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Green Economy

Van Jones and Jason Walsh

In the 21st century, America will be defined by its response to two great challenges: One is global warming, which threatens irreparable harm to our planet and its people. The other is the increasingly unequal economy of our own country, which is now more divided between rich and poor than at any time in living memory. The necessary response to these intertwined realities is to build an inclusive green economy, strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

A powerful logic connects the two missions. The shift to a more efficient, low-carbon economy will have profound health benefits for poor people, who suffer disproportionately from cancer, asthma, and other pollution-related ailments. And the effort to curb global warming and oil dependence contains enormous potential to create new jobs and avenues of opportunity, by creating pathways to ensure that the work that most needs doing - rebuilding, retrofitting, and restoring our cities and town, our infrastructure and public lands - is done by those who most need the work.

Politically as well as economically, it makes sense for the poor and disadvantaged to be key players in this process. A crucial early step will be the design and construction of a system that places a price on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and invests the proceeds in mechanisms that drive us toward a low-carbon economy. No part of the transition to a sustainable economy is more urgently needed - and none will be more fiercely resisted by the industries that dominate our current pollution-based economy. Their opposition can be overcome only by expanding the coalition of support beyond the traditional environmental organizations that have been the loudest voices for change to date.

Low-income Americans will be pivotal to the success of that coalition for action. But despite clear evidence that they will be disproportionately impacted by climate change, low-income people are 'swing votes' up for grabs in the unprecedented political battle that awaits us, and on which so much depends.

Polluters and their champions have a history of using economic scare tactics to defeat climate protection measures. That was a winning formula as recently as June 2008, when the Senate took up the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security bill to create a cap and trade system for GHG emissions. Opponents of that proposal made two claims, and repeated them endlessly: It would raise gas prices. It would wreck the U.S. economy. Much of their rhetoric focused on the consequences for low-income Americans, and that proved to be a powerful line of argument, even when it came from Senators, like Mississippi's Thad Cochran and Arizona's John Kyl, known for consistently voting against legislation that would directly benefit poor people by, for example, raising the minimum wage or expanding children's health insurance.

To counter such arguments and bring significant numbers of poor and working-class Americans into a winning coalition, climate protection has to be presented as economic policy based on core American values of opportunity and fairness. That means, for one thing, redefining the threat. While low-income communities are hardly monolithic, it is safe to say that polar bear habitat does not top the list of concerns in West Oakland, Newark, and Appalachia. To reach people where they are, it would make more sense to talk about the fact that it is poor people who can generally expect to be hit first and worst by climate catastrophes - witness Hurricane Katrina.

But words will not be enough. Even these realities of current risk remain somewhat distant questions for people struggling day-to-day with violence, joblessness, pollution, and lack of healthcare and affordable housing. Because nobody has "issue fatigue" like poor people, a climate protection campaign must do more than speak to their immediate concerns; it must offer a lifeline of hope and possibility through investment in green-collar job creation and training.

The power of this approach goes beyond self-interest. It summons people into a compelling moral struggle that welcomes them as key players and co-creators of solutions. It appeals to a grand sense of purpose on a planetary scale. At the same time, it is grounded in meaningful action at the neighborhood scale - restoring communities with green space and green buildings, restoring bodies with healthy local food and clean air, and restoring families with purpose and paychecks.

By framing solutions to climate change as mechanisms for creating new jobs, opportunities, wealth, and health in low-income neighborhoods, we can win millions of members of this key constituency to the struggle for a sane climate policy. We can - indeed we have no choice but to - fight poverty, pollution and global warming at the same time.

Green-Collar Jobs

To give meaning to the concept of an inclusive green economy, we will need to establish concrete and specific mechanisms for ensuring equal protection and opportunity in our climate and energy policies. We must do this, in part, through signature proposals that capture the imagination and propel the hope of millions.

We can start by building on an idea and term that has already captured the nation's imagination - green-collar jobs. There is enormous potential to use public policy to catalyze the creation of millions of green-collar jobs - well-paid, career track jobs that preserve or enhance environmental quality - and to expand opportunities for the many Americans who have too few of them in our current economy. Fighting climate change by investing in green economic growth and opportunity is more than a nice idea; it's happening in regional economies around the country and holds the promise of significant job creation if brought to scale.

A large part of this promise is based on the fact that green-collar jobs are location-dependent: because they focus on transforming the immediate natural and built environment, they are harder, in some cases impossible, to offshore. No one will ship a building from Chicago to be retrofitted in China. The energy-efficiency industry provides perhaps the most exciting opportunity. Substantially reducing energy waste through systematic retrofitting and upgrading of residential and commercial buildings is one way to bring environmental and equity policy together, and create good jobs in plentiful numbers. The work requires a multi-skilled, local workforce, and it feeds a building-materials industry that is still largely domestic.

