New approach to energy needed
Jobs! Economic development! Investment! “Game-changers!”
Gov. Tom Wolf, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and boosters of the natural gas industry are beside themselves with excitement over plans by the Shell Oil Company to build an ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, as the newspaper reported June 7. Fossil-fuel lobbyists couldn’t have written the Observer-Reporter’s article better themselves.
It certainly sounds good, but how real are the benefits, and what about the costs? Assuming those jobs numbers aren’t inflated, short-term construction jobs and a small number of permanent jobs won’t bring broad-based economic change. What happens with the next fuel bust, when prices fall? Is the money for environmental cleanup really there?
Wooing industry in the name of economic growth is a 20th-century tactic. We need a new approach that looks to the fuels and the economies of the future, while protecting our land, water, and air.
B.J. Campbell
Burgettstown