Reflections From a Murky Pond

Obama and/or his “uncoordinated”  Super PACs do love them some green energy and black lies. Their latest afront to Americans and reason is their the recent ad which glibly fosters the impression – they are too nuanced to lie outright – that Obama created 2.7 million jobs in the “green energy” sector of America’s economy.

Damn! They Said The Cord Would Reach To November, 2012

Once Americans are unplugged from the fantasy, however, they’re forced to realize that it is nothing but a fantasy – a pack of lies and misinformation meant to save one singular job, Obama’s.

That 2.7 Million jobs figure that Obama and his die-hard cultists are shopping is, from all appearances, loosely based upon a report by The Brookings Institution. That report bears only vague surface level resemblance to their claims.

The clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a significant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. Though modest in size, the clean economy employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry and bulks larger than bioscience but remains smaller than the IT-producing sectors. Most clean economy jobs reside in mature segments that cover a wide swath of activities including manufacturing and the provision of public services such as wastewater and mass transit. A smaller portion of the clean economy encompasses newer segments that respond to energy-related challenges.

The clean economy grew more slowly in aggregate than the national economy between 2003 and 2010, but newer “cleantech” segments produced explosive job gains and the clean economy outperformed the nation during the recession. Overall, today’s clean economy establishments added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, expanding at an annual rate of 3.4 percent. This performance lagged the growth in the national economy, which grew by 4.2 percent annually over the period (if job losses from establishment closings are omitted to make the data comparable). However, this measured growth heavily reflected the fact that many longer-standing companies in the clean economy—especially those involved in housing- and building-related segments—laid off large numbers of workers during the real estate crash of 2007 and 2008, while sectors unrelated to the clean economy (mainly health care) created many more new jobs nationally. At the same time, newer clean economy establishments— especially those in young energy-related segments such as wind energy, solar PV, and smart grid—added jobs at a torrid pace, albeit from small bases.

Working backward from the numbers leading up to the 2003 – 2010 time-frame of the report, only 500,000 “green economy” jobs et al were created during 2003-2010, a small fraction of which were in “green energy.” Since Obama didn’t become POTUS until 2009, that means that only 125,000 “green” jobs were created during his regime, once again only a small fraction of which were in “green energy.”

So, even if Americans give Obama and his cultists the handout of accepting any “green” job for the purposes of the veracity of this campaign ad, that still shows the reality is only about 4.6% of the fantasy that they’re promulgating.

~*~

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

Tags: 2012 Elections | AGW | America | Big Oil | Climate Change | Economy | Global Warming | Green | Lies | Obama | Politics | Solar Power | Technology | The Environment | Wind Power

This entry was posted on Friday, February 17th, 2012 at 1:24 pm and is filed under 2012 Election, Politics, Technology, The Environment. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.