Green-hued monster.

• Author: Gearino, G.D.
• Position: FINEPRINT

Because I'm a man prone to hopeless causes--that's what growing up an Atlanta Falcons fan will do for you--I have oodles of sympathy for people who place their faith in the idea of a "green" economy. They're tilting at windmills, bless their hearts, but I appreciate the instinct. Where would the world be without optimists?

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The problem is there's no such thing as a green economy, which is to say an economy "that produces goods and services with an environmental benefit/' as the Brookings Institution, the Washington, D.G-based think tank, recently defined it. Why do I think there's no such thing? Because the Brookings gang says so. "Not only do 'green' or 'clean' activities and jobs related to environmental aims pervade all sectors of the U.S. economy; they also remain tricky to define and isolate--and count The clean economy has remained elusive in part because, in the absence of standard definitions and data, strikingly little is known about its nature, size and growth at the critical regional level." In short, parts of the economy have a greenish hue, but there's no identifiable green economy.

The green economy isn't elusive because there's no definition and data. It's elusive (or, more accurately, vaporous) because green isn't a description so much as it is a value judgment. The auto industry, for instance, is a tangible, recognizable market sector. The green economy is ... well, whatever you want it to be. It's a hope, a dream, a panacea or an ideal. Brookings calls it an "aspiration," and when the think tank unveiled its state-by-state, city-by-city analysis of where green jobs can be found, North Carolina ranked right up there. We're good, it seems, at peddling vapor.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound ill-tempered. But the stickler in me gets surly when a respectable policy center declares that the green economy can't be defined, measured and quantified and then does all three.

A trio of North Carolina cities figured prominently in the Brookings' ranking of the top 100 metro areas for green jobs: Raleigh came in at No. 30, Charlotte at No. 33 and Greensboro at No. 76. The response from each local newspaper was appropriate to its city's place in the pecking order. The News & Observer in Raleigh, for instance, happily boasted that Brookings had declared the Triangle to be "the nation's second-fastest growing region for green jobs." But the Greensboro News & Record's disappointment was unmistakable: "Greensboro may...