If drilling domestically for oil/gas could create a whole lot of jobs would we be for it?

[dkf]

I'm beginning to think that even if we don't drill here, it's not like someone wouldn't drill somewhere else and that we wouldn't use the same amount of fossil fuels anyway.

Is there not hypocrisy involved expecting other countries to take the environmental damage for the oil we insist on using at a low price and as we wish?

[midnight]

1. I think another question needs to be asked.... Why not invest in more sustainable energy that

will create new jobs?

[holdencaufield]

2. Suggestions? NT

[SugarShack]

3. All gov buildings in Germany have been solar powered for over 30 yrs now. Start there for now.

lots of jobs there....

[holdencaufield]

7. Solar Panels...

...controllers, inverters, and most of the components are made in China. I'm not sure how this equates to American jobs.

[SugarShack]

16. Oh my then this means we can't manufacture what China does? oh darn!

you're like children. Import fees on certain items is not a bad thing. Especially if we are "outfitting" our country, Maybe if the air and heat bills were not so high in government bldge they could hire more. Crap, my sister is doing the job that three used to do...she is wiped out!

[gateley]

18. Make them here. Give tax incentives to corporations who will

do that.

I know, sounds so easy, right? I have no idea what actually accomplishing that would entail. But that's what I'd like to SEE happen.

I just don't like the idea of any more drilling or mining.

[holdencaufield]

26. Solyndra NT

[patrice]

31. Happened at almost exactly the WORST possible moment in our current economy. nt

[holdencaufield]

33. But it had to happen...

...the US just isn't capable of competing on price-points with manufacture of solar infrastructure in China. Going green is a great idea -- BUT it doesn't create "Green American Jobs".

[patrice]

43. Yes. Timing is sooo important. I suppose it's too much to hope to see a national

manufacturing policy (something like Germany has . . .?) that helps stake holders deal with this sort of question.

That would be worth something from Labor too!

[Pab Sungenis]

35. Fuck tax incentives...

give GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS to corporations who will do it.

[gateley]

39. Yes! You're right! nt

[dkf]

4. That was my question ages ago but it's just not happening.

Obama didn't do anything to help spur demand and there's nothing I see down the road. I think he kind of blew it.

[JustAnotherGen]

41. Amen

[Fridays Child]

5. I'm pretty sure that drilling is going on all over the country.

It's never stopped in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. They drill in Kansas, Louisiana, and Illinois, too. There are oil fields opening in North Dakota, from what I've heard, and they continue to drill in California, both coastally and inland.

[tblue]

6. If making Zyklon B created a lot of jobs......?

Hell no. We need to move on to new energy technologies. Oil is literally killing us.

[Cerridwen]

8. Ah, the owl versus the logger.

Haven't we done this before?

Maybe it's time to look up the chain. Squint passed the shower being trickled down upon us.

[Arctic Dave]

9. I hate to break it to you but already are drilling for oil and gas here.

Not sure what fields out there you think we aren't drilling. Sure there little finds sprinkled through the country but we have zero fields within the borders of this country that could remotely meet the absurd amounts of oil we use.

For what it's worth, I work in the largest oil field in the US. Prudhoe Bay Alaska.

[dkf]

19. I'm not thinking of replacing foreign sources, just creating what jobs we can.

What about the Bakken shale?

Halliburton hiring thousands to work in N.D. oil fields
Date: Friday, August 26, 2011, 6:40am CDT - Last Modified: Friday, August 26, 2011, 6:49am CDT

Halliburton    plans to hire 11,000 employees this year and send most of them to the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, which is turning out to be one of the most important oil finds in U.S. history.

Jim Brown, the Western Hemisphere president for Halliburton, revealed the company's plans to CNBC's Jim Cramer, who was broadcasting from the Bakken Shale, the Houston Business Journal reports.

Halliburton will hire employees for multiple job types, from people with MBAs to engineers to unskilled workers, Brown said.

“If you have a willingness to work and an aptitude to learn with a high school education, within a year and a half to two years, you can become a front-line supervisor. That job will pay $125,000 to $130,000 a year,” Brown told Cramer. “What we’re doing here, we’re replicating across the nation.”

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/morning_roundup/2011/08/halliburton-jobs-north-dakota-oil.html

[Arctic Dave]

37. "a frontline supervisor"? Uh, what made up position is that.

The fact is there is only so many drilling rigs and support equipment out there. Almost all of it is being used.

I hate tell you this but this article is sheer oil company propaganda. I read it daily. This is just for the people who don't know anything about the oilfield. They promise jobs for everyone, money flowing out your pockets, but wierdly, it never materializes.

Also, Halliburton is one of the lowest paying companies in the field, the only way you would make that type of money is if you work twenty-four seven, three sixty five.

[scentopine]

10. If lead in paint, drinking water and gasoline would create more jobs - would you be for it?

China's just going to do it, so why shouldn't we?

[scentopine]

11. If making DDT legal again would create more jobs - would you be for it?

I mean China and India and Africa are just going to use it anyway. Fair's fair.

[scentopine]

12. If deregulating the banking industry would create more jobs - would you be for it?

I mean republicans are just going to do it anyway, what's the harm?

[scentopine]

14. If requiring everyone to carry a gun made us all safer - would you be for it?

I mean criminals and psychopaths are just going to carry them anyway.

[scentopine]

15. If giving Wall Street CEOs huge bailouts of tax payer cash created jobs - would you be for it?

[scentopine]

17. If allowing corps to dump toxic materials into atmosphere created more jobs - would you be for it?

China and India is just going to do it anyway.

[scentopine]

21. If sending more jobs to India and China created more jobs.... hey, wait a minute....

IF WE STOPPED SENDING JOBS TO CHINA AND INDIA WE WOULD CREATE MORE JOBS THAN ALL THAT OTHER SHIT COMBINED!

