossil fuel. A second industrial revolution – a green collar revolution – is needed to provide the world's energy needs in an environmentally and economically sustainable way. 

Secretary Chu quotes hockey player Wayne Gretzky who when asked how he positioned himself on the ice, used to reply: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been."  We cannot, of course, know for certain what the future will bring nor can we guess with 100 percent accuracy which industries and innovations will shape our world.  But certain trends and developments move us in the right direction. 

For example, in the United States, cities and states are making major contributions to the new green energy revolution. Cities like Pittsburgh, for example – a city that was for decades dependent on steel mills. When the steel industry shrank, many jobs were lost.  Who could have guessed that Pittsburgh would reemerge as a center for technology and green jobs? 

Pittsburgh is no longer a blue collar city.  It is now one of the top 10 American cities when it comes to “green” or “green collar” jobs.  The city made famous by its steel mills and heavy industry now boasts acres of sunflowers throughout its urban center.  The flowers are a clue to Pittsburgh’s ongoing transformation from an industrial economy, with all the pollution associated with it, to an environmentally sustainable one.  The flowers pull lead and heavy metals out of the soil; their seeds are used for bio-fuel.  Planting the flowers on vacant urban land improves the value of adjacent properties.  The high school students who plant the crops learn about renewable energy and resource management.  In short, a win-win situation. 

The sunflower project highlights the challenge in developing a more energy-efficient and less-polluting economy and creating jobs in the process.  In Pittsburgh, government leaders are working with stakeholders in labor, government, industry, academic science, consumers and nonprofit groups to build clean energy industries on a scale much larger than flower plots, from solar power to biodiesel to green building to green chemistry or nuclear energy.  One of the tasks for educators is to work closely with industry and employers to develop a work force that’s up-to-date on cutting-edge environmental science.  In the new energy economy, workers will need to know how to install solar panels, solar water heaters and low-water-flow plumbing fixtures.

Some regions have become green jobs strongholds.  California leads the nation in clean-energy jobs.  The Bay Area is the number one metro area for clean technology job activity.  San Francisco recently passed $100 million in revenue bonds to support renewable energy projects. 

With the highest concentration of colleges and universities of any metropolitan area in the world, it comes as no surprise that the Greater Boston area is also a leader in green technology.  Two big sources of green construction and engineering jobs in Boston are wind power.  Wind power is in fact Boston’s third-largest fuel source. 

There are also an increasing number of opportunities for green jobs in New York City.  Since 2001, organizations such as Sustainable South Bronx, have worked to move South Bronx residents from welfare to green collar jobs through education and outreach.  In 2007, Mayor Bloomberg launched 127 greening initiatives, including $1 billion for retrofitting buildings to boost energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The New York program would also ensure that a park was within a 10-minute walk for all residents.  Meeting these 127 goals will create thousands of green-collar jobs in a variety of fields from urban forestry to renewable energy.

However, with a national unemployment rate of close to 10%, much remains to be done.  The question of how to get unemployed Americans back to work is front and center on everybody’s agenda and there is also much we can learn from successful and innovative employment polcies of countries such as Germany.  I hope this conference will succeed in giving valuable new ideas to all of the participants.

A recent New York Times piece told the story of how training programs tied to the needs of local industry have shown success but it also documented examples of people who had undergone skills training only to be no better off than they were before.   The traditional approach to workforce training has largely been to help job seekers polish generic skills and then send them off into the job market.  Today, effective training is tied to high-demand occupations and developed in partnership with industry.  It provides job seekers with industry-recognized credentials.  This is a training model in which Germany has long been a leader.  The economy is changing and legacy models no longer works for automobiles, for the media, for medicine.  Why would we still accept an outmoded model for workforce training?

In fact, many green economy advocates believe that, when done properly, green jobs training can move unemployed and disconnected individuals – who are often low-skilled – into good jobs.  Providing the training that will turn 20th century blue-collar jobs into secure 21st-century green-collar jobs like retrofitting buildings to conserve energy or helping to build a wind farm or manufacturing solar panels. 

An energy-conscious economy will, however, also need a new generation of environmentally smart managers. That’s where community colleges are stepping in with new courses and degree programs.  With existing connections to employers and regional credibility, community colleges are well positioned to play key roles in growing the green energy sector.  There are numerous initiatives of which you will surely hear tomorrow – both at the federal, state and city levels to foster job growth for a new green economy.  The federal government alone is pouring $500 million into training for green jobs. 

This evening, I have focused on cities like Pittsburgh and San Francisco, Boston and New York are doing because cities play an important role when it comes to changing lifestyles. That too is a crucial part of a green 21^st century economy.  Concepts like “smart growth” and “new urbanism” both of which promote neighborhoods with a diverse range of housing, businesses and public spaces organized around central areas to avoid urban sprawl and, transit-oriented and walkable land use, are changing some fundamental elements of American society and perhaps even what has come to define the American Dream.

They say that all politics are local.  Some of the examples I have mentioned this evening support that hypothesis but when it comes to the environment, it is also true that climate change and clean energy are global challenges.  In full knowledge that the United States has the largest historical emissions of greenhouse gases, we are prepared to assume our share of the responsibility.  This is what we bring to the table: an unprecedented level of effort and a commitment to act both domestically and internationally, in terms of financial and technological support as well as domestic emissions reductions.  But action by the United States or Germany or by the entire group of developed nations is clearly not enough.  Significant action will be required by the major developing countries.  Over the next twenty years, 97% of the growth in emissions will come from developing countries – 50% from China alone.  There is simply no way to preserve a safe and livable planet unless developing countries play a key role in the climate negotiations and join in taking collective action to meet this common challenge. 

Or, as Rachel Carson said, “We stand now where two roads diverge.”  Her book, A Silent Spring, sparked the beginning of the environmental movement in the 1960s.  The book was a bestseller and led to the banning of the chemical DDT, the passing of the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.   

But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's poem, they are not equally fair.  The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy; a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lays disaster.  The other fork of the road -- the one less traveled by -- offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

America has always been a nation built on hope – hope that we can build a prosperous, healthy world for ourselves and for our children.  In the 21^st century, these long-standing American aspirations will depend critically on far-sighted investments in science, technology and innovation.  These will be the ultimate act of hope and will create the most important legacies we can leave. The United States is still the land of the future.   I believe that America is indeed going green and that America’s scientists, entrepreneurs and public officials have understood the importance of applying the power of American curiosity and ingenuity to one of the biggest economic and societal challenges of our times.  Germany, with its deep and long commitment to the environment, its thirst for knowledge and innovation, and its success in educating and training a highly skilled work force is perhaps our most important foreign partner as both our economies move down this road.  

Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit. Ich wünsche Ihnen allen eine interessante und anregende Diskussion morgen.

[Thank you for your attention.  I wish you all an interesting and thought-provoking conference tomorrow.]