We’ve got green-collar jobs on our minds this week, good green-collar jobs.

[Towntalk]

Wolf Blitzer (CNN) did a brief story on Green Jobs yesterday afternoon on The Situation Room. Here is the transcript of that story:

CNN
The Situation Room
3/16/09

EXERPT

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, we're on top of a wind turbine in California. We're talking green jobs. We're going to talk to a couple of jobs that lost their jobs that have new life in the wind industry. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Number of Americans are taking a crack at so-called green collar jobs as their new heading on their road to rescue, climbing and maintaining energy producing windmills for instance.

Let's go to CNN's Ted Rowlands right now. He's joining us from way, way up high. He's atop a turbine in South Central, California.

Ted, I take it there are some jobs available up there. But tell us, how high are you?

ROWLANDS: About 100 feet up in the air, Wolf, it's windy and for the novice, it's a bit scary, quite frankly. We're talking about becoming a wind technician. There are jobs out there around the country now and there are expected to be thousands of these jobs in this field in years to come with the investments in wind technology and wind energy especially with the upgrading of the energy grid. One guy that's been able to redefine himself is Mike Golds. He used to be a cabinet maker, you lost your job, Mike, tell us how you got here?

MIKE GOLDS: I got here because last spring I took the high school ROP program taught by Airstreams at their facility. I kept in touch with the instructor over the months and when I got laid off, I put a call into Mike and said, hey, if you guys know of anything up, let me know and they actually had an opening, and they offered it to me on the spot.

ROWLANDS: Jobs are available, right now, Wolf, they're saying in this industry around the country. Texas is a huge producer of wind energy, California, Iowa also a large producer, but the real jobs are coming in the future. And here's an example. This is Josh Gates. He just finished the training program to become a wind technician. He's from southern Utah and there's a wind farm going up where you were. You were a general contractor and you could not get enough work to sustain your family. You've got a young family, you've got one on the way and a two year old. Why'd you make this decision and you're happy you changed your life to get into the green world?

JOSH GATES, WIND TECHNICIAN: I made it just to, you know, like you said, I needed to support my family. I think that's most important. Tough times, and at first I was a little nervous, but it's really exciting. It's something that I didn't know too much about, but due to the national college in air stream, it's really helped me to get an understanding of what it's all about and it's exciting.

ROWLANDS: Are you planning on going back to Utah when the wind farm's up and running?

GATES: I hope so, maybe even help start building and who knows what the future will bring.

ROWLANDS: Good luck to Josh. Two examples of people that are redefining their lives, they lost their jobs, but they're finding new life in the green world. One thing, you can't be scared of heights. I definitely would not be cut out for this one.

BLITZER: How did you get up on top of that turbine?

ROWLANDS: We had to climb a ladder, what I'm dreading is climbing down. It takes a tough soul to do this.

BLITZER: The wind farms, maybe they could show us a wide picture. If the direction of the wind changes, can they pivot? ROWLANDS: Absolutely. They -- well, they can change the pitch of the blades and if the wind increases, sometimes it gets too hot, the wind is too strong, so they'll change the pitch of the blades to make it less, to let it spin less. It's amazing, the technology in all these and it's changing constantly, but yes the short answer is absolutely.

BLITZER: One thing we got a lot of is wind and solar power too. Let's hope it can work. All right Ted. Be careful climbing down that ladder over there. Good work. Thank you. He's one courageous reporter we have got. I don't think I would have done that.

[irishbobcat]

We've got green-collar jobs on our minds this week, good green-collar jobs.
The White House estimated in February that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would generate 3.7 million jobs, 541,000 of them in clean energy development and in rebuilding highways and modernizing public transit.
Our researchers at the Apollo Alliance are convinced that the White House estimate is low. More than $100 billion of the $787 billion appropriated in the Recovery Act is devoted to scaling up the clean energy sector and for infrastructure repair and modernization. We are convinced the Recovery Act will create or retain over 1 million green-collar jobs.
We also want to ensure that the green-collar jobs generated by the Recovery Act provide wages and benefits that meet one of the Apollo Alliance's primary goals: rebuilding the American middle class. The national Apollo Alliance and our state and local Apollo Alliances in California and New York City worked closely together to develop statements of core principles to ensure that the Recovery Act dollars are spent in a way that moves America toward a sustainable economy with broadly shared prosperity.
The national Apollo Alliance's five core Principles for Success in the Clean Energy and Green-Collar Economy are ambitious. They call for local, state, and federal officials involved in approving the projects and making investment decisions to apply these standards to generating jobs and building a clean energy economy:
1. Create quality green-collar jobs, like those at a wind hub manufacturing plant and a solar material plant in Michigan (see pix above and left), that are "well-paid, career track jobs that contribute directly to preserving or enhancing environmental quality" and attaching these job quality standards to all public investments.
2. Ensure the highest possible degree of transparency and accountability, so that local taxpayers know how the money is being spent and can track each project's progress.
3. Target investments to create jobs and environmental benefits in low income
communities, heavily polluted areas, and areas with high layoff and unemployment rates.
4. Promote climate stability and energy security by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and our overall dependence on foreign oil. For transportation infrastructure projects, policy makers should 'fix-it-first,' prioritizing repair and upgrade projects and expansion of public transit.
5. Focus on combining stimulus programs and scaling up projects in a way that maximizes job opportunities, for instance aggregating energy efficiency funds to retrofit an entire neighborhood of houses, which makes the projects last longer and gives workers longer-term opportunities.
There is abundantly clear evidence that Congressional leaders and the Obama administration support goals for economic recovery and American workers that are consistent with ours.
On February 26, the first meeting of the White House Middle Class Task Force focused on developing green-collar jobs as a pathway to middle-class stability. This week the Employee Free Choice Act was introduced in Congress. The bill is designed to give workers the tools they need to bargain for fair wages, benefits and treatment. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was a champion of the bill when she was a member of Congress representing East Los Angeles. On March 5, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of labor leaders that the White House supports the measure. "We just want to level this playing field again," he said.
This week, the Apollo Alliance congratulated Van Jones, the founder and president of Green For All, a long time Apollo board member, and one of the premier advocates of green-collar job creation, was appointed special advisor to the president for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation. Jones and Green For All were closely involved in developing the labor standards and principles for stimulus spending in California.
And this week, the GIVE Act was introduced in Congress to launch a new era of national service by more than tripling the number of AmeriCorps volunteers, from the current 75,000 to 250,000, and by increasing the education reward they receive to $5,350 for next year, the same as the maximum Pell Grant scholarship award. The act also would establish a National Civilian Conservation Corps for, among other things, environmental stewardship, and energy conservation.
We see 2009 as the year of opportunity to make tremendous progress on generating good green-collar jobs, "accelerate the development of the nation's vast clean energy resources, and move us toward energy security, climate stability, and economic prosperity."
Keith Schneider
Communications Director
Apollo Alliance

Sounds like a great week for green jobs and growth in America!

Dennis Spisak
Mahoning  Valley Green Party
Ohio Green Party

www.ohiogreens.org

www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/