title:  Look Out, Big Oil: ‘Job Creation’ No Longer An Argument As Solar Outpaces Oil
text: While jobs in the solar energy sector account for 39 percent of all world-wide energy employment (while oil accounts for 50 percent), Fortune magazine reports that for the first time in quite a while, there are more openings for solar jobs than oil.Think about that. While the world burns for the next barrel of oil, green energy jobs are outpacing the status quo dirty energy that pulled the United States into a massive war.As Fortune finds:This [trend] corresponds with a recent report by The Solar Foundation that highlighted the rapid growth of the U.S. clean energy sector. By the end of this year, the solar sector should have 240,000 workers under its wings, and currently employs around 77% more workers than the coal mining industry.So why is this happening? Well, since the price of oil has plunged by 60 percent in the last 18 months has caused the world s largest oil and gas companies to cut jobs at an alarming rate. BP has announced it will cut 9 percent of its workforce while Chevron says it will cut 10 percent.This comes as reports show that global investment in renewable energy, most of which has come from China and India, heavy polluters, was more than twice that of coal and gas combined from last year s numbers.Tara Sinclair, chief economist of Indeed, issued a warning to those in the energy industry: see out renewable jobs, not oil.The decline in oil prices has not just rocked that industry, but jobs linked to both fossil fuels and renewable energy. Whether or not solar overtakes oil on Indeed, energy workers would do well to position themselves for work in renewable fields such as solar, wind, and hydroelectricity.With Clinton s pledge to build 600 million more solar fields and a promise to rebuild ravaged coal country with renewable energy, the amount of green workers could surge within the next several years (should she win).Is the country, and the world, moving towards a greener economy? Hopefully, it does and will send a powerful and destructive industry packing.Featured image via Wikipedia