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Rooting for Failure: Republicans Bash Green Jobs, Clean Energy
Climate Progress / News Analysis
Published: Sunday 17 June 2012
Although clean energy creates hundreds of thousands of better paying jobs, Republicans looking to gain ground in an election year have disparaged these jobs as less valuable.
Republicans have bullied the clean energy industry for months, pointing to flimsy evidence for why the government should slash funding for the industry, even as Big Oil subsidies continue.
On the heels of passing legislation that slashes clean energy funding 13 times, House Republicans are fulfilling the oil and coal industry’s wish list with next week’s Domestic Energy Production Act.
Although clean energy creates hundreds of thousands of better paying jobs, Republicans looking to gain ground in an election year have disparaged these jobs as less valuable. Mitt Romney’s former economic adviser said as much: “I am buying that they’re rooting against the economy somewhat because they think that the short-term pain of, you know, the next four months is much better than having additional four years of pain under Obama.”
Republicans have made green jobs a political target, at the behest of their oil and coal allies:
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said the 1603 tax credit reimbursement program is a “Solyndra-style stimulus program.” This program has created thousands of jobs, 5,000 projects, and helped the industry grow during tough times. “Listen, the American people continue to ask the question, ‘Where are the jobs?’ They deserve answers, and they deserve the truth.”
House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa called green jobs “propaganda” in a recent staff report. Issa also recently released a video making fun of the BLS’s broad definition for green jobs, calling them “groovy.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): “This is the no-more-Solyndras amendment,” speaking on his amendment that would ban a loan guarantee program for renewables, even though the program itself has expired.
Jordan labeled green investments wasted dollars: “The president said that we will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And he promised that our country would create millions of green jobs, which would help us compete in the global economy. Over three years into this gamble, available evidence demonstrates these efforts have wasted vast sums of taxpayer money and have failed to achieve the stated goals.”
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) at a Feb. 19 news conference: ”There’s a fundamental difference in approach. And this is the challenge that faces us. The reason our economy is stagnant is because we haven’t let the free market work. The government keeps getting in the way. Now is the time to pick the Keystone economy over the Solyndra economy, to pick the American people over big government and to pick prosperity over stagnation.”
Mitt Romney: [Obama] said he was going to create some 5 million green energy jobs. Have you seen those around here anywhere? No, as a matter of fact he’s gone after energy.
Romney says the Chevy Volt, is an “idea whose time has not come,” saying, “I’m not sure America was ready for the Chevy Volt.”
While Republicans call for a “free energy market” devoid of subsidies to clean energy, they continue to support hundred-year-old subsidies for oil and coal. Though the House GOP prefer to point to failures, clean energy is seeing historic levels of investment — reaching $257 billion worldwide — helped by public-private investments in the industry.
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By Richard (RJ) Eskow
12 comments on "Rooting for Failure: Republicans Bash Green Jobs, Clean Energy"
June 18, 2012 10:58am
answer to dwdallam question
german deficit 2011= less than 1% gdp
June 17, 2012 6:19pm
All of those arguments are completely specious. For instance, "Our economy is stale because of regulation and green energy."
Why is it then that Germany's economy is better than ours, while at the same time they have invested heavily in green energy and have more regulation than the US does?
June 17, 2012 2:57pm
Green energy only makes sense within very small parameters. First, they must be located and properly sited where the sun shines or the wind blows a certain portion of the day. Most of the energy generated by power plants, green or other, is lost in the transmission. To be cost-effective, green projects have to be five times the size of a gas-fired plant, for example, in an area that gets a required amount of sunshine each day. Those areas are not generally available in the northeast, for example. So they must be supplemented with conventional sources of energy.
The sunshine (or wind) requirement limits locations for green energy plants, necessitating that they be built in deserts or otherwise unoccupied, large tracts of land that are usually away from transmission lines.
Green energy has its own ways of "destroying" the environment just as conventional methods of producing energy. The water requirements for solar plants is very large, thus changing the microclimate of the area in which they are sited.
For example, if located in a desert, the land becomes unsuitable for wildlife--including endangered species--who live in the desert. And they, by necessity, have to be located in areas that usually don't have all that water--deserts, for example.
In addition, generating plants, solar and otherwise, use many chemicals. As a result, the ground becomes contaminated and unusable for 100 years or so.
Most jobs resulting from energy projects are temporary, primarily occurring during construction. Most power plants are automated and few permanent employees are needed for monitoring functions.
