Now, a decade after Schwarzenegger began his strong emphasis on green jobs, we have another powerful state leader on the bandwagon.

With Senate President Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, declaring his determination to bring a huge infusion of green jobs to California, it’s time to look at the most comprehensive assessment of green job claims in the Golden State.

It wasn’t from The Los Angeles Times or Sacramento Bee. It was from The New York Times in August 2011, and it’s fairly described as harshly dismissive of such claims.

In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream. …

A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more — 2.2 percent — in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.

Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development.

The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on.

Job-training programs for nonexistent jobs

The NYT also pointed out that when there are few green jobs, having ambitious green job training programs isn’t likely to turn out well:

Job training programs intended for the clean economy have also failed to generate big numbers. The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.

“The demand’s just not there to take this to scale,” said Fred Lucero, project manager at Richmond BUILD, which teaches students the basics of carpentry and electrical work in addition to specifically “green” trades like solar installation.

Richmond BUILD has found jobs for 159 of the 221 students who have entered its clean-energy program — but only 35 graduates are employed with solar and energy efficiency companies, with the balance doing more traditional building trades work.

When upbeat green job reports come out, they’re usually driven by ever-expanding definitions of what constitutes green jobs, as I noted recently in the U-T San Diego newspaper:

Thrift-shop clerks, bus drivers, janitors at solar power plants, professors who teach about the environment, cashiers at bicycle-repair shops and trash collectors are all characterized as green jobs by the Obama administration.

This is a fact that rarely seems to appear in California newspapers.

On the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama promised to create 5 million green jobs across the nation. Depending on how you define green jobs, he either did incredibly badly on this front — helping to create less  than 3,000 jobs — or quite badly — adding about 700,000 jobs after the passage of the 2009 stimulus.

But there’s a gigantic problem with the latter estimate: It counts all mass-transit and construction jobs as being green because the industries follow green principles. So bus drivers and ditch diggers are green employees.

As you probably suspected, the group that put out the report had a motive to put its thumb on the scale. It’s from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute,  “a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting environmentally sustainable societies.”

On the campaign trail in 2010, Jerry Brown promised to create 500,000 green jobs in California. A year later, The New York Times scoffed at his vow.

In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. … Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream….

The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.

In early 2013, California greens celebrated a report that said the Golden State led the nation in creation of green jobs in 2012 with 26,000. But that figure once again included categories of jobs like mass transit and construction — no surprise since the report didn’t come from a respected think tank but from Environmental Entrepreneurs, a de facto lobbying front for government-subsidized green projects.

And what do the think tanks say? The Brookings Institution, considered liberal to moderate, echoed McKinsey’s findings in its 2011 report, estimating that green jobs constitute about 2 percent of the total economy — and that too was with a definition that included many construction jobs. A twist to the Brookings report: It found there were fewer green jobs in Silicon Valley in 2010 than 2003.

So when the new leader of the California Senate talks up green jobs, he’s going down a well-trod path. If his promises come true, that will be a first.

As The New York Times noted in 2011, it’s just wrong to depict green jobs as emerging as a central pillar of the U.S. economy.

But it is a talking point that remains beloved among greens, if not among economists.

In 2010, Jerry Brown ran for governor of California on the promise that he would help the state’s struggling economy with a recovery plan built on green jobs. He promised 500,000 such jobs would be created in California and that the state would work in sync with the Obama administration and private investors on green projects and initiatives.

In 2014, Obama and Brown never bring up these promises because they haven’t come close to being met.

In 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a plan to carefully track the growth in green jobs. Very tellingly, however, it has never updated its initial information that estimated there were 2.15 million green jobs in the U.S. as of 2009. That number was itself highly suspect; 1.6 million of those jobs were for construction and professional/business services under a definition that defined a job as a “green” job even if it only involved “green” projects or services a small percentage of the time.

The actual hard numbers since then are grim. The Energy Collective website — which cheers all things “green”– reported in May that in the first quarter of 2014, only 5,600 clean energy and transportation jobs were created in the entire U.S. Numbers were better in 2013, but they still reflected the McKinsey think thank’s prediction of a decade ago that green jobs would never be more than a “niche” in overall jobs, not a pillar.

This is confirmed once again by a source that’s a cheerleader for green jobs: the Solar Foundation. Its “Solar Jobs Census” reports 142,698 such jobs nationally as of November 2013 — and this after solar energy’s best year ever, thanks to a drop in the cost of solar panels and some increases in efficiency. California had 47,223 such jobs in 2013.

