Posted on 05/03/2014 8:14:38 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
...Five years ago, “green jobs” were all the rage in Washington. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was rolled out with a win-win agenda aimed at fixing the economy and healing the environment at once. Candidate Obama touted a “blueprint” for a green economy, with plans to create 5 million green jobs.
Though federal green initiatives have provided vital seed money for wind farms and solar-generation projects nationwide, the blue-collar workers who have the most to gain from the projected clean-tech boom are still struggling to find any job, much less a green one.
Indeed, some environmentalists say that green jobs might have been a more sustainable political venture if they had been more realistically billed as part of a broader climate change policy, not a big jobs booster in a slumped economy.
Rather than bean-counting with job statistics and return-on-investment figures, activists can start rethinking green within the context of social protection, and focus on building policies around social equity—from subsidizing green power for low-income households, to shifting jobs from coal plants to the solar panels. Environmentalism can be a populist movement—if the political framing of climate policy centers not on just cutting carbon but cultivating justice.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
The real green in Obama’s green revolution was the green color of the money he and his pals stole from taxpayers.
“activists can start rethinking green within the context of social protection, and focus on building policies around social equity—from subsidizing green power for low-income households, to shifting jobs from coal plants to the solar panels. Environmentalism can be a populist movement—if the political framing of climate policy centers not on just cutting carbon but cultivating justice.”
scary paragraph
same place as Obama’s past
Some 35 years ago I took thermodynamics from a former astronaut. As part of the lecture and homework we worked through dozens of what are now called “green” schemes. None of them made any sense at all. They were tremendously more expensive than oil or coal or natural gas. He debunked all of them. There never were any “green” jobs and there most likely never will be.
I just drove from NY to CO for the first time in many years.
Western Iowa, which used to be rolling plains of corn, beans, and occasional tree line with wind gently rippling over it.
Now the view is marred by huge windmills. 500 foot tall monstrosities. I feel that western Iowa has been violated, in order to save a few million cubic feet of natural gas.
Same place as:
* Transporter Operator
* Ghost Buster (paid ones with traps and ghost-stopping weapons)
* Flying Car Limo driver
* Bitcoin Bank Teller
* Pleasant DMV clerk
Where have all the green jobs gone?
Short time passing.
Where have all the jobs gone?
Short time ago.
Where have all the jobs gone?
The Democrats have closed them ev’ry one.
Oh, When will they ever learn?
Oh, When will they ever learn?
The only Green Job™ left is shoveling up all the dead birds around the wind turbines.
The economic factor is what killed the “green” jobs. There was no incentive to pay more for a product (energy) from some unreliable and uncertain source, so long as there were good reliable sources available.
All the “green energy” schemes were totally dependent on a back-up source of power generation, to even make them feasible. Short summation - why invest in the uncertain and unreliable method, when the certain and reliable source was still vastly cheaper in terms of infrastructure, operating costs, and distribution, and it had to be built anyway?
Every one of these schemes depended on the presence of a back-up in the form of natural gas fired power plants.
When we run out of natural gas (and there is no such thing as “peak production” of natural gas), then we can talk about “alternative energy”.
Unicorns, rainbows, and pixie dust.
Indeed, that is one of the weirdest paragraphs I’ve read in a long time. I worked in scores of industrial and utility power plants as a field service engineer right out of school, and I can tell you, out of the hundreds of plant workers I worked with, NOT ONE was concerned about “cultivating justice.” They cared about getting their checks and keeping their jobs.
The author is saying the envirokooks can create a populist movement if they focus on “cultivating justice.” Shouldn’t populist movements by definition arise on their own free accord? If public opinion has to be shaped and molded so we all see the wonders of “cultivating justice,” then it cannot be a populist movement.
These people are scary because of the outsize disproportionate control they have over our everyday lives. How the tiny extreme fringe of envirokooks came to dictate how we live our lives and force things we don’t want on us is a huge mystery. Shutting down coal plants, destroying dams, light bulbs, microcars with 57 mpg, appliances that don’t work, toilets that don’t flush, and on and on.
Maybe in 100, 500, 1,000, or 5,000 years when the fossil fuels are finally gone. Fundamental economics will take care of the problem when the time requires it.
Gone with the flowers, everyone.
They were illusory just as tax cuts to produce jobs. The jobs were exported by both parties. Restore MADE IN USA and restore prosperity.
You speak the truth: Obama and his buddies have looted the Treasury of the United States and it will be years until the full amount is completely calculated.
There may be no “fossil” fuels. Companies are finding oil almost everywhere once they get down several miles. The theory is oil is created by deep planet bacteria. Wells that were “dry” in the 1940’s are pumping again. If the fossil theory was true they’d go dry and stay that way. (See book at url.)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Deep-Hot-Biosphere-Fossil/dp/0387952535
“It appears Ivanpah may act as a ‘mega-trap,’ attracting insects which in turn attract insect-eating birds, which are incapacitated by solar-flux injury, thus attracting predators and creating an entire food chain vulnerable to injury and death,” concluded scientists with the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in a report that investigated 233 bird deaths representing 71 species at three Southern California solar power plants. -- Todd Woody, Atlantic, April 28, 2014
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