Sunday, March 18, 2012

Renewables - doing worse than North Dakota

When you downplay North Dakota's job growth due to its oil fields - and then try to promote renewables as the answer - you're looking for trouble.
Paul Krugman mocked the unemployment rate of North Dakota due to its small size. The oil and gas extraction industry has added 70,000 in the last few years.
Then they tout renewables as the fastest growing, basically going up 50% in the past few years.
But for an industry with 100,000 jobs, that increase is around 30,000 - fewer new jobs than the oil extraction industry added.
North Dakota is small.
The renewables industry is small.
If you fuss about one exalting their percentages, you can't make a big deal of your percentage increase from a small base.

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