So national figures for green-job growth have not even reached what Jerry Brown predicted for California alone, making his 2010 campaign promise an absolute crock.

I look forward to this being pointed out someday by the Sacramento media.

Not.

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 Chris Reed

Greens were doing some chest-thumping this week after a new study came out that said California led the nation in 2012 in creation of green jobs.

“Environmental Entrepreneurs tracks the creation of green jobs on a monthly basis. The 2012 wrap-up found firms announced the creation of 110,000 green jobs last year. About 26,000 of those jobs were in California.”

But that’s a puny number by almost any objective standard. It confirms that green jobs are just a small niche and will never be a core sector of the economy, just as the respected McKinsey consulting firm predicted, and just as Barack Obama’s economics advisers told him in winter 2008-09 as they put together what would become the 2009 stimulus bill, and just as I told Gov. Jerry Brown when he touted the same myths as Obama and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the employment numbers in North Dakota, where leaders emphasize brown jobs — created by the fracking boom — not subsidized, corporate crony green jobs. From 2010 to 2012, this tiny little state went from 370,000 employed residents to 421,000 employed residents — a stunning 14 percent increase with few parallels in recent U.S. history. Equivalent growth in the California workforce would mean 2 million new jobs.

Let’s trade governors with North Dakota

Instead, as of December, the Golden State continued to have the third highest unemployment rate in the nation, and North Dakota continued to have the lowest — a tiny 3.2 percent — and a different set of worker problems than those seen in any other state.

If only we could trade governors and legislatures. Bill Clinton had that great post-presidential gig in Argentina, remember?

Oh, wait. That was in The Onion’s world. It’s stranger than ours. But not by too much. Consider that California easily could be the Saudi Arabia of the First World, but that the majority party that controls the state thinks this is a bad thing. Instead of the 21st-century version of “There Will Be Blood,” in Sacramento, it’s more like “There Will Be Duds.”

By Chris Reed

We’ve seen President Obama and Gov. Brown spread the green jobs myth, pretending that niche categories of employment can revive the larger national and state economies. Now Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti is offering up the green Kool-Aid, claiming if he’s elected he’ll bring 20,000 green jobs to a city that the Los Angeles Times has finally admitted is in broad economic decline.

But as the L.A. Weekly is reporting, Garcetti doesn’t exactly have credibility on this front:

“On Nov. 10, 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown came to Los Angeles to help open the new headquarters of CODA Automotive. The company was rolling out its CODA Sedan, which boasted new battery technology that would deliver unprecedented range for an all-electric car. The company claimed it would bring 650 high-tech jobs to L.A.

“‘To the naysayers, we’re saying yes to solar, yes to CODA,’ Brown said. ‘We’re saying yes to a Los Angeles that’s on the move.’

“But though Brown and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa did most of the talking at the day’s ceremony, it was City Council president Eric Garcetti who deserved most of the credit. Garcetti played the key role in enticing CODA to move its headquarters from Santa Monica by dangling $1 million in city redevelopment money — even as he received $8,000 in contributions from CODA executives and their spouses.

“And yet, a little more than a year later, CODA is in trouble. The company never got close to its goal of 650 employees, topping out at about 270 before it began laying off workers in December. A showroom at the Westfield Century City mall has closed. It appears the company has sold fewer than 100 cars.

“Over the past several months, CODA has been sued by eight suppliers for unpaid bills amounting to more than $1.7 million. One of its suppliers recently warned in an SEC filing of “substantial uncertainty regarding CODA’s ability to honor their obligations.”

“‘Their staff’s been cut to nothing,’ says John Gartner, an analyst at Pike Research. ‘On the automotive side, it seems like there’s not much of a future for them.'”

Connect the dots on green-job lies? Nah

Isn’t this, yunno, news? That green job claims at every level haven’t come true?

Nah.

What we’re seeing in the national media with the basic refusal to acknowledge that the president’s sequestration rhetoric is pure scare tactics, we see at every level of the media when it comes to environmental issues. Green jobs aren’t saving the economy. Low-regulation states do create more jobs.

Katy Grimes: The phony green jobs that I have been writing about for several years are just another inconvenient truth in this administration.

The U.S. Labor Department’s Inspector General just released a report on Friday revealing that President Obama’s green jobs training program went up in smoke.

Bad news from the government always is released on Friday.

In addition to a failed stimulus program, the Obama green jobs program wasted another $500 million dollars from taxpayers.

The report found:

In the three and a half years since the stimulus bill was signed, the green jobs program has only placed 11,613 individuals into jobs that have been retained for more than 6 months. That’s only 16 percent of the total goal.