Finally, a realistic solution to our economic crisis.

[Lucian]

13. Absolutely...

not.

We should invest in alternative energy, like solar or wind power. Once we start accepting those, then jobs will be created because wind generators and solar panels need to be built and installed.

[dkf]

22. So why didn't it work under Obama?

I had high hopes but they are pretty much splattered now. And with two US solar companies failing...seriously WTH?

[FarLeftFist]

20. But it doesn't create a 'whole lot of jobs'.

[dkf]

25. 70,000 in North Dakota?

North Dakota State University estimates the oil workforce has gone from just over 5,000 in 2005 to over 18,000 in 2009.

Hamm said the industry now employs 30,000 in the state, and if production does hit a million barrels a day, it could employ over 100,000 people there.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/04/news/economy/oil_shale_bakken/index.htm

[Arctic Dave]

38. 70,00 people to produce a million BPD?

Those numbers are waaaaay full of shit. 70,000 people to pruduce that much of oil wouldn't pencil out unless they all made minimum wage. We produce 500,000 barrels a day and we do it with 5,000 people. Like I said more oil company propaganda. Nice try though.

[FarLeftFist]

40. Riiiiight. Just what we need "70,000" more people raping the Earth.

We don't have a demand problem, what's the rush to destroy the environment?!

[napoleon_in_rags]

23. Its a devil's trade we don't need to make. Creating jobs is easy in a sense.

First, on the drilling. The info that's coming out is saying that getting at the new oil is making a bigger and bigger mess for future generations to clean up, and that's basically the thinking we need to be getting away from, whether its leaving them land that's dirty and stripped of resources or a mountain of debt to China. The questions we need to be asking are are how can we start to a lay a foundation of something that's really useful to them, like our grandparents did for us. That pushes us in two directions 1) renewable energy infrastructure 2) REALLY smart fossil fuel usage. (holy grail is still hydrocarbon combustion that outputs valuable carbon based product instead of C02, totally scientifically possible) We need to move toward a position where something like a carbon sequestration break through can be instantly harnessed, and that means getting real about electric cars, even if gasoline is turning the turbines to charge them.

On jobs, I keep remembering this FDR speech. We (Dems) look at him as this great leader, but in some ways he had any EASY task in ending the great depression. He said it in a speech I am too lazy to find, but wildly paraphrasing:

"I see unemployed with no income who can't eat, I see employers, farmers afraid to hire workers to grow food because they fear nobody will have any money to buy it. Yet there is no shortage of good land to grow food, no shortage of shovels or hoes, and no shortage of good men to work the fields and grow the food, and if these men were paid to do so, there would be no shortage of income for the farmers who paid them when selling that food"

So the situation was easy, there was limitless potential for production with people scared and sitting on their hands. FDR knew he could do anything. He could print money of thin air if that was what it took to get the workers in the fields growing food, and the real value they added to the economy from the food would validate the previously fake currency. He understood the capitalist illusion, the rich don't produce anything, they get people to produce for themselves and hand the fruits of their own labor back to them, charging a fee for the privilege. So the answer to the jobs crisis was simple, you get people working on producing economic value in the name of any currency you want, and the fruits of their labor will prop up the currency.

But notice an important part of what FDR said: no shortage of land, hoes, men. When there is a real shortage of oil, or land, that's a real DEPRESSION like we haven't seen before, the Great Depression was an irrational snit in comparison. So resource issues trump perception based economic issues in every way. Burning the last resources of future generations and leaving them a weird, hyper polluted debt slavery state because America needed to get out its latest snit is simply not tolerable.

[flvegan]

24. Declaring war on China would probably "create" a "whole lot of jobs"

But still not a good idea in the long run.

[scentopine]

27. Deep water drilling was supposed to create 100,000 jobs and

boost the economy.

This is not counting the people employed part-time to mop up after oil spill disasters.

Fracking is even more dangerous than deep water drilling with the ability to destroy entire aquifers with highly toxic solvents and lubricants.

'Fracking' Pollution In Water: Pennsylvania Allows Natural Gas Drilling Waste Disposal In Waterways

DAVID B. CARUSO 01/ 3/11 10:32 PM AP

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/03/fracking-pollution-in-wat_n_803737.html

It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear Obama announce this as a great plan for the economy. Along with cutting social security and medicare.

God help us all with the republicans running the democratic party.

[wtmusic]

28. If we're going to go down that road, just start another war.

Tried and true.

[scentopine]

30. Yep - three wars and 100,000+ slaughtered to secure oil in middle east

and trashed the Gulf of Mexico with exploding oil rigs and Japan has exploding nuke plants, three mile island almost melted down - and now what - we are supposed to fuck up all the ground water with fracking chemicals?

I guess that would make our planetary destruction complete - nuclear radiation, oil pollution, smog and poisoned ground water.

Jesus - what sort of democrat comes up with these shitty ideas?

[raouldukelives]

29. I think clearly at this point the writing is on the wall

for climate change. Continuing to consume massive amounts of fossil fuels at this point is just thumbing your nose at future generations. So sure, the USA would be all for it.

[patrice]

32. ONLY in exchange for equal & rigourous longitudinal commitments to ALTERNATIVES.

[grahamhgreen]

34. NO. All you have to do is build a bunch of windmills and electric cars. Wind is cheaper than oil to

run cars on, at about 1/10 the cost.

[theophilus]

36. If we could eat for free by cutting off and cooking our left leg would we do it? n/t

[mod mom]

42. This will answer your question definitively:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/03/wyomings-smog-exceeds-los-angeles-due-to-gas-drilling/1