"Do not – let me repeat – do not use this as an excuse to raise gasoline prices or gouge the American people."
Joe Biden in a speech at the White House as Hurricane Ian’s damage was being assessed.
Even before Hurricane Ian gave Big Oil another excuse to increase prices, magnify profits and slorp at the trough of making money from the pain of others, Putin’s war had already tilted the playing field towards Big Oil: “As fossil fuel giants… reported record profits for the second quarter, an [early August survey] highlighted how eight oil companies have raked in nearly $52 billion over the past three months ‘while Americans continue to struggle at the pump.’
“The review by the watchdog group Accountable.US revealed that from April through June, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Hess Corp, Phillips 66, Shell, and TechnipFMC ‘saw their profits skyrocket from the same time period last year, with income shooting up 235%.’… The analysis also pointed out that leaders at Equinor, Halliburton, Hess Corp, and TechnipFMC have boasted ‘about excellent quarters while dismissing high prices for consumers.’” NationofChange.org, August 1st.
Isn’t it ironic that the industry that one of the principal causes of the intensity of Hurricane Ian could be a major beneficiary of even more windfall profits? Yet any attempt to regulate such price gouging is met with Republican cries of “socialism.” Look up the word, folks, and finally understand what it means: Government, not private ownership of land, wealth and the means of production. That is not happening anywhere in the United States.
In fact, the old-world fossil fuel industry, that amplifier of climate change misery, pretends to be environmentally friendly while spending millions to influence elected officials to slow down the implementation of alternative energy and to expand the use of fossil fuels. In fact, it is Russia’s abundance of oil and gas that hang over major parts of Europe as winter approaches, giving Vladimir Putin leverage he should never have. Job loss? In fact, fossil fuel supporters claim that shifting to alternative energy will cost the nation of millions of jobs, while the precisely opposite is true: For every fossil fuel industry job lost, expect two to three new jobs to be created.
Tanya Kaushal, writing for the September 27th Yahoo!news, has researched the underlying opportunity numbers for this transition from fossil to alternative, renewable sources of energy: “In 2021, 18 million people worked in the energy sector globally, an industry that is projected to grow to 26 million by 2050. Although 9.5 million jobs could potentially be lost in the transition to greener energy, the process won’t create mass unemployment, according to a study published in the One Earth journal. Instead, it will create an additional 17.4 million jobs in renewable energy.
“The biggest increase we see is in manufacturing renewables equipment like wind turbines, solar PV panels, etc., and installation and maintenance of these technologies,” Dr. Johannes Emmerling, a scientist at the European Institute on Economics and the Environment, told Yahoo Finance. (He was co-author of the study.)… The main reason why is due to the ‘much more granular technology’ that will require large quantities of materials, space, and maintenance ‘per GW [gigawatt] of capacity installed,’ he said, adding that those jobs could outnumber those lost by a factor of 2-3…
“As of 2021, jobs in net-zero emissions-aligned areas made up approximately 40% of total energy jobs, the Department of Energy stated in an annual report. And these areas are expected to grow even more rapidly in the coming decades… According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wind turbine service technicians make up the second-fastest growing occupation in the U.S. behind nurse practitioners with a 44% growth rate projected in the next decade.
“Wind turbine technicians earned a median salary of $56,260 in 2021, and the typical job required a certificate but no college degree. The states with the highest employment of wind turbine technicians are Texas, California, and Oklahoma… Solar photovoltaic installers were also cited as one of the fastest-growing jobs in America. This job typically requires a high school diploma and pays $47,670 a year. California, Texas, and Arizona are the states with the most solar PV installers.” Kaushal.
In response to Putin’s war, there has been some backsliding. “Texas [for example] added approximately 4,000 oil field service jobs in April, but throughout the country employment around the oil sector remains below pre-pandemic levels.” Kaushal. Coal is already experiencing a steep decline in global demand. Most nations know that this is the single largest polluter and that there really is no such thing as commercially viable “clean coal.” Gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles are next on the chopping block as electric vehicles are increasingin range, dropping in cost and more rapid charging stations are built. But we still have a long way to go.
“Despite a potential job boom on the horizon, the energy transition is still in the early stages… About 81% of the primary energy sources in the U.S. are fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas — and America relies heavily on them. After China, the U.S. consumes the most fossil fuels annually… The U.S. is also the top producer of fossil fuel-based energy production overall, accounting for 20% of the world's total energy production from hydrocarbons… According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), just 24% of the national electricity generation in the first half of this year came from renewable sources.
“Yet, the fossil fuel industry has been on the decline since 2014. For instance, jobs in the mining industry fell at an annual rate of 3.5% from 2011 to 2021, and it is projected that the annual growth rate will only increase by 1.2% by 2031.” Kaushal. If you look at the recent firestorm and hurricane damage just here in the United States, you know we need to do a lot more much faster. To the extent that big corporate interests and the politicians they have bought try to deny or marginalize the issue, they need to be pushed out of the way so the rest of us can survive!
I’m Peter Dekom, and anytime you hear a politician decry those pushing the United States away from its addiction to oil as leftist plotters, guess who is making big dollar campaign contributions to that candidate?
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