The Apollo Alliance and Urban Habitat have a new report out today on the coming green economy and the immense job potential for traditionally excluded groups -- low-income, heavily minority urban communities. The report sets out a vision for green jobs in the U.S. and outlines the green industries that already exist in the country, offering policy guidance for creating better jobs for more people.
It also details programs that are working, like apprenticeships, job training, and local hiring policies, and profiles worker and career pathways in the green job market. And it presents some strategies and policies to help cities ensure new green jobs are accessible to all residents -- not just middle-class white kids.
The report kicks off with a foreword by Van Jones (interviewed by Grist here), director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and a member of the Apollo Alliance National Steering Committee. An excerpt:
The national effort to curb global warming and oil dependence can simultaneously create good jobs, safer streets and healthier communities. That is the chief moral obligation in the 21st century: to build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. We have the technology. Investors are lining up. The only question is: do we have the political will to make government support the transition -- and the moral commitment to ensure that the new "green wave" in fact "lifts all boats?"
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Comments
View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 5:11 pm
01 May 2007
And we all know how well thats doing.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/brazil.png
http://www.greyfalcon.net/ethanol
http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/110_SN_155.html ...
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SustainableGreen Posted 2:38 am
02 May 2007
Yes, I have never like the metaphor of 'a rising tide lifts all boats' for the simple fact that if you are not already on a boat, it does NOTHING for you. And in fact it can make simple treading water more tiring, with the inevitable consequences.
Germany has its real leadership and has resulted in their "Solar Valley" producing enormous numbers of PV panels, employing a large work force, creating a tremendous ripple effect.
We could vastly increase domestic skilled and semi-skilled employment in urban population centers large and small with the right incentives, as easily as transferring huge beeeellion dollar fossil fuel subsidies, much of which immediately goes off-shore or into the pockets of rich investors.
Open up a PV manufacturing plant in an existing unused factory in MA and NJ and PA and NY and IL and MI and OH and a dozen other states, put the first 3000 panels on the very same roof where they were made, vastly cutting fixed costs, and then spread them to the surrounding community. Jobs, reduction of reliance on fossil fuels, CO2 cuts, greater public health, a huge ripple effect, and an awakening to the distorted mentality of 'electricity as commodity' all would be achieved in short order.
Everyone not only is lifted, but many many more have boats. Sail on.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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Delay And Deny Posted 7:44 am
02 May 2007
Checking that photo...those cats can do some serious damage.
I'm in.
You Read It Here First
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