Teachers Do Add to GDP Growth. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Interview On Energy Policy.
Wednesday, October 24th, 2012This post is basically a marker for two pieces of information I find compelling. The teacher part comes from a study by the globally respected business consultant McKinsey Co. Basically it says if we closed the education gap between the lower performing students vs the higher performing ones in our own schools, we’d add 3-5% to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If we closed the gap between our schools and the world’s top performing schools, like those in Korea, we’d add 9-16% to GDP. We should be investing in more teachers and in training them to be better teachers. It does add to GDP and the economy.
The second marker is of a CNBC interview recently with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy does a good job of giving the rationale for our continued investment in alternative, sustainable energy. Kennedy has put his money where his mouth is. He’s an investor in Ivanpah, a huge solar power installation.
BrightSource’s LPT solar thermal system is currently being deployed at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California’s Mojave Desert. Ivanpah, which started construction in October 2010, is the first project that will deliver power to serve the company’s signed contracts with PG&E and Southern California Edison. The project – which counts NRG Solar, Google and BrightSource as equity investors – is currently the largest solar plant under construction in the world. The project is being constructed by Bechtel.
A 377 megawatt net solar complex using mirrors to focus the power of the sun on solar receivers atop power towers.
- The electricity generated by all three plants is enough to serve more than 140,000 homes in California during the peak hours of the day.
- The complex will reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by more than 400,000 tons per year.
- Located in Ivanpah, approximately 50 miles northwest of Needles, California (about five miles from the California-Nevada border) on federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
The complex is comprised of three separate plants to be built in phases between 2010 and 2013, and will use BrightSource Energy’s LPT solar thermal technology.
Beezer here. These are two areas, teacher quality and solar energy, where our national discussion has been intentionally hijacked by campaign funding from the fossil industries. We are being inundated by this massive propoganda effort and, as a result, we aren’t rationally discussing what really needs to be done for our future health, economic and personal. At least President Obama sticks to his promise of supporting more teachers and supporting alternative energy. But they are minor points in our current discussion which almost solely revolves around more drilling and more tax cuts, especially tax cuts for the wealthy.
