I’m spending a few days in Elizabethtown College next week as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow.  One of the talks I’ve proposed is “Job Security in a Globally Warmed World: What you need to study to be employable in 2020 and 2040.”

Perhaps the talk title should be “What Color is Your Parachute?  It better be some shade of green.”

I’d welcome your thoughts, since this is a tricky issue.  For instance, will we be desperate for more marine biologists — or will that job be an oxymoron in a few decades (see “Imagine a World without Fish“)?

One clear piece of advice — don’t plan on being part of the U.S. airline industry.  It has never been profitable and has no business model for oil at $150 a barrel, let alone $200 or higher, which is what we face in 2020 and beyond (see World’s top energy economist warns “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”).  On the other hand, the clean energy and water efficiency business will boom.  True, doctors specializing in diabetes and obesity will be in demand, but let’s keep the focus to job market changes driven by energy and climate.

Air conditioning repair, yes, ski instructor, no.  Forest fire fighter, yes, gardener in the desert Dust Bowl Southwest, not so much.

To help imagine Labor Day 20 years from now, let me revise my earlier piece, “When the global Ponzi scheme collapses (circa 2030), the only jobs left will be green.”

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Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has promised to make ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, months before world leaders meet for crucial climate change talks.

Hatoyama, who will take office next week, said Japan would seek to reduce CO2 emissions by 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, but said the target would be contingent on a deal involving all major emitters in Copenhagen in December.

“We can’t stop climate change just by setting our own emissions target,” he said at a forum in Tokyo. “Our nation will call on major countries around the world to set aggressive goals.”

The announcement today by Japan’s prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama (pictured above) is not a big surprise (see “Japanese opposition easily wins elections “” running on a much stronger climate target“).  But it is nice to see politicians keep their promise — or try to.  The business lobby opposes the target.

Today’s Guardian story notes:

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Following Van Jones’ resignation Saturday night, Glenn Beck has released a statement vowing to go after “other radicals in the administration.”

What could be scarier than the nation’s clean energy and climate policy being affected by uber-wingnut Glenn Beck.  In a January attack on Obama’s energy and environment adviser, Carol Browner, Beck said on his national radio show:

It’s just that almost everyone who does believe in global warming is a socialist. I mean, believes in manmade global warming that now can be fixed and reversed or whatever. And we’ve got the tools to fix it. Almost everybody who says, “I’ve got a plan to fix it” is a socialist.

Yes, “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse” — but if you understand the science of human-caused climate change or want to do something to stop it, you’re a socialist.  Klein was right, Beck and his buddies are “nihilists.”

Beck doesn’t belong on TV, well, except maybe on a show like “Cops,” getting hauled off to jail like any other incoherent babbler.

What follows is a Think Progress repost.

John Podesta, the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, released this statement following the resignation of Van Jones:

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All of us who want to see the world changed for the better struggle with whether it is better to fight for that change from the inside or the outside.

But you can’t fight for change from inside an organization dedicated to stopping change, like, say, the scandal-ridden front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy.  You know that a coal-industry-funded group is beyond redemption when one of the largest coal utilities in the country abandons them (see “Breaking: Duke Energy quits coal front group over climate bill “” GE and Caterpillar should do the same“).  Duke explained in a statement:

“We believe ACCCE is constrained by influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010.”

Duh.

The Center for Public Integrity’s excellent staff writer Marianne Lavelle managed to get GE on record with a truly laughable defense for their refusal to join Duke (and Alcoa):

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