5 million new jobs? Yeah!! right?
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122601449992806743.html
On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama argued that spending $150 billion over the next decade to boost energy efficiency would help create five million jobs. The jobs would include insulation installers, to make houses more energy-efficient, wind-turbine builders, to displace coal-fired electricity, and construction workers, to build greener buildings and upgrade the electrical grid...
Critics say analyzing only new green jobs misses half the story.
"It's not looking at the other side of the coin: You are spending more money for your energy," says Anne Smith, a vice president at CRA International. The consulting firm wrote a report for the coal-mining industry in April that concluded that, under a bill to cap global-warming emissions, gains in green jobs would be "more than offset" by job losses elsewhere in the economy. That bill failed, but Mr. Obama has said he supports capping emissions.
The green-jobs argument isn't new. In the 1970s, amid an energy and economic crisis, President Jimmy Carter cited job creation as one reason for his calls to increase federal spending on renewable-energy research and development. But the argument has taken on new life in the past few years, as environmental activists have concluded that saving the planet isn't enough to make most Americans support higher government spending.
The job creation number cited by Mr. Obama has its roots in several green-jobs studies. Each projected different numbers, because each made different assumptions -- for instance, about the number of additional jobs that would be created by the spending of every person directly employed in a green job.
Robert Pollin, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who co-wrote another study, questions the job target touted by the Obama campaign, saying it would cost much more.
Mr. Pollin's study, sponsored by the Center for American Progress, came out in September, after green jobs had become a theme on the presidential campaign trail. It said that $100 billion spent over two years could produce two million green jobs.
Even Mr. Pollin's study assessed only the number of jobs that might be added if the government spent more money on clean energy. It didn't count jobs that might be lost elsewhere in the economy if the country shifted to costlier sources of energy.
Mr. Pollin says he's working on a fuller study now. He and other green-jobs advocates say that, on balance, shifting to cleaner sources of energy creates more jobs than it destroys.
The Apollo Alliance, a San Francisco coalition of environmental and labor groups, also released a study in September. It concluded that five million green jobs could be had with an investment of $500 billion -- more than three times Mr. Obama's number.
Kate Gordon, co-director of the Apollo Alliance, says the numbers are less important than the message. "Honestly," she says, "it's just to inspire people."
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Word to the wise:
What liberals do to solve a problem, bring out the exact opposite of what they alledgedly intended.
It's just a fact. Don't slur the messenger...
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hey boyz and girlz we are about hopefully about to survive the most destructive years for America ever...........maybe the depression was worse but I doubt it...........
so lets give peace and prosperity a chance...................and become an Obama Nation
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Why did Obama say he was going to favor putting the coal businesses out of business with high rates of taxes and fees?
About ONE HALF of the elctricity in our US comes from coal. And Obama doesn't want nuclear plants.
Obama has been all about radical platitudes his whole career.
Now, if he actually does become president, he'll have to live in the real world with
real world solutions.
And the left will not be happy.
People have already been installing wood burning outdoor furnaces to heat their homes if
electricity or propane or natural gas becomes too expensive or critically rationed...
The firewood market is already huge.
120-150 a rick?
Got big beautiful woods for our neighbors' furnaces if the worst ever happens...
big downed older trees....
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