As the national jobs situation continues to deteriorate, voices calling for gas drilling as the only way out of our local economic dilemma become all the more strident. But several recent studies suggest that if we rush into a gas drilling economy, it may be only to find ourselves rushing out again, with less to show for it, even in the short term, than has been commonly assumed—especially as compared to other avenues likely to offer better long-term solutions.

One important study whose impact, we feel, has not been fully recognized, is a new USGS estimate of the total gas reserves contained in the Marcellus Shale, which comes in at 83 trillion cubic feet. There has been some controversy as to whether this represents a massive increase, or a massive decrease, in the amount of recoverable gas assumed to be available. Industry advocates like The Wall Street Journal compared the number to the USGS’s 2002 estimate of two trillion cubic feet, thus hailing it as a 40-fold increase. Of course, nobody inside the industry or out has paid attention to that estimate for years. Terry Engelder, the Penn State geoscientist whose generous estimate of Marcellus reserves in January of 2008 played a key role in inspiring the current boom, has been using an estimate of 489 trillion since 2009. The U.S. Energy Information Agency, back in April, briefly increased its estimate from 410 to 844 trillion cubic feet. (It has now adopted the new USGS number.) Compared to these assumptions, the USGS number represents a drop off from 80% to 90%.

These reduced estimates not only have implications for the balance sheets of natural gas companies that have leased land for drilling, they also mean that the bust that can be expected from the boom-bust cycle of a natural-gas-driven economy will come that much sooner. To get a sense of perspective, the United States currently consumes about 24 trillion cubic feet of gas per year. Under the 489 trillion cubic foot assumption, one could argue that the Marcellus alone could provide 20 years of U.S. consumption. Under the 83 trillion cubic foot estimate, it can supply only about three and a half years worth.

We’re not saying that the “boom” phase will only last three or four years; but it also clearly won’t last anything like the three to five decades or so that many have been assuming. Whatever jobs the industry brings to the area will run out fast, leaving not only an environment no longer suitable for the tourist economy that once provided its lifeblood (not to mention the loss of quality of life for residents), but a workforce no longer trained for the future. Does it really make sense to despoil the environment, fragment habitat, pockmark the area with gathering lines and compressor stations, risk the loss of our aquifers and the contamination of our special protection waters—for a decade or so worth of employment that peters out with an obsolescent workforce?

And just how many jobs would the industry probably produce? Another recent study, led by Penn State professor of agricultural economics Timothy Kelsey, estimates that the number of jobs produced by shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania in 2009 was only about 23,500, compared to the 44,000 estimated in an earlier Penn State study. And of those jobs, about 37% went to out-of-state workers, leaving the impact for local job-seekers at only about 15,000 statewide, including ancillary and government jobs. Meanwhile, other economic impacts could actually be negative, according to the study. It surveyed municipal governments in 12 Marcellus counties, of which only 18% said their tax revenues had increased, and about 26% said costs had increased, especially related to road maintenance. (Admittedly, Sullivan County would be better off than its Pennsylvania neighbors in this respect, both with regard to the Multi-Municipal Task Force’s road maintenance program now being considered by eight municipalities, and given the fact that New York, unlike Pennsylvania, allows for the collection of ad valorem property tax payments on gas wells, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation’s recently released Economic Assessment Report for the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement.)

A third report we already mentioned in our editorial of July 28, “The beginning of the conversation,” suggests an alternative to an economy that clings to the last dregs of an obsolete technology. Conducted by the Brookings Institution, it concludes that the “clean” economy—defined as the sector of the economy that produces goods and services with an environmental benefit—currently employs more people than the fossil fuel sector, and that it offers more opportunities and better pay for low- and middle-skilled workers than the national economy as a whole.

Is our planning energy best spent encouraging a short-term boom that could actually damage resources that could be used for longer-term economic growth? Or should we not move full speed ahead into 21st century sectors like sustainable energy and locavore agriculture? Data like that contained in these three most recent reports increasingly suggests that it is these alterative sectors, not the obsolescent natural gas industry, that contain the promise of the future.