Conservative estimates put U.S. direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion per year; with 20 percent currently allocated to coal and 80 percent to natural gas and crude oil.Jul 29, 2019 So end the subsidies and put the $20 billion into unemployment, retraining and expanding jobs in renewables.
You can’t seriously think unemployment and retraining is an equitable substitute for well paying jobs where people are willing to work...nor that job quantities in renewables comes close to the amount in oil and gas not looking to argue about how you feel on fossil fuels/jobs vs green energy at all but don’t pretend that what you proposed makes actual sense from the willing workers perspective.
Do it now or do it later, the O&G is going to contract. Do it with a plan or have a slow rolling disaster. The industry has had 3 major job cutbacks in my lifetime, the boom and bust nature is systemic.
Guess I just disagree that the “plan” of instantly working to eliminate lots of jobs while we are still reeling from so many other Americans willing to work but unable to due to the pandemic when the demand and infrastructure for fossil fuels remains unchanged is too extreme. Instead we just rely on buying from other countries as demand and need remains unchanged in the short term. Having many family and friends in the industry and living in a city where the industry is vital makes me very biased on this. So once you actually find and build the proposed green infrastructure and can make a switch, then the jobs can potentially be eliminated. Until then you are just rewarding other countries as consumption remains steady and to me that is insanely unfair. But I know many will disagree.
From what I recall of his longer stump speech, this issue led Yang to move away from "retraining" toward UBI. He worked for years on a jobs training program in the midwest, if memory serves, and he described it as a failure.
I know, and care, little to none about either's dating choices. The question whether Biden's executive orders will be as controversial or divisive in relation to his immediate predecessor does interest me (and has garnered 7 pages of discussion thus far). If he's attempting to be President of all Americans it is important that he have coadunate policies not alienating ones. Updated... no promises I'll continue this for the next 4 years. It'd be cool if forums had a collaborative post option.
I know, but ask the 65 year old guys, they have been through it before, probably twice where a large percentage of O&G workers were laid off. Somewhere around 1985 a popular bumper sticker in Houston said " Lord, please give us another oil boom, I promise we won't piss it away next time" The 1980s Oil Bust Almost Broke Houston. Almost It was brutal. Houston lost 211,000 jobs between February 1982 and March 1987. One out of eight Houstonians were unemployed because of the downturn. Tent cities became a part of the landscape. “Real estate collapsed because we had overbuilt,” says Gilmer. “All those people who’d moved down here from Michigan gave the banks the keys to their homes and moved back, because there was simply no work h
I agree with Dubious. What we're seeing happening with coal should be a warning to the O&G industry. While O&G is still going to be with us for decades the technology is there already to make them obsolete as energy sources and the infrastructure for that to happen is already being built. Rather than fall behind and have to make major changes when the market for those is drying up the US should be looking to get ahead. There is a reason why the PRC invested so heavily the last decade in green technology. Even while they are still polluting they've already long since known that it is getting closer to the end. The US has already lost a lot of ground to the PRC and further delay will only cause the US to drop further behind.
I didn’t state that oil and gas wasn’t going to go the route of coal. I stated there is zero reason this week to start with attacking the industry when demand is the same and the green technology has not been put in place. All Biden is doing right now is putting US workers out of jobs without having the infrastructure built and helping other countries. While we are USING the oil and gas, we should do so domestically as much as possible employing American workers. All these executive orders were was this new admin telling the country they plan to go big on climate. That’s fine but it isn’t necessary this week and will cost a lot of people their livelihoods prematurely. Do it when you actually have alternative energy ready
The problem with that is unless we start sooner rather than later we won't have the alternative energy ready to provide US jobs. Not that long ago the US was the leader in manufacturing and technology for wind and solar. Now Germany and the PRC are the leaders in those. Transitions are never easy but the longer we wait the harder the transition will be.
Solar is a pretty cut throat business and China owns it. I don't see how US is going to competitive in it. I guess we will import a lot of panels from China.
Did you direct them to the FERC website or Lexco OWL and have them count the eleventy gillion hits that come up for approved facilities or active leases.
People will lose jobs, it's inevitable. Some will switch to a well-paying green energy job, some will switch to other well-paying jobs, some will take lower-paying jobs, some will be flat out unemployed. It sucks when well-paying jobs become obsolete and lost, but it's no excuse to not do what's necessary for the people of our country, the people of this planet, and our future generations. It's a losing game and a bad argument, we don't for example, not attempt to stop the opioid crisis, in fear that a reduction in demand/production will lead to people losing jobs at the big drug companies.
You need a paradigm shift buddy. Removing subsidies (handouts) isn't attacking an industry. It's just letting market forces do the work for the industry without government's helping hand. It's the purest form of capitalism. Americans love capitalism. What's not to like about letting market forces handle oil and gas?
I need a paradigm shift buddy? I stated that removing subsidies and putting money into retraining and having workers accept unemployment is not an even trade for good jobs. I didn’t discuss whether or not subsidies should be in place. And ironic you say let the market take care of itself while defending not letting the market take care of itself by using executive actions to stymie the US industry while demand (the market) remains stagnant. If you want clean energy, build the infrastructure first and “the market” will take care of itself as demand will wane and you don’t just buy foreign oil while the demand stays the same. These actions will put lots of people out of work when the demand stays the same. We can’t consume less fossil fuels without the actual alternative energy sources in place.
