Brita Belli, at E: The Environmental Magazine, took a crack at these questions, too, with her cover story, “Welcome to Green-Collar America.” She doesn’t nail the coverage, but she does give readers a quantitative idea of what’s going on with green employment:

The ten Midwestern states, ideally suited for wind energy development, could see nearly 37,000 new jobs by 2020, according to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, if the nation’s renewable energy portfolio were set to twenty-two percent.

The problem is that 37,000 jobs over twelve years will barely make a dent in the number of blue-collar jobs that are being lost. The U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in March alone, 48,000 manufacturing and 51,000 construction jobs were lost. E&E Publishing’s recently launched ClimateWire has done a particularly good job of parsing these statistics, especially in light of the presidential campaigns, but this is the kind of comparison more news outlets need to make.

During a contentious election season in which the candidates are relying heavily on viral buzzwords like “green jobs,” it’s all the more important for the press to parse the sound bites. Five million new jobs sounds great in a speech-especially to workers in ailing economies like those in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana-but it’s a disservice to the reader if there isn’t sufficient analysis of how such virescent promises may actually hold up.

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