By Lena Babaeva Coradini

Here is an editorial arguing that green-collar job market is a myth.  The argument is that a general shift in labor, about five million new “green collar” jobs created as well, would not happen anytime soon, because:

As new jobs are created in alternative energy openings, old jobs in traditional energy companies will be lost. This creates a break-even job scenario. Simply put, a new solar plant creates several hundred new jobs. That energy replaces a coal-fired power plant. The coal plant shutters and hundreds of jobs are lost. Result: no gain.

Moreover, the jobs in the alternative energy sector -- beyond construction workers hired temporarily to build or retrofit -- need a different set of skills than those who have been working in the traditional energy sector. An oil-rig operator can't become a wind operator overnight.

This brings me to the real issue at hand: The skill of the U.S. labor force.

A recent study of college graduates shows that for every U.S. student who earns an engineering degree, China graduates five. Never mind those engineers coming out of India, South Korea, and Japan.

The West is losing out on the skilled labor needed for future growth not because we aren't investing in alternative energy -- we are -- because we aren't investing in education.

Although the beginning of the article sounded like the majority of articles out there criticizing the green job agenda, the main point—the lack of educated labor force in the United States—is a valid and good point, a new one in the discourse that has grown stale with the same arguments on both sides.  The article continues:

Sam Newell, a job recruiter for RenewableEnergyJobs.com, writing on the Climate Change Corp. website, says: "Unless the number of students taking science, engineering, technology and math base qualifications in the Western world increases dramatically, this skills shortage will become even more apparent and constraining for businesses.

"It is beginning to look untenable that the new green-collar jobs can be made available only to domestic applicants -- in line with [President Barack] Obama's plans of creating jobs that cannot be outsourced -- due to the engineering skills shortage. If we fail to address the lack of available, qualified and appropriately skilled workers, talk of millions of new jobs being filled within the renewable energy sector is likely to remain just talk," Newell went on to say.

What a powerful argument, lets hope that someone hears it and the education of the work force will be changed from training the blue collar, to training engineers and other professionals who can truly be “green collar” in a meaningful way.