Go ahead...pick a number...any number-- as long as it's over a million.
Nowadays-- no matter where you turn-- we're being inundated with an unending parade of politicians, TV-radio spots, news broadcasts, talk show interviews, etc., all trumpeting the same, grandiose promises of the so-called green energy revolution ..."It will create millions of new green energy jobs, and reduce our dependency on foreign oil!"
Ho hum (yawn).
Whenever any liberal politician talks about our new green-energy economy, it's become de rigueur to "hyperbolate" about the unlimited millions of new jobs at hand, once we switch to renewable energy sources. Examples abound:
Barack Obama promises..."We're going to create 5 million new green energy jobs that cannot be outsourced!"
Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania... "We're going to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs with clean green energy..."
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland..."Renewable energy can create millions of new green jobs."
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm..."A transition to a green economy will create millions of new green jobs and will reduce our dependency on foreign oil."
Henry Waxman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Chairman Edward Markey of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee..."Our clean energy legislation will create jobs, help end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, and combat global warming."
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, in her speech at the New Hampshire Forum on the Future..."Millions of new jobs will be created in alternative energy, and energy efficiency."
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Cal)... "Green energy means green jobs”..."President Obama's new auto mileage CAFE standards are one big step toward creating up to five million new green jobs, and will fuel long-term economic development."
Even England's Gordon Brown is jumping on the bandwagon: (quote) "The president and I share the conviction that green technologies will be a major driver of our future economic growth, and we can create millions of green-collar jobs in the world for the future.”
Whew...that's mighty impressive-- add 'em up: So far, we've totaled at least 30 million new green energy jobs, have virtually eliminated our dependency on foreign oil, and we're still counting!
But before we all go hoarse cheering, who was it that said..."There's a sucker born every minute?"
Calling P.T. Barnum; we're being suckered by both the press and these self-serving politicians, who know nothing about science; know nothing about the hard realities of economics, and ignore the fact that less than 4% of U.S energy is currently generated by "renewables."
These untold millions of green energy jobs-- that promise to combat atmospheric "climate change"-- are little more than pie in the sky.
EXAMPLE: Our blowhard politicians omit one grossly inconvenient truth: the failure to consider the millions of jobs LOST due to the massive changes they espouse for the U.S. economy.
Legislation requiring a shift from fossil fuels displaces jobs at coal mines, oil fields, refineries, power plants (plus their support industries), and will do little other than sentencing millions of ex energy workers to the unemployment lines.
But not to worry-- they'll be replacement jobs aplenty.
The green energy revolution will spark a boom in "administrative services"-- huge increases in trial lawyers, government regulators & administrators, not to mention the ballooning staffs the EPA will require to enforce these preposterous measures.
But for now, the political momentum appears unstoppable. A prime example of the green energy mania can be found in the Keystone state-- Pennsylvania:
Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, is raising taxes and spending more than $2 billion on clean, green energy investments; and of course, this includes the standard obligatory promise to create hundreds of thousands of new "green" jobs.
Thus far, Rendell's efforts have been an abject failure.
His first $1 billion of green energy "investments" created a whopping 3,500 new jobs; a cost to taxpayers of a mere $285,000 per job-- a shining model of efficiency.
Rendell won't be in line for the Nobel Prize in economics anytime soon.
And if one were to extrapolate the data from Pennsylvania, it would cost the federal government more than $1.1 TRILLION to replace the estimated 3-4 million conventional energy jobs, destroyed by a nationwide push to renewables.
Aside Pennsylvania, another voice shouting in the wind comes from yet another brilliant democrat, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland...(quote) "Wind turbines and other renewable sources are not only a less-polluting means of diversifying the state's energy sources, but also, as a job-development tool."
Governor Insanity (er, Strickland) wants to make the Ohio Turnpike an "advanced energy corridor", using state land to site wind turbines and other renewable energy technologies.
And if state legislators allow Strickland to get his way, Ohio will soon see dozens of giant, hideous windmills sprouting up offshore in Lake Erie .
Turn baby, turn... this is fabulous news! Stricklands "advanced" land /lake energy corridor will be based on the 500 year-old, 16th century technology of windmills.
Picture it now it now... driving along the scenic Ohio Turnpike...dodging thousands of dead birds, slaughtered by the whirring 40 foot diameter of windturbine blades. ODOT (Ohio Dept. of Transportation) will indeed experience a job boom in roadway cleanup crews hired.
And out in pristine Lake Erie, consider the dilemma of the "pleasure" boaters, who now have to dodge hundreds of anti-scenic, offshore wind turbine installations, most of which will remain calm on the numerous wind-free days that are typical of northern Ohio weather.
So who was it that said..."look before you leap?"
As America rushes intrepidly into the renewable energy era (and attempts to clean-up the atmosphere) what becomes of the effort if the large developing nations, like China and India, refuse take the same dramatic steps-- something they're unlikely to do.
China recently surpassed the U.S. to become the world's number-one emitter of CO2; and India is fast coming up to supplant the United States as number two.
If the goal of our actions is to prevent global warming, then to what end? No matter what the U.S. and the western countries may do to restrict emissions, China's carbon dioxide output is on track to double (or possibly treble) during the next decade,
So basically, the money the U.S. government spends on renewables will serve no other purpose than to subsidize the Chinese economy, and concomitantly penalize our own.
Attention Al Gore-- here's the BIGGEST inconvenient truth-- why spend billions to restict CO 2 emissions in the U.S. when it's a scientific fact that all of China's (and India's) rapidly-increasing CO2 output all eventually mixes within the upper atmosphere anyway?
Short of building a gigantic, green energy bubble over each one of these "offending" countries, all U.S. environmental efforts will be for naught.
Unlike our liberal, coconut-head politicians in Congress, China recognizes the undeniable indications from around the globe-- green energy literally does not pay.
Evidence from Spain and Germany (and other countries that have attempted to fast-track growth in their green-energy sectors) reveals that such policies often destroy more jobs in other industries than they actually create, and have done virtually nothing to reduce atmospheric CO2.
And in reality-- after the U.S. plunges headlong into this climatological fools' errand-- how much global warming are we really avoiding? How many conventional jobs are lost as we destroy our economy in a futile attempt to remake it?
But repeating mistakes has long been a storied part of Washington's misguided energy policies of the past.
Unlike China, the U.S. will spend untold billions on windmills, solar panels, biodiesel, ethanol, switchgrass, refined cooking grease, and every other boondoogle these radical environmental extremists in Congress attempt to legislate down our throats.
But fifty years from now, the U.S. will still be using fossil fuels; the internal combustion engine will have survived America's foolhardy rush to electric cars; and those blowhard, windmill-touting politicians will have eaten their words.
The law of economics cannot be repealed. Sooner rather than later, the green energy bubble is bound to burst, and America will return to its former sanity.
Or so we hope.