Creating Green-Collar Jobs
    By Van Jones and Ben Wyskida
    TomPaine.com

    Tuesday 23 January 2007

    It was 70 degrees in New York City last week, setting flowers into bloom and residents into T-shirts in the dead of winter. Here in Oakland, Calif., we scraped ice off of our windshields for the first time in years. Even the most well-funded Exxon research study couldn't convince us - or America - that global warming is a hoax.

    Meanwhile, Saturday saw the third bloodiest day since the war on Iraq began, with 19 U.S. soldiers dead in the streets of Baghdad. Our dependence on foreign oil - and the fight to protect our oil interests - is taking more and more lives every day. Many of the dead are people of color from America's poorest communities; others are young men and women who would have different jobs to go to - if America still had well-paying middle class jobs to offer.

    The response to these crises is bizarre at worst, tepid at best. President Bush, in his State of the Union address, will propose tweaking the standards by which we gauge fuel efficiency. Instead of raising fuel economy across the board, the proposal would redefine how we measure it - a classic Bush administration tactic to change the language, not solve the problem.

    The Democrats, however, are playing on the same field. At a press conference last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held a press conference to announce an effort to "combat" global warming. In the run up to the State of the Union address, Democrats are ticking off their list of priorities: This is what we think about energy; this is what we think about jobs; this is what we think about Mideast oil.

    Unfortunately, it's no longer enough to declare a war on warming. We're all missing the point, and Democrats are close to missing a real opportunity to propose visionary policy that steps outside of traditional issue silos. The solution is a green jobs agenda that bridges economic and environmental development. It's an idea that could transform entire communities, and that has the potential to unite once-hostile factions of the progressive left for a generation.

    Green Jobs Are Local Jobs

    First, let's take a step back. What are "green jobs"? And who are they for? It's pretty simple: Green jobs are jobs in the booming clean and green economy. The LOHAS Journal ("Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability") estimates green enterprise as a $229 billion market sector. CleanEdge.org reports clean/green technology as the third largest venture capital investment category in 2006. In California alone, investments in clean tech could create up to 114,000 new jobs by 2010.

    These investment categories mean new green-collar jobs for American workers at a time when blue-collar jobs are drying up or shipping out: Solar panel manufacturer; green building construction worker; sustainable forestry worker. These are all green jobs - many of them unionized.

    By their nature, green jobs are also local jobs, meaning that money stays in the community and creates a multiplier effect for the local economy. You can't outsource a green job, and a green job doesn't take a toll on public health.

    There is a challenge here, of course: Boom times like the dot-com era didn't do much for communities of color or low-income workers. But green jobs require a specialized skill set, giving workers who have been locked out of the old economy an opportunity to skill up and move to the front of the line for jobs in the new clean and green economy.

    A New Politics of Hope

    Here in Oakland, our organization, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, launched a campaign to help Oakland become a model green city. A working-class town burdened by a tragic murder rate, Oakland has incredible potential but heartbreaking poverty.

    Along with our partners, the IBEW and the National Apollo Alliance, we convened the Oakland Apollo Alliance. Our goal: Demonstrate on the ground just how big an impact "green jobs" could make. We've offered three big ideas to the City of Oakland:

• Create the nation's first Green Jobs Corps, a training partnership between labor unions, the community college system, and the city to train and employ residents - particularly hard-to-employ groups - in the new green economy.
  
  
• Declare Green Enterprise Zones - areas where green businesses and green-collar employers are given incentives and benefits to locate and hire. This will be part of a comprehensive Green Economic Development Plan distinguished by eco-industrial parks.
  
  
• Green the Port, helping a polluting old-economy relic become an international model for sustainability.

    The city council has already committed to oil independence for Oakland by 2020 as a path to job creation. The other proposals are up for a vote next month. And our new mayor, progressive stalwart Ron Dellums, has embraced the vision of Oakland as a global green city. A three-legged stool of environmentalists, labor and social/racial justice advocates are propping up a new politics of hope in Oakland.

    A Progressive Rallying Point

    This new politics around green economic development is a winner far beyond Oakland. A study conducted by Greenberg, Quinlan and Rosner showed that Americans overwhelmingly want policymakers to "offer an optimistic vision of America ... with the can-do spirit to solve the energy problem." Even more encouraging, respondents asked policymakers to broaden the energy issue beyond the environment by making it about the future of the American economy.

    The people want a solutions-driven approach to energy, jobs and the environment - not an effort to "combat" and "fight" global warming. Green jobs could be a rallying point for a real progressive majority. The new Democratic leadership should:

• Pass a national Green Workforce Development Act, training workers from around the country.
  
  
• Create green enterprise zones in the parts of the country most impacted by poverty and the shrinking manufacturing base.
  
  
• Help polluting industries transition into the new economy, instead of subsidizing them to continue polluting our poorest communities. Congress took an important step last week by slashing oil subsidies.

    Here in California, Governor Schwarzenegger is winning over some progressives with his bold, market-based approach to confronting global warming. Now we don't have a lot of love for Arnold - his record is lacking on some critical human rights challenges like prison reform - but on this one, we're for it. Schwarzenegger sees the political and economic viability of the new green economy.

    The enthusiasm for Barack Obama's candidacy - even the comforting tone of Hilary Clinton's campaign announcement/coffee klatch - shows an understanding that the American people are hungry for something uplifting. But which one will be able to say, "I co-sponsored the Green Workforce Development Act of 2007"? Who will be the first one to visit our office and throw on a Green Jobs for Oakland? T-shirt? We're betting it will be the same one who wins.

    Gone are the days where the right could divide us over environment versus jobs. It's environment and jobs - and they are jobs that could mean a pathway out of poverty for those most in need. Propose it. Fight for it. And let's begin moving all of America into the green-collar age.