Only 30,857, or 38 percent, were placed into any green jobs at all.

Even with these damning numbers, the Labor Department put out its own statement disagreeing with the Inspector General: “This report does not take into account that nearly half of the grants are still active and thousands of workers are still participating in the program,” a statement said.

The Obama administration’s plan was to create 700,000 green jobs in clean tech energy.

The bad news

According to the newly released report requested by Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan, the report revealed that the Department of Labor has further squandered taxpayer money since the program was flagged by the IG last year.

“The green jobs training program belongs in the long list of the Administration’s bad investments including the bankruptcies of Solyndra, Beacon Power, Abound, and just this month, A123,” said Issa. “Not only was the program poorly thought-out, mismanaged and dysfunctional, but it served as a slush fund to reward friends of the Obama Administration. Millions of dollars went to groups like the National Council of La Raza, the Blue Green Alliance and the US Steelworkers union,” Issa stated.

Here is the Congressional hearing where Issa learned what a green job really is:

Worse news

DOL trained more criminals than veterans: 9 percent of the people who received training (about 10,000 individuals) had criminal records, while 7 percent were veterans.

Poor results: Out of a target of 81,254, grantees collectively reported 30,857 participants (38 percent) entered employment

Of the 81,354 participants who completed training, 42,322 (52 percent) already had jobs.

Of the 81,354 participants who completed training through the Green Jobs program, 38,366 received 5 days or less of training, of which 17,374 received only 1 day of training.

According to the Inspector General, “Grantees were authorized to train incumbent workers who needed training to secure full-time employment, advance their careers, or retain their current jobs. However, for the 81 incumbent workers we identified in our sample, we found no evidence that they needed green job training for any of these purposes.”

“The sampled grantees were unable to provide documentation for 24 percent of sampled participants reported as entered employment,” The IG reported. “Moreover, they could not provide documentation for 33 percent of sampled participants reported as entering training-related employment and 44 percent of sampled participants tested for retention.”

I really hate to say “I told ya so,” so instead I”ll just ask all of you greenies how it feels to have so much smoke blown up your skirts?

The Inspector General’s report is HERE.

The difference between the federal government’s go-slow-or-is-it-no-go approach on the Keystone XL oil pipeline and the let’s-get-it-done push for the first segment of the California bullet train is instructive, in that in both cases we are told that environmental rules need to be taken seriously and rigorously enforced. Hence this paragraph in the Wednesday Mercury-News story about the (tiny) delay to the formal federal go-ahead for bullet-train work in the Central Valley:

Even though Congress and President Barack Obama previously approved enough funding to split the cost of the initial stretch of track, U.S. officials still needed to ensure the project met federal environmental laws. Wednesday’s 41-page ruling said that while the bullet train will have “significant” negative impacts on the environment and community — from loud noises to reducing property values — it’s still worthwhile.

But wait a minute: So now whether a project is “worthwhile” is somehow a formal metric for approval? Isn’t “worthwhile” kind of an ultimate eye-of-the-beholder thing? Are there federal standards for worthwhileitude that someone can cite? So the preposterous, lie-driven bullet train is worthwhiler than Keystone, which could transform the already-wildly-improving U.S. energy picture? Sheer insanity.

Thankfully, we know that there are actual federal regulations that can be used to tie big infrastructure projects into knots — even “good” ones — and rich cities in Silicon Valley are eager to use them. Go, NIMBYs, go. Administer a beating to the bullet-train nuts. A worthwhile one.

Songs and books have been written about the importance of living every day as if it will be your last. While a seemingly noble concept, living out each day indulging in special moments and treats instead of addressing responsibilities could be seen as a little self-indulgent.

However, living as a liberal would be much more accepted and easier, far more self-satisfying and approved by the mass media.

Being a conservative in California is just too much work.

But before I fully tap into my inner liberal, I will need to practice dropping the f-bomb in casual conversation more frequently, brush up on making stinging personal attacks against people I dislike or disagree with and watch more vile television programs like “Two and a Half Men.”

Living like a liberal is going to be easy and fun, but the To-Do list is long.

It’s Time To Demand A Free Education

Because California needs one more smarmy, liberal lawyer, I plan on signing up for law school. To pay for tuition and books, as well as my considerable personal expenses while I attend, I will need massive student loans and all of the Cal-Grants I can get my hands on.

