Green Jobs-Great Pumpkin

Halloween is not here yet but universities are already channeling Charlie Brown in their eager anticipation of their own Great Pumpkin—green jobs.

“There is a growing demand for graduates with an expertise in environmental and sustainability issues as sustainability becomes more integrated within the strategies and operations of employers,” George Washington University geography professor Lisa Benton-Sort wrote in an article which appeared in The Washington Examiner on August 15, 2012. “In a recent survey of more than 1,300 business professionals conducted b the National Environmental Education Foundation, 65 perent of respondents identified environmental and sustainability knowledge as valuable, especially in new hires.”

One wonders  if any of the survey respondents worked at that one-time source of thousands of green jobs—Solyndra. “Buried in the treasure trove of White House emails related to Solyndra released Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee is one suggesting that concerns about Solyndra’s viability were shared all the way up to then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley a full six months before the company went bust,” ABC News reported on August 3, 2012. “First, some background.”

 

“We’ve known for a while that career analysts at the Office of Management and Budget had told the Department of Energy that they had concerns about Solyndra. The emails show that OMB analyst Kelly Colyar urged the company be shut down and its assets sold off in January 2011. Liquidating Solyndra then, she estimated, would limit taxpayer losses to $141 million. The Department of Energy’s plan to save the company by restructuring the loan, she warned in a January 2011 email, could mean losses “significantly HIGHER” for taxpayers.”

 

“The Department of Energy rejected those warnings, leaving taxpayers on the hook for nearly the full $535 million loan when Solyndra declared bankruptcy last September…Here’s the email, on page 106. (Footnote 732).”

 

 

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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