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Could it be that, despite their anger and frustration at high gasoline prices, Americans’ actual behavior patterns tell a different story? That’s what a New York Times article, citing economic research, suggests.  A few key points:

• Americans spend about 5% of their income on gasoline — “less than half of what we spend on restaurants and entertainment.”
• Economic research indicates that rising gasoline prices led to “no significant effect on the consumption of movies, bowling and billiard[s], casino gambling and only insignificant declines for recreational camps, sightseeing, spectator sports and spectator amusements.”
• Americans’ “enthusiasm for car pooling, enhanced public transportation and fuel-efficient vehicles remains relatively low.”
• Americans are particularly incensed at higher gasoline prices mostly because gasoline “is the only volatile commodity that most Americans deal with directly: we are buffered from most other price swings by our relative wealth.”

Finally, the article points out that, “as unpopular as it may sound, the best possible future for most Americans may involve much higher gas prices,” with increased oil  drilling in the United States unlikely to have any significant impact.  In the long term, perhaps those higher prices for oil products like gasoline will increasingly persuade Americans to finally break their “oil addiction,” for instance by converting the economy to clean, renewable energy. In the short term, however, behavior patterns appear far less amenable to change, no matter how high the professed frustration level.

Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its first-ever annual survey on “Employment in Green Goods and Services” (GGS) in the United States. Here are a few key numbers:

*”In 2010, 3.1 million jobs in the United States were associated with the production of [GGS].”

*”GGS jobs accounted for 2.4 percent of total employment in 2010.”

*”Manufacturing had 461,800 GGS jobs, the most among any private sector industry.”

*”Among the states, California had the largest number of GGS jobs (338,400),” while “Vermont had the highest proportion of GGS employment at 4.4 percent.”

Those statistics are impressive in and of itself, but they’re even more impressive when we compare them to employment numbers in the mature, heavily subsidized oil and gas industry.

…According to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data from 2009, the drilling and production of oil and natural gas directly generates 799,100 jobs, not 9.2 million.  If we generously expand the direct jobs to include all of the mining (including oil and gas) support jobs, the total increases to 1.12 million jobs – representing less than 1 percent of total U.S. jobs.

U.S. Department of Labor 2007 statistics indicate the drilling and production of oil and natural gas, plus support activities directly account for 425,025 jobs.  If we further expand direct oil and gas jobs to include questionable sectors such as oil refineries and natural gas distribution, the total increases to 743,825 jobs, not 9.2 million jobs.

In other words, it turns out that “green goods and services” actually employ several times more people (3.1 million) than the oil and gas industry (743,825-1.12 million jobs), according to U.S. government statistics.  Another way to look at it is as a percentage of the economy, where GGS accounts for 2.4% of total employment, while oil and gas clocks in at less than 1%.  Finally, as this analysis points out, many of the jobs claimed by the oil and gas industry are “low wage retail and mixed wage service sectors” (e.g., gas station attendants, convenience store clerks).

The bottom line is that, based on government statistics (not oil and gas industry spin), “green goods and services” — renewable energy, energy efficiency, pollution reduction and removal, recycling,  environmental compliance, etc. – employ several times more people than the oil and gas industry does.  And, with investment surging to “unprecedented levels,” installations of solar panels booming, and renewables the fastest-growing U.S. industry between 2007 and 2011, this gap is only likely to widen in coming years.  That’s definitely a trend to look forward to.

In the March 15 New York Times, Paul Krugman effectively calls out the oil and natural gas industries on their self-perpetuated myth of dirty energy job creation. Here’s an excerpt:

…what about jobs? I have to admit that I started laughing when I saw The Wall Street Journal offering North Dakota as a role model. Yes, the oil boom there has pushed unemployment down to 3.2 percent, but that’s only possible because the whole state has fewer residents than metropolitan Albany — so few residents that adding a few thousand jobs in the state’s extractive sector is a really big deal. The comparable-sized fracking boom in Pennsylvania has had hardly any effect on the state’s overall employment picture, because, in the end, not that many jobs are involved.

And this tells us that giving the oil companies carte blanche isn’t a serious jobs program. Put it this way: Employment in oil and gas extraction has risen more than 50 percent since the middle of the last decade, but that amounts to only 70,000 jobs, around one-twentieth of 1 percent of total U.S. employment. So the idea that drill, baby, drill can cure our jobs deficit is basically a joke.

Of course, despite the fact that the oil and gas “job creation” myth is “basically a joke,” if you turn on your TV there’s a good chance you’ll see industry propaganda like these ads by the American Petroleum Institute (API) or this nonsense (also by API) about a supposed “1 million new American jobs” that could be created through development of North America’s oil and gas resources. Just remember, this industry has almost unlimited amounts of money to spend on these ads, but that doesn’t make them true.  In fact, as this Washington Post article explains, “The API is the best there is at lying with statistics,” such as the fact that “the four biggest oil companies combined — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and BP — reduced their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees between 2005 and 2010.” Details, details.

Just a short post regarding two findings from a new poll by Bloomberg we thought worth passing along:

*66% of Americans blame “oil companies and Middle East nations who are taking advantage of the situation to make more money” for the recent increase in gasoline prices.

*46% of Americans believe that the “single best way for the U.S…to reduce dependency on foreign oil” is to “[e]xpand development of alternative fuels and promote conservation.”

In fact, the best way to reduce our dependence – and expenditures – on gasoline is through aggressive energy efficiency measures, and ultimately a switch away from a fossil-fuel-dependent economy towards one that is powered by abundant, clean, domestic solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable energy. Then, we can all tell the oil companies and Middle East nations what to do with their oil.

Needless to say, we never believed a word the tar sands industry says, whether it relates to the supposed number of jobs created by the Keystone XL pipeline (see here for the real number), or the supposed lack of environmental harm inflicted by tar sands operations. Well, now a new study, published yesterday in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (and cited in the New York Times), demolishes the tar sands industry’s “contention that its planted forests may actually be better than the boreal forest they replace.” To the contrary:

Claims by industry that they will “return the land we use including reclaiming tailings ponds – to a sustainable landscape that is equal to or better than how we found it” (33) and that it “will be replanted with the same trees and plants and formed into habitat for the same species” (34) are clearly greenwashing. The postmining landscape will support >65% less peatland. One consequence of this transformation is a dramatic loss of carbon storage and sequestration potential, the cost of which has not been factored into land-use decisions. To fairly evaluate the costs and benefits of oil sands mining in Alberta, impacts on natural capital and ecosystem services must be rigorously assessed.

The bottom line is this: the more we examine tar sands oil development, including the Keystone XL export pipeline, the worse it looks on every level. How about we focus our efforts – and investments – on clean energy development instead?

P.S.  Cornell is out with a brand new study which finds that “Keystone XL could, over a 50-year period, generate up to 91 major spills.” In turn, a major spill “could inflict significant economic damage, causing workers to lose jobs, businesses to close, and residents to relocate. “