The “Our View” piece by Jody McCaffree (The World, Nov. 4) does a great job of demolishing the liquefied natural gas proponent’s attempts to characterize the Citizens Against LNG as opposing the more jobs agenda.

It leaves us potentially, however with the continuing delusion suffered by both proponents and opponents, that more jobs is a good thing. There are two important reasons why this is not so, and thus why both the LNG proponents and opponents are part of the problem and not part of the solution when it comes to creating a “sustainable” local economy.

The first problem is that most people supporting more jobs are assuming that more jobs equals lower unemployment. In fact, a predictable consequence of bringing more jobs into an area is an increase in the actual number of people unemployed.

The second problem is that we have already exceeded carrying capacity in our area and more jobs also means population growth. The inevitable and impending socio-economic crash will thus be amplified. What we need for long-term sustainability in our area is a reduction in the size of the human enterprise, both in terms of population and economic activity.

Dennis Phillips

Coos Bay