From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

In a Tweet sent by White House media official Jesse Lee in direct response to AIM’s coverage of the Politico report on the elusive “green jobs” the President has promised, the press office sent “a few folks who disagree.”

The first item was an image of President Obama at a photo-op with workers at a solar energy plant. The second item is more interesting. Lee Tweeted an article written for CNBC by “freelance journalist” Rob Reuteman which claimed that “everyone seems to agree there will be many more [green jobs] in the coming decades.” Reuteman claims that “market forces” in addition to regulatory mandates are creating such jobs.

Reuteman notes that “twenty-nine states have ordered their utilities to produce up to 30 percent of power through renewable energy in the next couple decades.” This is a mandate, not a market force.

Reuteman reports that the stimulus program “earmarked more than $70 billion in direct spending, tax breaks, and loan guarantees … most of it for ‘green energy.’” This too is not a market force but state intervention.

Reuteman then finds his first “market force,” noting that a for-profit university in Colorado offers a degree in “Wind Energy Technology.” This is the same “Wind Energy Technology” that Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) noted receives “25 times as much [in subsidy] per megawatt-hour as…all other forms of electricity combined.”

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From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

While researchers at King Juan Carlos University in Spain found in 2009 that the Spanish “green jobs” program killed over two jobs for every one it created, Politico notes that “the White House can’t point to much solid evidence” that green jobs are being created. Politico states that “Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers suggests 225,000 clean energy jobs were either created or preserved,” but does not acknowledge the follow-on effects identified by the Spanish study.

Politico, which deserves some credit for its open skepticism of Obama administration claims, reports that “White House officials say asking about the connection between the 9.1 percent unemployment rate and the administration’s green jobs campaign is the wrong question.” Instead of looking at macroeconomic effects of policy, Politico notes that the officials would rather show off the “exponential growth” in highly subsidized “clean technology industries.”

The Politico quotes “top Republican” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) as “not seeing [green jobs].” Murkowski said, “I don’t know” when speculating on whether it was premature to judge.

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In a column she posted at the Huffington Post, USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson continued in her attempts to rebrand the Agency into something it never has been nor was intended to be: a creator of wealth. Jackson surely recognizes that the tired, old “sky is falling” message that has traditionally driven environmental agendas has less traction than ever given the economic realities of 2010. So, while she isn’t ready to abandon the fear-mongering tactics that are ingrained in the green movement, Jackson is working hard to create a parallel reality, one in which there is an absolutely phenomenal return on investment whenever the government imposes a new round of environmental regulations.

In a draw-dropping example of the old saw that “correlation does not equate to causation” the administrator told America that the Clean Air Act has created a venerable cornucopia of riches:

“…as air pollution has dropped over the last 40 years, our national GDP has risen by 207 percent. The total benefits of the Clean Air Act amount to more than 40 times the costs of regulation. For every one dollar we have spent, we have received more than $40 of benefits in return, making the Clean Air Act one of the most cost-effective things the American people have done for themselves in the last half century.”

How does one calculate a whopping 4,000% return on Clean Air Act investments? If you’re the EPA, you point to increased productivity that you happily attribute to less lost time due to illness in the workplace, as well as avoided medical costs. Not that you actually have to prove that any of those results actually occur. All you need is a few pointy-headed academics with calculators who can punch the right numbers, attach a certain value to sick days and medical condition and – voila – you too can create trillions in phantom economic benefits.

That’s the method that has been used to justify just about every major piece of Clean Air regulation and Jackson’s EPA has shifted this technique into hyper-drive. If the numbers that she uses to justify the sweeping, radical environmental initiatives her Agency is pushing are to be believed, nobody will ever miss work again and the health care industry will have to close its doors for a lack of business. And yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. (more…)

Recent revelations about the way that president Obama’s plan to weatherize U.S. homes has gotten off to a less than stellar start symbolize what’s wrong with so-called “green jobs.” Green job programs depend on government subsidies and mandates, require government oversight and, as a result of those two factors, are slightly less efficient than your average Rube Goldberg machine.

One year into the $5 billion program, the government has weatherized five per cent of the target number of homes overall, and less than fifty per cent of what was expected for 2009. The problem? Government rules, believe it or not. Gosh, who could have possibly foreseen that glitch in the plan? But, it seems that it’s difficult to figure out how much to pay contractors, how to protect historic homes and how to solve the nuances of a host of other problems for which government needs to formulate policies and procedures.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a system in which some responsible party – say, the homeowner for example – could make those decisions and save the United States the time, expense and trouble of having to do so? Wait, I seem to remember that we used to have a system something like that. It was called “capitalism,” or some such. (more…)