In a few prior pieces, I explored in some detail the Obama Regime’s green energy jihad. Essentially, its goal is to “solve” the “crisis” of global warming by forcing Americans (but not the Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, or anyone else) to switch from plentiful, relatively inexpensive domestic fossil fuels to so-called green energy sources (solar, wind, and biofuels — but not nuclear), fuels that are orders of magnitude more expensive.
This jihad has two fronts. First, the Regime is shelling out massive amounts of taxpayer money to solar, wind, and biofuel companies — usually those that have greased the palms of the corrupt Regime, and often those that have failed despite the insane subsidies lavished on them. Second, the Regime puts every possible regulatory hurdle in front of domestic fossil fuel production, doing its uttermost to stifle the renaissance in American fossil fuel energy production created by recent technological advances.
Two recent stories illustrate the toll in human suffering that this green jihad is inflicting on the American people. The first story notes that the US House of Representatives is — finally! — expanding its probe into the green energy programs spawned by this administration. For example, it is looking at the $500 million in taxpayer cash spent on a “job training” program for “green” industries.
This costly Department of Labor program (part of the “stimulus” bill that stimulated only graft) started with the grand promise of training about 125,000 people and putting at least 80,000 of them into jobs. Well, after a year and a half, the program has trained only about 53,000 people, and placed a ludicrous 8,000 in actual jobs. Yes, that’s about $62,500 per job. One wonders, besides, why those people couldn’t have been trained directly by the companies hiring them.
This criticism has raised howls of outrage from the green brigades. Perhaps the most asinine came from Assistant Secretary of Labor Jane Oates, who defended the program on the ground that is wasn’t intended to provide immediate jobs. So I guess she’s admitting that when Obama said the stimulus projects were “shovel-ready,” he was shoveling lies. Oates proclaimed piteously, “It’s like coming to me three days after I join Weight Watchers and yelling at me because I didn’t lose 62 pounds yet.”
No, sweetheart, it isn’t anything like that. A proper analogy would be this: you force me to pay a half-billion bucks to send you to Weight Watchers (a program you could have paid for yourself), under the theory that you will lose 62 pounds, and a freaking year and a half later you have lost only 6 pounds. Get it?
The second story is about the cost of the Regime’s May 2010 moratorium on all offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, because of BP’s deepwater spill. After fighting with the courts for six months, yes, the Regime lifted the moratorium. But ever since, it has stalled the issuance of the requisite permits. (This stall is called the “permitorium.”) Since the lifting of the moratorium, the number of deepwater permits granted has been 71% lower than the average before the spill. Shallow water permits have dropped 84% from their historic average.
The predictable result has been the destruction of a horrendous number of medium and small businesses, with a concomitant loss of jobs. The Greater New Orleans economic development agency has reported the results of a survey showing that 53% of businesses responding have not hired any workers since the moratorium, and 49% have had to lay off workers. Of the 47% that did hire workers, most were just replacing departing employees or hiring in small numbers, and most of them have reduced hours or wages.
That is because the companies are hurting. 82% of the owners reported losing personal savings as a result of the moratorium-permitorium, with 13% completely emptying their savings accounts. 76% of the companies lost cash reserves. 27% lost more than half of them. Only 59% are now profitable.
Few green jobs created, many fossil-fuel jobs lost — all to satisfy the environmentalist extremists who feed donations to the Green Regime.