Where it exists, the opposition to green energy projects may have little to do with opposing Obama and more to do with the hype that surrounds the "environmental" benefits of green energy without adequately explaining the environmental costs. And those costs range from groundwater and land pollution, including making it unlivable for at least 100 years, destruction of wildlife, ruination of habitats, and extensive government funding that is given primarily to multinational corporations to build and operate the plants without any acknowledgment of the environmental degradation caused by the plants.
That funding and other costs are borne by the taxpayers. And the taxpayers who have never been given the full story on the costs vs benefits of green energy.
The most cost-effective green energy program would be providing solar panels to every house in the US that gets the required amount of sunlight a day and requiring the utilities to buy that energy back at market rates--the same rate they sell it to the consumer. But, that is never likely to happen. Energy programs aren't run for the consumer, they're run for multinational corporations.
June 17, 2012 7:31pm
MIZ.BEHAVES You are ignoring off-shore wind farms, biomass and geothermal sources. Also, there is always "wind" moving up the stacks venting steam from manufacturing and processing plants ; put wind turbines in every one.
June 17, 2012 1:05pm
the prob with gov created green jobs is a bho buddy forms a co get big$ then folds the co
typo for chet When can you tell demo are lying slime?
When their lips are moving...
June 17, 2012 11:47am
The Republicans have been winning the debates by being more adept at selecting the words we use. I believe the phrase “affirmative action” helped frame the debate for racial equality and may have been the last lexicon win for the Demarcates. Look at phrases like: “job creators,” I’m sure there are a few with that title that are but giving them tax breaks actually hurts the economy; “death tax,” sounds dreadful but inheritance tax was an important tool in reducing the long term pooling of wealth; “clean coal,” really? An interesting theoretic concept having nothing to do with reality; “moral majority,” thinking you are doesn’t make it so; “patriotic right,” patriotism requires more that waving a flag;…
Even to term “Green Energy” is a loser in the Machiavellian world we live in today. Saving the Earth is nice, but not as powerful in the minds of voters who are focused on the economy and their own financial wellbeing. “Sustainability” is a step in the right direction, though we want rewards today, not delayed and the words need to be at the third grade level.
Remember the median distribution of our society is mentally moving towards belief over facts and science.
We need more powerful jargon to gain traction in the minds of our peers.
June 17, 2012 11:05am
I will give this example of the need for Patience. From the time John Kennedy announced that we would go to the Moon, how long did it take and how much money was spent?
It is better to have tried and failed , than to never have tried at all.
June 17, 2012 10:51am
WE, the People need to make our voices heard - to be as obnoxious about truth-telling as the GOP is about lying - but WE NEED TO BACK IT UP WITH FACTS! WE need to challenge the GOP. Go to some of the speeches by the GOP members, when they tell their lies, ask the big question - don't take NO for an answer - also, don't let them beat around the bush and not answer the question. Typical candidate speak.
June 17, 2012 10:44am
As time passes it becomes clearer and clearer that the Republican Party has become the PR arm of the elite who would strip us of all our assets, chip us, dumb us down and enslave us. This explains why the republicans will oppose any initiative that threatens the obscene profits their oil company masters are making and that means they will oppose green energy. With this elite appearing to own Obama as well as Romney the choice in this years election is not really a choice at all. My hope is that Ron Paul continues to participate..
June 17, 2012 10:37am
That Republicans lie openly and overtly is nothing new. We've come to expect it. Even when they are exposed and confronted they continue to espouse the lie. They do this because they know 2 things: they know that if they repeat the lie often enough and long enough lots of folks will accept it as the truth. I don't know why that is, but it is. They also understand that most voters have long ago decided how they will vote and so are only concerned with the 10 -12 % who have yet to decide. Since most of these folks will make their decision at the last minute and base it on something other than facts and issues, they can tell lies that sound plausable to those who don't know any better. The real problem here is that there doesn't seem to be a way to get the truth out to those who need to hear it. If you know anyone with 10 or 20 million bucks laying around, ask them to pony up a big chunk.
June 17, 2012 10:13am
When can you tell republicans are lying slime?
When their lips are moving...
June 17, 2012 10:08am
As other countries lay the groundwork for green energy and the jobs associated with it we, in the U.S., flounder and argue. The repugnants would fight against the initiation of any green job project, no matter how well proven, merely to defeat Obama. They care not for this country, they care only for the rich and those that can keep them in power.