Green + IT = 'Green Collar' Jobs for U.S.
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The business of greening of America could create more IT jobs in the United States. |
That's a key takeaway from a column by The World is Flat author Thomas Friedman in the The New York Times on Sunday (subscription required).
Friedman writes of the fundamental truth about green technology: "You can't make a product greener, whether it's a car, a refrigerator or a traffic system, without making it smarter--smarter materials, smarter software or smarter design."
In the column, he cites IBM's efforts to help Stockholm, Sweden, reduce auto pollution by making congestion pricing work. Congestion pricing--charging fees to drivers entering congested downtown districts during business hours--requires a sophisticated IT system to tie together cameras that read auto license plates with computers running complex algorithms to automatically charge drivers and check whether they paid the fee to enter the city center.
Though many commodity-type of IT work such as coding is being offshored, jobs that require a lot of knowledge can remain here. So, Friedman argues "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."
