A recent lengthy report by Reuters confirms what many conservatives have long known: President Obama’s promise to create millions of so-called “green jobs” has been a colossal and expensive failure.
A few highlights from the report:
- Since 2009, the wind industry has lost 10,000 jobs, even as the energy capacity of wind farms has almost doubled. By contrast, the oil and gas industry have created 75,000 jobs since Mr. Obama took office.
- “A $500 million job-training program has so far helped fewer than 20,000 people find work, far short of its goal.” The program was so bad that “the Labor Department’s inspector general recommended last fall that the agency should return the $327 million that remained unspent.” They didn’t. And now, the department “remains far short of its goal of placing 80,000 workers into green jobs by 2013.”
- According to the Labor Department’s own figures, the push for so-called “green jobs” has been an abysmal failure. “By the end of 2011, some 16,092 participants had found new work in a “green” field, according to the Labor Department – roughly one-fifth of its target.”
The article also highlights the degree to which Obama’s big jobs promises have fallen flat. For example, in 2008, Obama promised that “investing” $150 billion taxpayer dollars would create 5 million jobs over 10 years. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s past green jobs statements now read like punchlines:
“We’ll put nearly half a million people to work building wind turbines and solar panels, constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings, and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to new jobs,” he said at a wind-turbine plant in Ohio the day before he took office.
In December 2009, Vice President Joe Biden said the effort would create 722,000 green jobs.
None of this will come as a surprise to conservatives and Republicans. Indeed, the ream of failed green energy stories is endless. Still, it’s encouraging to see a consensus among mainstream media begin to sprout–even if green jobs aren’t.