Good Jobs, Green Jobs

For environmentalists, its easy to understand their excitement about greening anything, but for labor it may not be so clear how they stand to gain. Everybody's worried about climate change. Green jobs mean burning less carbon to slow the pace of climate change. The industries that can do the most to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are some of the most unionized. For instance, take construction work. Forty-percent of all carbon emissions are from buildings. Retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient will be done by workers in the construction trades, adding extra layers of insulation, caulking up energy leaks, upgrading heating and ventilation systems. 

There was a tremendous amount of energy at the conference and confidence in President Obama to deliver the promise of a green economy to fruition. As the conference was taking place, negotiations on the stimulus package were going on a couple of miles away on Capitol Hill. During the 3-day conference, there were several keynotes from members of Congress, all Democrats not surprisingly, encouraging participants to get over to the Hill if they could and make their voices heard in support of provisions in the bill for green jobs. Sheila Jackson, the new EPA administrator, spoke about how her agency was poised to help rewrite environmental laws to put clean air, clean water, and environmental justice at the forefront of policymaking again. Van Jones, leader of Green for All, was there and gave an electrifying speech about the intersection of green jobs and poverty reduction (more on this in the future).  

I attended several workshops and it was clear to me from listening to the work being done at the local, state and regional level that a green revolution is already in motion. While it would have been nice if the Bush administration had been a partner, no individual or group represented at the conference let that slow them down. The difference between President Obama and President Bush on environmental issues is like the difference between green and whatever color in the spectrum that represents the most opposite. That helps to explain some of the excitement, some of the optimism and sheer our-moment-has-arrived energy in the room. Whatever impact the stimulus has on spurring on a greener economy, one thing was certain to me about the people who came to this conference. They won't stop charging forward.   

Where does Bread for the World fit into this? Well, it's becoming increasingly clear, as we realized in writing the 2009 Hunger Report, climate change and hunger are becoming increasingly the same.