Bringing green-collar jobs to scale requires changing the rules of the game in our national economy. And this brings us back to climate protection policy. A system that places an economy-wide cap on GHG emissions, selling permits to polluters, would end the most destructive market failure in America's economic history: the ability of industries to pay no cost for baking the global commons to the brink of catastrophe.

In so doing, it would provide a powerful price incentive to the nation's economic actors - from manufacturers to utilities, from home builders to cities - to use renewable rather than fossil fuel sources for energy and to pursue greater energy efficiencies wherever possible.

Clean Energy Corps

Price signals alone won't be enough. The transformation to a just and sustainable economic future will require targeted investments in research and development, technology deployment, transition assistance to workers and consumers, and economic and workforce development strategies that maximize green-collar job creation and direct jobs and job training to those who need those opportunities most.

A cap and trade system would provide a new source of public revenue (tens to hundreds of billions of dollars annually generated by the auction of permits) to make such investments. In 2009, when we can expect a worsened budget deficit and mounting pressure from pay-go spending rules, this will be an invaluable and perhaps singular source of public funds to create an economy that works for our people and planet.

Money must be invested wisely, in a manner that meets the test of good policy, on the one hand, and good politics, on the other. In order to do so, we must put forward a bold and simple proposal for massive green opportunities that captures the imagination and propels the hopes of millions of Americans. To that end, Green For All and its allies are developing a proposal for a national Clean Energy Corps. We envision the CEC as a combined service, training, and job creation effort, concentrated in cities and struggling suburban and rural communities, and designed to combat global warming, grow local and regional economies, and demonstrate the equity and employment promise of the clean energy economy.

Over the course of a decade, The CEC would invest in the energy efficiency in buildings - which account for 40 percent of national energy consumption - by creating financing mechanisms that would put public and private capital to work, covering up-front costs and capturing the energy savings. This part of the CEC program is largely self-financing and would create local jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a vast scale. The CEC would work with a wide array of employers, community organizations, educational institutions and unions to connect working families to high-quality, career track green-collar jobs in the emerging clean energy economy. It would specifically seek to develop "green pathways out of poverty" for low-income and unemployed people, providing them the training, work experience, job placement, and other services needed to gain family-supporting jobs within that economy. And it would directly engage millions of Americans in diverse service and volunteer work related to climate protection.

We believe the time is right for such an effort. Our ailing economy needs a stimulus that is long-term, sustainable and focused on communities. The public urgently wants action to promote clean energy and curb global warming.i Americans overwhelmingly support the idea of voluntary national service and support a stronger national effort in this area.ii Young adults of the "greenest generation" are already volunteering in record numbers and would welcome the opportunity to serve the nation in combating climate change;iii so will a generation of skilled baby boomers looking for useful activities in their retirement.iv Blue-collar workers -- particularly those left on the bench by a stalled construction industry -- are looking for a chance to apply their skills to green-collar work that rebuilds our nation.

Low-income communities are also keenly aware of the economic promise of a clean energy economy, and wish to be in on the ground floor of building it. A bold visible national effort like the CEC would powerfully advance the national effort to stop global warming while widening economic opportunity and active citizenship. Helping to heal the planet, it would also help heal the nation.

  1. Among the public's top two priorities for national action, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research reports that energy independence and stopping global warming now ranks a close second to health care reform (29 vs. 32 percent). See GQR Research, "Dramatic Transformation in Energy, Global Warming Debate" (May 9, 2007).
  2. Harris Interactive reports that while 64 percent of Americans oppose reinstating a military draft, 73 percent believe national service to be important and 55 percent favor increasing federal spending to satisfy the demand for service opportunities. See Harris, "U.S. Adults Do Not Support Draft for Military or Civilian Service, But Favor Voluntary Service to Support Country" (February 23, 2007).
  3. The National Survey on Service-Learning and Transitioning to Adulthood (November 2, 2006), a joint effort of Harris Interactive and the National Youth Leadership Council, reports that 55 percent of Americans aged 12-18 years (or 15.5 million person) currently volunteer, while 70 percent of college freshman report having done so during their last year of high school.
  4. See Harvard School of Public Health-MetLife Foundation Initiative on Retirement and Civic Engagement, Reinventing Aging: Baby Boomers and Civic Engagement (2004).