Obama and the American Jobs Act: What happened to energy?

It’s been impossible to miss the
recent crescendo of articles and op-eds somberly claiming that the reality of
“green” jobs hasn’t lived up to the promises and arguing that we need
to put all our bets on traditional sectors. It isn’t surprising — given the
continued focus on jobs and the economy as the top concern of most voters, and
the huge expenditures of fossil fuel interests to greenwash their practices,
undermine regulation, and manufacture doubt about accepted science, it would
have been far more surprising if we didn’t see concentrated attacks on clean
and efficient energy.

Nevertheless, it has been very disappointing to see prominent media outlets
like NPR and the New York Times and generally centrist commentators like David
Brooks fall for these arguments. Even President Obama in his national address
on jobs last night failed to even mention “energy” even once, retreating
from this year’s State of the Nation where he stirringly called for us to
respond to our “Sputnik moment” by creating the clean energy jobs of
the future.

While there were some great proposals in his speech (we particularly like his
call to modernize thousands of decaying schools to reduce energy waste and
pollution) it is disappointing to see how far he has retreated from the focus
on creating jobs in the clean energy economy.

Some facts please. For example, are
you surprised to know that:

• The wind industry now employs more people in the United
  States than the coal industry.
• The solar industries in the US and Germany employ more
  than steel.
• Clean energy provides large export opportunities. Even with fierce competition from Chinese
  manufacturers, the US solar industry had a nearly $2 billion trade surplus
  last year.
• The Brookings Institute recently concluded that job
  growth in the clean energy sector from 2003-2010 was at 8.3%, (wind and solar grew 10-18% over these
  years), more than double the national average for other sectors. The pace
  of growth really is torrid in that sector, says Mark Muro, a senior
  fellow at Brookings Metropolitan Program and a co-author of the report. This
  confirms the intuition that these exciting industries really are growing
  as fast as we think they are.
• Overall, Brookings reports that the clean economy
  employs more than 2.7 million Americans, more than the fossil fuel energy
  sectors.

And, clean energy jobs generally pay
better and offer more secure long-term prospects than their counterparts in the
old energy economy.

Should we be happy with the progress? Of course not. Many of the forecasts for
millions of new clean energy jobs that the critics are busy labeling as
unfulfilled promises explicitly depended on policy that would spur the
transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner, more efficient and more
sustainable energy. Policies like requiring dirty energy sources to begin
paying for the costs of their pollution and support for critical sectors that
will keep our country competitive in the clean energy revolution that is
sweeping the globe. We still desperately need these policies to get clean
energy to scale. It is hypocritical and disingenuous for critics who have done
everything possible to defeat these policies to then claim that they haven’t
created the promised jobs. Imagine if opponents of John F. Kennedy’s space
initiative had successfully stopped funding for the Apollo program than
criticized him for failing to make good on his promise to put a man on the
moon.

Creating clean energy at scale remains the greatest challenge and opportunity for
our generation. And we shouldn’t be surprised that powerful voices for the
status quo will keep trying to hobble these efforts. But it never hurts to look
at a few facts in the midst of all the rhetoric.