The weekly facts rodeo begins with jobs, jobs, jobs.
1. The US economy in 2011 has created 1.2 million jobs or about 120,000 per month. It is just about enough to keep up with a growing population but not enough to lower rapidly the now 9% national unemployment rate.
2. The 1.2 million jobs created nationally so far in 2011 underscores the poor performance of the Pennsylvania economy since May. Since May, Pennsylvania has lost 5,000 jobs per month, with the unemployment rate jumping from 7.4% to 8.3%. Pennsylvania now ranks in the bottom 10 states for job creation, after being a top ten state from January 2010 to April 2011.
3. Chinese greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 were 50% higher than US emissions. China had matched US emissions in approximately 2007.
4. India ranks third in world carbon pollution and are rising swiftly. The combination of rapidly rising Chinese and Indian emissions make it difficult to see how carbon concentrations could be stabilized at less than 600ppm and make a world with 1,000ppm possible. Those numbers are scary whether anyone is scared or not.
5. Indeed 2010 global carbon emissions exceed the worst case scenario in the IPCC studies. But world leaders are not paying attention.
6. Despite massive global increases driven by Chinese and Indian demand, USA emissions in 2011 will fall to 1997 to 1998 levels and are likely to continue falling as gas substitutes for coal and oil; renewables grow; CNG, biofuels, and electricity substitue for gasoline and diesel; and energy efficiency rises in transportation, buildings, and production processes.
Dear Mr. Hanger,
ReplyDeleteThe shale gas boom was supposed to bring a lot of jobs to Pennsylvania. All we've seen in my area are out-of-state workers, and now I see that we are ranking in the bottom 10 states in job creation(!) What's going on? It looks like we're doing worse, not better, and after all those industry promises, too.
I'm disgusted.