Green Jobs Can Make A Difference

[irishbobcat]

Green Jobs Can Make A Difference

Following on the heels of a study from the Pew Charitable Trusts last week, two more reports from a broad coalition of environmental groups and research institutes suggest that clean-energy investments have the potential to kick-start the economy and employ millions of workers — particularly those at the lower end of the economic scale.
In a statement accompanying the release of the two reports — one authored jointly by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the other by the institute, the green jobs advocacy group Green For All and the Natural Resources Defense Council — the researchers assert that a "$150 billion investment in clean energy could create a net increase of 1.7 million American jobs and significantly lower the national unemployment rate."
As part of their study, P.E.R.I. and the Center for American Progress provide a state-by-state breakdown of where jobs are most likely to be generated.
And Robert Pollin, James Heintz and Heidi Garrett-Peltier — researchers at P.E.R.I. — wrote on the center's Web site on Thursday that the estimated 1.7 million jobs could make a significant impact on the nation's jobless rate:
These job gains would be enough — on their own — to reduce the unemployment rate in today's economy by about one full percentage point, to 8.4 percent from current 9.4-percent levels — even after taking into full account the inevitable job losses in conventional fossil-fuel sectors of the U.S. economy as they contract. Our detailed analysis ... calculates that roughly 2.5 million new jobs will be created overall by spending $150 billion on clean-energy investments, while close to 800,000 jobs would be lost if conventional fossil-fuel spending were to decline by an equivalent amount. It is not likely that all $150 billion in new clean-energy investment spending would come at the expense of reductions in the fossil-fuel industry. However, we present this scenario to establish a high-end estimate for reductions in conventional fossil-fuel spending, and the net gains in employment that will still result through spending $150 billion per year on clean-energy investments.
The P.E.R.I. report joined by N.R.D.C. and Green for All, meanwhile, emphasized the impact such job creation might have on low-income and less-educated workers. Among their findings:
• Of the 1.7 million net increase in job creation, about 870,000 would be "accessible" to workers with high school degrees or less.
• Of those, about 614,000 would be jobs that present "decent opportunities" for advancement and increasing wages.
• The increase in jobs (and decrease in the unemployment rate "should raise earnings for low-income workers by about 2 percent.
Job creation among less-educated workers would be "seven times larger than the number of jobs that would be created in this category," the researchers also concluded, "by spending the same amount of money within the fossil-fuel industry."

Green Jobs can make a difference in bringing new jobs to the poor and working class in Ohio and this country!

Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Valley Green Party
Ohio Green Party

www.ohiogreens.org
www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/