Real Damage

calendar userTimothy Schell

The buffoonery is obvious. Let’s recognize it, move on, and waste no more energy reacting to each embarrassing example of this behavior.

Let’s focus on the damage to:

  • The Planet
  • Wage Earners
  • The Economy
  • Our Place in the World

The Planet:
The EPA Administrator is a former energy lobbyist whose biggest clients included Murray Energy Corporation and vigorously fought the Obama administration’s attempts to reduce carbon emissions and strengthen environmental and public health laws. Shortly after the current administration took office, the CEO of Murray, a fervent climate denier, handed the Vice “commander” a self-serving pro-coal “action plan” that called for doing away with the Clean Power Plan, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, eliminating federal tax credits for renewable energy, and cutting the EPA’s workforce in half.

The issue here is that the “energy” companies have a lot of their balance sheet assets in the ground and are very protective. They want to postpone the future while they extract and lobby.

Job opportunities:
 “… on average, 2.65 full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs are created from $1 million spending in fossil fuels, while that same amount of spending would create 7.49 or 7.72 FTE jobs in renewables or energy efficiency. This means that each $1 million shifted from brown to green energy will create a net increase of 5 jobs. ”

95% of the World is Not US:
Since there is no strategy behind the impetuous tough talk, sanctions, summit meetings and “maximum pressure” campaigns we are rolling the dice. While China plans ahead for 2025 with their ambitious Belt and Road initiative in Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe, we isolate ourselves with no idea what we need to do, to keep up. We will need friends!

Ignore the Distractions!