The promise of abundant oil jobs was dangled before us as an incentive—despite the fact that clean energy industries were some of the only sectors to show strong growth at the height of the Great Recession, and 3.1 million jobs in the United States were associated with the production of green goods and services in 2010.12 In contrast the single-largest category of people working directly for the petroleum industry in 2011 was cashiers at gasoline stations and stations with convenience stores.
So what did we get for our fidelity to Big Oil back then? Instead of choosing to invest in clean and efficient energy solutions post-2012, giving consumers and businesses a choice in what kind of electricity and fuel to produce and use, we committed ourselves to a carbon-intensive, extractive economic future. We kept drilling and burning, and we kept spewing noxious CO2, smog, and other pollutants into the air at exponential rates. (see graph)
While professing our desire not to leave a worse future to our children, we chose the path guaranteed to do exactly that. We went against the beliefs and best interests of the Millennial generation, 71 percent of whom believed that America’s energy policy priority should be developing alternative sources of energy.
And so we arrive in 2030, where we increasingly struggle to deal with the consequences of our shortsightedness in 2012.
via America’s Future Under ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’.