By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh —— Bio and Archives May 16, 2019
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“Despite a huge workforce of almost 400,000 solar workers (about 20 percent of electric power payrolls in 2016), that sector produced an insignificant share, less than 1 percent, of the electric power generated in the U.S. last year. And that’s a lot of solar workers: about the same as the combined number of employees working at Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Apple, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer, Ford and P&G. In contrast, it took about the same number of natural gas workers (398,235) last year to produce more than one-third of U.S. electric power, or 37 times more electricity than solar’s minuscule share of 0.90 percent. And with only 160,000 coal workers (less than half the number of workers in either solar or gas), that sector produced nearly one-third (almost as much as gas) of U.S. electricity last year.
In 2016, the coal sector generated an average of 7,745 megawatt hours of electric power per worker, more than twice the 3,812 megawatt hours of electricity generated per natural gas worker, and 79 times more electric power per worker than the solar industry, which produced only 98 megawatt hours of electricity per worker. Therefore, to produce the same amount of electric power as just one coal worker would require two natural gas workers and an amazingly-high 79 solar workers.”It does not seem that AOC thought this out before she read her TelePrompTer about the New Green Deal. In Virginia, Spotsylvania, Chesterfield, Accomack and now Culpeper, solar providers have set up shop with help from generous subsidies. The proposed solar facility in Culpeper, operated by Cricket Solar of California, will install panels on 800 acres of agricultural land and provide 80 megawatts of power. Who will produce our food each time agricultural land is taken out of commission for solar panels and wind turbines? Socialist co-operatives here or China? There is no other country in the world where I can seek the best health care right now, go to a hospital and be treated the same day, have medical tests relatively quickly, buy what I want to eat right now, cooked or uncooked, find a pharmacy open that would fill the prescription I need, walk into an abundant grocery store at all hours of the day and night and find what I want to buy without standing in line and fighting other shoppers for the last potato. There are myriads of choices provided by capitalist supply and demand, by freedom, by mobility, by entrepreneurship, and by the much-maligned fossil fuels which brought us out of the dark ages of poverty, want, and disease and into a successful western civilization that everyone envies and risks life and limb to get here. But we should not let reality and truth stand in the way of corrupt politics. Every time AOC opens her mouth to speak, more pearls of communist wisdom roll out onto the floor. They spread in all corners of the country and disappear, never to be found again. Her socialist ardent supporters just hear “free, free, free for all.”
Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh, Ileana Writes is a freelance writer, author, radio commentator, and speaker. Her books, “Echoes of Communism”, “Liberty on Life Support” and “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy,” “Communism 2.0: 25 Years Later” are available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.