Give Governor Corbett an A for nerve. After creating less jobs than tiny Delaware over the last 12 months, Corbett calls President's climate plan "a war on jobs." Remember that the national economy created 2 million jobs during the last year, but Corbett's policies made sure that Pennsylvania generated just 4,700.
Corbett's "War On Jobs" sound bite is no more than a reflexive, unthinking ideological response. It is also nonsense, since both cutting carbon pollution and creating jobs can be done in many, specific ways.
You can read for yourself the President's climate plan that is 21 pages and is practical and workable:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/25/us/obama-climate-action-plan.html.
The President's climate plan will benefit natural gas, renewable energy, nuclear power, and energy efficiency. Currently, Pennsylvania can create at least 100,000 jobs in those areas, if we had a Governor who understood energy.
My Jobs Plan creates 382,500 jobs, and many of them are by expanding industries that cut carbon pollution. I chaired the Committee that wrote in 2009 Pennsylvania's Climate Action Plant that would cut Pennsylvania's carbon emissions by more than one-third and create 65,000 jobs. Implementing the ready-to-go Climate Action Plan is a key part of my Jobs Plan.
Other big jobs creators that also cut carbon are doubling renewable energy, doubling investment in energy efficiency, and expanding rapidly alternative fueling stations so that motorists need not just pay gasoline or diesel vehicles.
Another opportunity for innovation that can cut carbon and create jobs is a real push to develop carbon capture and storage technology. Indeed, developing the commercial ability to stop carbon from entering the atmosphere with pollution control equipment may be indispensable to stabilizing temperatures, since coal is increasing its global market share. Last year, coal had its best year since 1970, with its highest market share of total energy used in the world. Only carbon capture and storage technology can prevent carbon being released in huge amounts when coal is burned.
The climate has already changed in measurable ways. Now the climate policy train is leaving the station. Good energy policy will both cut carbon and create jobs.
My full Jobs Plan is available at www.hangerforgovernor.com. The real and proven jobs killer in Pennsylvania is none other than Tom Corbett.
I am well aware of your support of natural gas extraction. What I would like to see is a push from elected officals and want to be elected officials for the implementation of cleaner, safer technology now. Wells, pipelines, compressors are not on hold so neither should the improvements! We have the technology to reduce the pollution that is happening at this moment in the gasfields. The second point, the denying of any wrongdoing or mistakes over and over by the industry and their disciples, without holding them truly accountable for negligence and their violations, will just allow them to continue to do business as usual at our expense-not theirs. Letting the gas industry sign off on violations, stating they did not do anything wrong is an insult to every living person and future persons in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
ReplyDeleteI support renewable energy and energy efficiency and have done more than anybody in Pennsylvania to make those better sources of energy grow. But I also live in the real world or in the Three Mile Island nuclear evacuation area and so know the sources of energy that provide more than 95% of our total energy all have risks and impacts. That's why I support strong regulation, enforcement of those energy sources. Air emissions from gas can and must be cut by 90%, open pits banned, and more. Unlike any other candidate I have a specific plan to regulate strongly and tax the gas industry. It and its many details are at www.hangerforgovernor.com.
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