There have been plenty of signals that the US economy is in recovery mode. Housing prices seem to have stabilized, the stock market has regained a lot of ground, some companies have reported better than expected earnings, some steel companies are starting some operations back up – yet amongst all this, unemployment is still way up, other industries such as paper mills continue to close up shops, thousands more workers are being laid off and the expected key point of President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight will be job creation. So, are we truly in a recovery? Or is this just a temporary upswing to be followed by another crash? Compared to recessions in the past few decades, this one seems to be clouded in unprecedented ways. So many conflicting indicators and opinions – which seem to prolong skepticism, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is a lot of talk about how the US economy will emerge from recession. One thing is sure, the manufacturing sector in the US is still sluggish. The question is, will it continue to crawl along, fall back into recession or bounce out quickly? According to an article in Recycling Today, over a third of manufacturers and steel service centers surveyed believe we will see a fall back before we see full recovery. So, what are your thoughts?

I don’t get it. Here we are trying to get biofuel vehicles mainstream, electric vehicles are scheduled to come off assembly lines next year, and hydrogen-powered vehicles have just faltered off to the side. Now, all of a sudden, car companies are going to have a network of fueling stations ready to service hydrogen-powered vehicles by 2015? And, over 1 million miles have already been logged in the Chevy Equinox fuel-cell car? What’s going on here?

While all of this is great for emission reduction, think about some of the problems we face. If we transform too quickly to a society of electric cars, we face too large hurdles – electricity supply being well short of the demand and lack of recharging facilities. Biofuel faces the same lack of fueling stations as well as supply problems. Now, add hydrogen to the mix and neither consumers or car companies will know what to do.

Don’t get me wrong, I think hydrogen fuel cell cars are a fabulous idea too long in the making. It’s just that the cost to build the infrastructure for three different technologies will be astronomical and what it leaves is rural Americans holding the short end of the petroleum stick since they will be the last to get refueling/recharging stations for any of those technologies.

I have asserted before that convenience is one of the most important things to getting people to recycle. This makes it difficult to implement any long-term recycling program that works because convenience costs money. The biggest factor causing this necessity for convenience is the ease of getting what we want when we want it. We have become so used to convenience in everything we do, it has bred a sort of “laziness” in us all so that even when faced with obvious good decisions such as recycling or not being wasteful, we only make the “best” decision when it is convenient or if we get something in return right now. And if you think the rising generation is more in tune with issues of conservation of resources, read this article. If we could just get most people to stop looking at every action with the “what’s in it for me” syndrome, I think we could finally take huge leaps forward in reducing waste, poverty, illness, greed, etc.

So, tell me how this is equitable? Demand is way down and a company already struggling has to bring workers back to do what work? There’s only so much cleaning and maintenance that can be done. How is that right? If you do the math, the possible severance works out to almost $19,000 for each employee! Cut that in half and it’s still more than most would get. Two to four weeks severance is quite common in the “real” world the rest of us live in. And we wonder why steel mills and other manufacturing plants have been moved to other countries. Our society has tumbled so far into the abyss of entitlements, we may never be able to extricate ourselves.