For years now, any discussion about climate action or the need to move off fossil fuels has run headlong into a familiar quandary: The industries fueling the climate crisis create good jobs, often in areas of the country where finding work that can support a family is incredibly difficult.
This leaves activists gesturing towards well-intentioned goals like a "just transition," a promise that likely rings hollow for workers and many labor unions because it's hard to see where this has actually happened—even though, by every measure, we need to create some real policies that turn this vision into reality.
Some of the most common jobs estimates are produced by the American Petroleum Institute , the powerful oil and gas trade association. Over the years, API has released reports claiming that the domestic fracking industry creates somewhere between 2.5 million to, both directly and indirectly. These numbers—or versions of them—are floated in political debates and in the media, but they are significantly out of step with other estimates, including the federal government's labor reports.