Some ‘green’ jobs you can count on (May 26)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
One of the things candidate Obama bragged about when he was running for president was “green” jobs. He promised us green jobs would provide employment for the masses. Or, at least some of the masses.
As it turns out, that hasn’t happened. Capital hasn’t followed the green revolution. While some windmill and solar power plants are going up, it turns out they depend heavily on subsidies. And they aren’t hiring that many people.
On the other hand, natural gas is booming right now. New ways of retrieving natural gas from the earth are resulting in vast new supplies being available.
Natural gas isn’t considered green, of course. But it is much greener than coal or other fossil-derivative fuel, such as oil and even gasoline.
Natural gas is all over the place. Municipal vehicles are burning it right here in Madera today. Those vehicles, we are told, run cleaner than any powered by gasoline or diesel fuel. These include trucks, cars, buses.
We are told that practically any car on the road could be converted to run on natural gas.
Also, natural gas is piped all over the place. You probably have it in your house.
Could you self-fuel your car from a natural gas pipe in your house? Well, not yet. But the point is that fueling stations could pop up all over without a lot of new infrastructure.
The idea of hydrogen as a “green” fuel is good, too. Getting a fueling network going, however, would be much harder to do than to talk about.
Manufacturers of new cars, such as GM, are planning to make some of their vehicles standard with natural gas capability.
The world now has about 11 million natural-gas powered vehicles, says NGV America. That is a lobbying group, but there’s no reason to believe it isn’t telling the truth about those numbers.
A conversion to natural gas could really produce jobs.
