Bill Maher to people working on offshore drilling rigs: Too Bad! [View All]

[Rage for Order]

I don't remember the exact quote, but I'm sure the clip will be available on YouTube soon enough. He said roughly 58,000 people in Louisiana work in the oil industry, many of them on offshore rigs. He essentially told them they should find new jobs building windmills or solar panels, or some other type of industry that doesn't harm the planet.

Fair enough Bill, but how about you put your money where your mouth is? When can we expect you to invest a few tens of millions of dollars into building a couple of windmill factories in southern Louisiana so these people will be able to quit their jobs on the oil rigs and work at a job that you deem to be acceptable? Perhaps you can offer to pay the expenses of a few thousand of these people so they can re-train in a different field, and pay their mortgages, utilities, buy their food, clothing, and other necessities while they go to school? If you really want to be part of the solution then step up to the plate and put your money where your mouth is. Telling people, "Tough shit, find another line of work" is not going to cut it.

I agree that we need to discontinue offshore drilling, but the people who rely on that industry to make a living can't just stop going to work tomorrow. Where else will they earn $70,000 annually to do manual labor with no more than a high school diploma? Should they all go to work at Wal Mart for $10 an hour, or take a job as a butcher in a grocery store for $30,000 a year? It's easy for people like Bill Maher to sit in their multi-million dollar mansions and tell other people they should make sacrifices for the sake of the planet. Unfortunately, most people can't afford to quit a job because someone else doesn't like the way they make a living.


*grammar edit