Clean Energy Investments, Jobs, And U.S. Economic Well-Being: A Third Response To Heritage Foundation Critics

Abstract

The Heritage Foundation recently released a response to “The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy" by Robert Pollin, James Heintz & Heidi Garrett-Peltier, which, surprisingly, finds consensus on the central point of that study: that investments in clean energy will generate roughly three times more jobs than spending the same amount of money within our fossil fuel energy infrastructure. Where the PERI authors and Janet Campbell of Heritage differ, however, is over the question of whether this job creation is inherently a good thing for the U.S. economy. In this brief response paper, Pollin, Heintz & Garrett-Peltier lay out their case that the U.S. economy will benefit greatly from creating an abundance of new job opportunities for people at all levels of income and credentials, and that it is a double benefit that these new job opportunities will mean mobilizing the U.S. workforce to the project of building a clean-energy economy and thereby defeating global warming.