Did You Know...

Somehow, this makes perfect sense. The poo-flinging White House wants to convert chicken manure to energy.

Yes, really:

A White House Business Council roundtable headed by U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan S. Adelstein was held here Friday at Cambridge International.

Improving economic conditions and creating jobs in the “Green Economy” industries involved in renewable energy solutions was the subject of Friday morning’s discussion among 25 representatives of regional businesses and government agencies.

Following the roundtable discussion, Adelstein spoke with the press, saying the gathering in Cambridge was one of 100 roundtables held throughout the country, all facilitated by key administrators in various federal agencies.

“The president has made a top priority of increasing the number of green jobs in the country,” Adelstein said. And it is already happening, he said, with 2 million green
jobs created in the U.S. during the past three years.

Many of those jobs were the result of the Obama Administration’s allocation of $80 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act towards clean energy projects, Adelstein said.

Another goal of the renewable energy jobs initiative is to slow the effects of global warming. Adelstein said reversing global warming is not likely but, “you can arrest it” by decreasing use of energy sources that cause greenhouse gases.

Burning chicken litter and manure to create electricity was a leading topic of discussion during the roundtable, Adelstein said, an idea that has been proposed by poultry companies in Maryland in the past, and been passed on in this state because of environmental concerns.