Chris Huhne, the UK energy secretary, boasts that wind farms and
other renewable energy schemes will create 9,000 jobs this year.
Since they are all subsidised, each one is in effect sponsored by a
newly unemployed person elsewhere in the economy.
Shale gas already supports 140,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone, up
from about zero in 2007. This is without subsidy; in fact, the
reverse -- hefty tax revenue. Pennsylvania's population is
one-fifth of Britain's.