Yeah. About those green jobs.

According to Ted Strickland, green jobs are the wave of the future.

The Dispatch's Joe Hallett agrees. His series on green jobs that appeared this week in the Big D had nary a critical perspective.

But Ohioans have been given a gift. A chance to see if it really can work.

Our friends a hemisphere away have already given a government-driven green jobs push the old college try.

And they failed.

A Spanish economics professor said attempts by his country to create a green economy would fail. Now a Spanish government report confirms his findings, blunting claims that the professor's report was biased.

The professor, Gabriel Calzada Alvarez of Juan Carlos University in Madrid, produced a 41-page study last year on the European experiment of going full bore on the conservation front. He found that "the Spanish/EU-style 'green jobs' agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs."

For every green job created by the Spanish government, Alvarez found that 2.2 jobs were destroyed elsewhere in the economy because resources were directed politically and not rationally, as in a market economy.

And yet, Strickland wants to repeat the exact same mistakes.

And why? Because of politics. Pushing for green jobs is the only way he can try to appease both those Independents focused on job creation and the liberal base he needs to inspire to vote.

Let's focus on our entire economy, Governor.

Improve the overall business environment and provide an incentive for all.