In order to qualify for the grants, I will have to dump my husband and quit my job. Life will be more enjoyable going to school instead of working, while maintaining a well-deserved and very active social life. The divorce will help seal the necessary indigence requirement for loan and grant qualification, since I am not considered part of a protected minority class.

Meet Your New Neighborhood Nanny

Because I know what’s best for all of my neighbors, friends and family, I will practice being everyone’s neighborhood nanny, beginning with turning in all of the fireplace-users and water violators in my neighborhood.

Next, I will lead the fight for water meter installation on every home in the city, usage limiters on the heating and air conditioning systems in each of the 6,000 homes in my neighborhood, as well as the requisite solar systems on the rooftops, and home water storage and recycling systems.

Every neighbor should be composting, as well.

While I will work to make sure that tiny, white twinkle lights are still allowed on homes during the generic winter holiday, no Nativity scenes, plastic Santas or Frostys will be allowed.

This neighborhood nanny will work to ban all political signs from neighbors’ lawns, because isn’t everyone who matters already liberal?

It’s All About ‘Green’

I will buy a Chevy Volt — no, I’ll buy a Tesla. I am worth the best. I will just add the $109,000 onto my student loans. The carbon offset credits from the purchase should cover me until 2050.

I will shame my “ex-husband” into dumping his SUV. He can drive a Prius like everyone else in the neighborhood.

The Journalist In Me

I will subscribe to the New York Times and the Washington Post, and start out every day listening to NPR for daily liberal talking points, and voting tips.

I will no longer need to do my own research on important economic trends, energy independence, social issues or global warming.  Like all other liberals, I will be able to get up every morning and get my fill of liberal politics fed to me as I eat my daily ration of organic multi-grain cereal with pesticide-free banana slices.

Tapping My Inner Vegan

Since I am already a vegetarian, it’s time to force my righteously healthy eating habits on everyone I encounter. It is not enough to make a scene in a restaurant when demanding special preparation of my food orders, it’s time to demand that restaurants feed everyone the way I eat.

Dreamy Social Issues

As a soon-to-be-liberal-lawyer-in-training, I plan on practicing manipulation of the law, and will demand that the government take care of everyone who wants or needs all social services.

The environment — especially the coast — will take precedence over the people of California.  We must save the ocean, save the whales, save the spotted owl, save the desert tortoise, save the Delta Smelt, save the Redwoods and Sequoias and save Malibu and Carmel while we’re at it.

Animals and prisoners have rights too. And state employees deserve their own Bill of Rights.

The Occupier In Me

Note to self: Meet up with local Occupiers to protest for a free education, free healthcare coverage, a free home, free transportation and free coffee from Starbuck’s.

Removal of the Conservative Outer Layer

The need to liberate my stodgy, conservative self is overpowering. I vow to give away my sensible dresses and slacks in exchange for more grungy, man-of-the-people clothes. Then I will stop wearing makeup, nail polish and hair products that are tested on laboratory animals. I will replace my fascist gold earrings with grommets. I’ll pierce my nose, lip, and cheek and get a sleeve of tattoos on my left arm … because I am left-handed.

The best part of this fashion change is that I won’t have to do laundry as frequently, and jewelry changes will be nil.

Liberal Mom Redux

I am going to need to talk my son into quitting the Navy. I don’t know how a kid who attended Montessori School in kindergarten found his way into the Navy.

I must have fed him too much meat when he was a child.

Rebirth As A Feminist

Becoming a card-carrying feminist should be the most fun part of being liberal: 1) Always play the victim; 2) Attack conservative women for their lofty morals and disciplined work ethic; 3) Be mean to other women; 4) Be meaner to men; 5) Hate myself for having a uterus; 6) Turn my boy children into wimps; 7) Replace husband with a girlfriend.

Tax The Rich

As an angry, activist, feminist lawyer, I will pursue changes to the tax code requiring the 1 percenters to pay more than their fair share of taxes. The rich have been enjoying their money for too long, and need to spread some of that love around.

Crass Is Cool

Lastly, I am going to contact talk radio hosts across America, and convince them to become comedians — or at least call themselves comedians. Once everyone knows they are comedians, they can say anything they want — crass, gross, disgusting, distasteful and vulgar things — and get away with it. They wouldn’t even have to be funny.

As a liberal, I’ll be able to talk like a sailor anywhere I want. I might even start watching Bill Maher without recoiling in disgust.

Rebirth as a liberal is going to be fun and easier. And maybe, just maybe, some of my old friends and dinner party acquaintances will start talking to me again. Sometimes I miss being part of the über-popular crowd.

— Katy Grimes