Millions of Green Collar Jobs!

Candidate Obama promised his administration would create millions of "green collar jobs," and to most it was a successful platform. Myself, I heard "Wasted $Billions and stifled innovation from government intrusion" but I am a partisan hack.

I'd bore whoever would listen with "when the government picks winners in the energy sector we get Synfuels and Ethanol." Let the Senators decide what projects get funded and don't be surprised if we're all driving our cars on Iowa's major export. Had Senator Craig had not been busted, I suppose we'd be developing a potato-fuel infrastructure.

In addition to creating more greenhouse gases, costing more, and adding to volatility in world food markets -- how's that Ethanol decision panning out? Instapundit links to this story about the collapse of North Dakota's ethanol industry and the evaporation of subsidies promised to keep the economically unviable industry afloat:

North Dakota has an annual capacity of 333 million gallons of ethanol. Due to this year’s excessive commodity fluctuations, VeraSun, the state’s largest producer (which recently filed for bankruptcy), is itself eligible to claim a full $1.6 million from just one quarter’s worth of production. Over the past two months the price of corn has dropped sharply, leaving producers with very expensive inventories.

It remains to be seen if this fund is essential to North Dakota’s ethanol producers and if they can weather the storm without it.

Oil and Energy Posted by John Kranz at December 19, 2008 1:42 PM