This has led to pushback from enviro groups, a coordinated campaign involving lots of press releases and social media commentary about how wonderful AB 32 is. But this campaign is going down a route it’s going to regret. It is attempting to once again depict green policies as engines of job creation. Look at this Tweet from a Silicon Valley PR type:

California “cleantech” has gotten an array of subsidies, tax breaks and favors from the state government for decades — especially since Gray Davis took over as governor in 1999. The effort ramped up in 2003 when would-be Global Green Giant Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeded Davis. It grew even more intense in 2010 when Jerry Brown ran for governor on a platform that asserted he would create 500,000 green jobs.

Meanwhile, in 2008, Barack Obama ran for president on a platform that claimed he would create 5 million green jobs. In 2009, after he took office, the federal spigot opened wide for subsidies and favors for state-level green-job programs courtesy of the $880 billion stimulus package approved by Congress.

But all the Golden State has to show for this massive push is 20 percent growth in 10 years?

That’s not even 2 percent growth per year when you take in compounding.

Thankfully, the Sacramento media have done a bang-up job of exposing the dishonesty of Jerry Brown’s 2010 green jobs claims.

Oh, wait — that’s right. The pack doesn’t think that’s a story.

Sheesh.

Back to the PR type who thought 20 percent growth over 10 years was impressive. She has an excuse. She’s an English major.

Susan Frank can bond with Sacramento journos over their shared innumeracy.

By Chris Reed

It’s not just President Barack Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown who have drank the green Kool-Aid and bought into the idea that “green” jobs and energy can be America’s economic salvation.

It’s also that lumbering, bumbling, scandal-ridden monument to all that is bad about California known as CalPERS. Why do I have the feeling readers are utterly unsurprised?

This is from Friday’s Upstart Business Journal:

“One of the biggest players investing in cleantech has lost money on its gambles.

“The California Public Employees Retirement System has put $900 million to work in cleantech, $460 million of that with venture capitalists who invest in cleantech startups, and has had a negative return of 9.8 percent on that money.

“The revelation came from CalPERS chief investment officer Joseph Dear during the Wall Street Journal’s Eco:comics conference Wednesday night. ‘Just because it’s a good idea doesn’t make it a good investment,’ he said. ‘This has been a noble way to lose money.'”

If you’re a California taxpayer, you should be screaming and pulling out your hair. No, big deal, all you suckers who are going to have to bail out CalPERS: The pension giant has figured out “a noble way to lose money.” Aaaaauuuggghhh! Aaaauuuggghh! Aaauugggghhhh!

Here’s another account of CalPERS’ green folly.

Here’s CalPERS’ official page on its noble fiasco.

Thanks to Jack Dean of the awesome PensionTsunami.com site for drawing this to my attention.

By Joseph Perkins 

California Gov. Jerry Brown appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday, during which he listed items “right at the top” of the state agenda, including pension reform, renewable energy, the California water plan and high-speed rail. 

The governor neglected to include jobs creation on the list, despite the Golden State’s 11 percent unemployment rate, the nation’s third highest. 

Indeed, while California has gained 385,900 jobs since the state’s economic recovery began in September 2009, more than 2 million working-aged residents remain unemployed, according to the state Employment Development Division. 

The challenges facing the state’s long-term unemployed — those out of work six months or longer — will become even more daunting as of May 12, EDD confirmed last week. 

That’s when about 93,000 idle workers will lose as many as 20 weeks of extended federal unemployment benefits under the FED-ED program. Another 100,000 who might have qualified for the benefit by year’s end will no longer be eligible. 

Brown has not focused as much on jobs as on the issues he mentioned on “Face the Nation” Sunday. But he did, in fact, propose an eight-point jobs plan when he campaigned for the state’s highest office in 2010, and yet another plan last year. 

Brown’s 2010 plan called for state investment in renewable energy technology that, he said, would stimulate “creation of more than half a million green jobs” by 2020. His 2011 “Jobs First” plan promised to create jobs by closing a tax loophole that, the governor said, benefited out-of-state corporations at the expense of California businesses. 

Brown never got around to presenting his eight-point jobs plan to the Legislature for its consideration. And, while he introduced his Jobs First plan last summer, it died in the Legislature. 

Nevertheless, the governor continues to express optimism that California will eventually replace the jobs it lost during the state’s economic downturn. 

In an appearance last week at the annual CEO Summit hosted by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the governor reiterated his view that the nascent clean technology industry — which currently accounts for less than 2 percent of California jobs — will eventually become one of the state’s biggest employers. 

“Electric is small, solar is small, high-speed rail is small,” said Brown. “But so was Fairchild, so was Intel, so was Hewlett-Packard, so was Steve Jobs. We want to plant the seeds that will bring forward a vast forest of new technologies.” 

It remains to be seen whether cleantech fulfills Brown’s lofty expectations. Even if it does, it won’t generate enough green jobs over the next several years to have more than a negligible effect on California’s jobless rate. 

Indeed, in a rather grim report last month, the UCLA Anderson Forecast projected that California’s jobless rate will remain above the national average through at least the end of 2014, and that unemployment in some parts of the state will not return to pre-recession levels until 2016.