For several years now, politicians have insisted that the road to net zero is paved with jobs. “When I think climate, I think jobs,” US president Joe Biden is fond of saying. Not just any jobs, mind you, but good jobs that will revive deprived communities. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour opposition leader in the UK, joined this chorus recently when he said the green transition could “bring back hope to communities that got ripped apart by deindustrialisation in the 1980s”.

I have been wary of this glossy narrative for some time, not because I think it’s impossible, but because I think it will be hard and involve trade-offs policymakers would rather not talk about. In recent weeks, that reality has become harder to ignore.

Why might a “win-win” for workers and the planet be hard to achieve? On paper, at least, the challenge doesn’t look too daunting. According to calculations by the IMF last year, the green transition should only involve the “reallocation” of 1 per cent of employment in advanced economies over the next decade, and 2.5 per cent in emerging markets. That, the IMF noted, is much less dramatic than the transition from manufacturing to services since the 1980s, which involved a shift of 4 per cent per decade. On top of that, the average “green” job pays almost 7 per cent more than the average “brown” job, which — all else being equal — should encourage people to switch, and make them better off when they do.