Feelings on a fossil fuel free environment

Originally posted by =Tired Hiker=
That's why we need a president who's main interest is not oil.

Originally posted by jaden101

many countries have changed from almost entirely heavy industry based to more service, less skilled based work without huge and long lasting economic problems..the UK done it when manufacturing, ship building and the like were wiped out and these industries employed a far larger % of the population than the oil industry does in the US

Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
This is why we need to encourage space travel.

We then can exploit the resources of other planets.

with exploiting resources of other planets money would have to be spent... and where will that money come from, with an economy that is already struggling?

but the space travel talk reminds me of the sci-fi movies where money is no longer an issue... instead a person commits their life to a certain space frontier company and if given credits... which would be spent right back into the company system... bottom line, you would be given choices by your company to what you can purchase.... just a thought.

Originally posted by jaden101
biofuels are causing more problems than they are solving as the land being cleared to produce the crops to produce the fuel is usually in poor countries and is usually rainforest that gets the chop

besides...the vast majority of fossil fuel goes to power stations rather than in cars via petrol/gas

sounds like a screwed if you do and screwed if you don't situamation

dont worry the segway will solve all of our problems

Originally posted by amlap

im not sure if that is a right answer for america... with computers/machinery replacing a number of jobs already where would your average employee stand? lets see.... we have immigrants, computers, machinery, and foreign trade taking jobs away from the average worker. the problem i see with that is that their is a lot of money that can be made from working in the industrial field... if you eliminate that and replace those jobs with service industries, will the salary for the worker stand the same? i wouldnt think so, because you know longer would have the most wealthy corp feeding your pocket. some where someone has to fork over some money to even out the cost of living compared to salary base. (in the next 10 years if things continue the way they are going i assume that a new car will probably react an average of 30-40 thousand dollars.) the american dollar is slowly losing its value, and i do see a simple solution to the problem.

you're right in that service industry jobs will never be as highly paid as skilled industry jobs but i think there are vast untapped resources for things such as tourism in the US

most visitors to the US do the cliched east and west coasts and call everything in between the "flyover" states

your argument that you have immigrants, computers etc taking jobs away doesn't really hold water because every developed country has those problems and some to far higher relative degrees than the US

in the UK there have been several million people from eastern europe (Poland, Latvia and the czech republic in particular) which is about 3% of the entire population in a matter of 3 years

in my city alone the population has gone up almost 5% in 3 years because of immigration...and these figures dont include illegal immigration or immigration from non eastern european countries which is still in the region of 250,000 applications per year and there only needs be 1 application per household...not per person

as someone mentioned previously...you only need to think outside the box a little bit because its inevitable that with the US pretty much in depression...manufacturing jobs are going to go to countries with cheaper labour

thinking about it also...the oil industries are obviously hugely dependant on importing from other countries...surely if the US led the way in finding alternatives then it would create jobs as well as develop technologies to export to the rest of the world and thus its economy would be strengthened rather than weakened

besides any energy industry is going to have similar roles than need fulfilled...hence the change from oil to alternative would only require a relatively small change in skills for employees