Live-blogging the Green Jobs Forum

OK, Mike Festa is starting things off.  Thanking Suffolk U. law school for donating the facilities for today’s event.  And thanking other folks who made the event possible.

Festa is now introducing Senator Ben Downing, who is in turn thanking Rep. Festa.  Renewable energy and conservation are the future of MA.  And Downing now introduces Bob Healy, Cambridge’s city manager.

Healy: blue-collar jobs have left Cambridge and they aren’t coming back.  Now is the time for green-collar jobs.  Cambridge has a goal of reducing emissions by 20% by 2010; Doug Foy and others helped consult.  Last year was the year of health care; this year is the year for energy.  Focusing on energy is not only good for the environment, it’s good for the economy.  Lots of jobs.  There has to be a lot of training for these jobs, but it’s a great opportunity.  Healy introduces Jim Hunt, Menino’s energy chief.

Hunt: Menino has signed far-reaching executive order: reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 [Menino’s 11th term? Heh. -ed.]  Now talking about Boston’s green building program.  Boston one of the first large cities in the country to require both public and private building to adhere to green building standards.  [stomv, over to you. -ed.]  Climate crisis presents both danger and opportunity. 

Festa now introduces Congressman John Tierney.

Tierney: I have very brief remarks, but I have to stretch them out because Sen. Kerry isn’t here yet.  [laughter]  I co-sponsored Green Jobs Act of 2007: Van Jones did great work on it, got Speaker Pelosi’s attention, and the House has passed it.  Now we’re waiting for the Senate.  We in the House have done lots of other great stuff too.  Time for Senate to step up!

Big economic opportunity: lots of green jobs will be needed.  Need lots of training for them, but they will be good, high-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced.  This bill will do that.

Sen. Downing is back up to introduce other legislators that are present.  Rep. Dan Bosley; Rep. Frank Smizik; Rep. Cory Atkins; Rep. Denise Provost; Rep. Will Brownsberger; Rep. Steve D’Amico; Rep. Jim Marzilli.  [Also, I’ve just spotted Democratic Party Chair John Walsh.  Welcome John! -ed.]

Downing is now introducing Senator Kerry.

Kerry: So much opportunity here, if we get smart and show some leadership on this issue, not just to create jobs, but also to face our environmental issues, and, as Van Jones will discuss, addressing social justice issues at the same time.

No. 1 Green Job in the US ought to be the president.  Beyond my belief that we are struggling with a president who is struggling not only with the fact that climate change is happening and we need to act, but also with respect to automobile efficiency, oil policy, etc., we have gone backwards.  We’ve abandoned the “polluter pays” principle that we have lived with for 25-30 years.  BushCo has abandoned new source regulations.  Things have gotten worse, and are moving faster, since Inconvenient Truth. 

Reviews the history on this issue: a big, vicious circle of inaction, from congressional hearings to Kyoto to the present day.  But now, there is an extraordinary opportunity for all of us.  This is more than a two-fer — it’s a five-fer.  If we act, but everyone saying climate change is happening is wrong, what’s the worst that would happen?  We’d still cut down air and water pollution, we’d be more secure as a nation by reducing our dependence on foreign oil, we’d have better farming practices that wouldn’t be killing our rivers, and we’d create jobs and drive the economy.  And the result if they’re right, and we don’t act: absolute catastrophe.  Yet we’re still faced with the flat-earth caucus in the U.S. Senate.

Now, we’re catching up to Japan and Germany on green technology.  In the late 1970s, MA was one of the top job bases in the country in environmental remediation — good, high-paying green jobs.  But then, it slowed down because in 1980s government under Reagan pulled back on federally-funded clean-up.  So, how do we jump-start this? 

Quotes OPEC oil minister: stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.  And the oil age isn’t going to end because we run out of oil — we are going to replace it.  Reality: US has only 3% of world’s oil reserves, and we import 60% of our oil for transportation.  We must invent our way out of this situation.  Some examples: Texas Instruments was going to move from Dallas to China, for the usual reasons.  But by doing green redesign of their plant, they made staying in Dallas competitive, and saved US jobs.  Wal-Mart is going green with light bulbs.

I don’t see doomsday, I see possibilities.  All of us can make a difference in this, and it’s still new — we’re all still learning what we can do.  But we must face up to this reality: since industrial revolution, CO2 has gone from 280 ppm to 380 ppm.  Ocean acidification has rapidly gone up.  Big worry is that the planet’s feedback loop is going faster than anticipated.  Original prediction: we could tolerate 500 ppm and 3-degree increase without major problems, but it’s been revised to 450 ppm and 2-degree increase.  So far, we’re at 0.8 degree increase, and there’s lots more coal-fired power plants coming on line overseas, and even here.  We need to act.

So: think about these green jobs, and think about the future.  Last remark: communities most impacted by environmental degradation are often communities of color, and almost always poor.  Van Jones has done great work: he is combining green activism with social action, focusing on at-risk kids and helping them by finding them good jobs in green industries.  Introduces Van Jones.

Jones: thanks Kerry for his service, and for stepping up in 2004.

Now thanking Tierney for Green Jobs bill: understands that we have to provide opportunity for people who need good jobs to get training for green-collar jobs. 

Introduces his PowerPoint: “The PowerPoint presentation that Al Gore would do if he was black.”  [laughter]

If you’ve always held environmental values, even before it was chic, this is your year.  Finally, the mainstream has come around to seeing it your way.  So, you have a lot to do.

I started not in environmental movement, but in trying to get and keep kids out of jail in Oakland.  Greatest frustration: getting the kids out, and then three months later they’re back in because the jobs weren’t there.  But we need the jobs to be beneficial, not harmful, to the community.  Is it that much better for “Pookie” to go to jail for selling drugs, stealing cars, and engaging in economic activity harmful to the community, then get out of jail, and work in a factory that is polluting his community?

Came up with a slogan: “Green-collar jobs, not jails, for our communities.”  Then people started telling me, “hey, you’re an environmentalist!”  I said, “really?” 

“The Third Wave of Environmentalism.”  What’s the first wave?  Conservation — started not with TR, but with the Native Americans.  1492: continent put under new management, and then there had to be a conservation “movement” — started with TR.

Second wave: Regulation.  Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring.  Led to Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, EPA, etc.  But the failing of the second wave: no analysis at the time in the enviro movement about race, class, poverty, and NIMBYism crept in.  Suddenly looked like all the dumps, incinerators, etc. went into our communities.  Parents, ministers, etc. began standing up: why should our children have to bear the burden of our industrial society?  Gave rise to environmental justice movement.

Third wave: i
f first wave was conservation of our past, and second was regulation of our present, then the third is investment in our future.  Solar panels, biofuels, green building, hybrid technologies.  Massive investment in not only regulating the problem, but creating the solution.

So: what is the meaning of the green economy for the poor communities?  The folks who can’t afford to put solar panels on their house?  Who can’t buy a hybrid?  What is their place in this movement? 

The question for this movement: who are we going to take with us, and who are going to leave behind?

We have a moral obligation to build a green economy that is strong enough to bring communities out of poverty.  Communities that were locked out of the previous waves have to be locked into this one.  Have to overcome sense that the green movement is just for the hippies, just for the tofu Birkenstock crowd.

Celebrities, corporations (“greenvertising”), are all trying to get in on the action.  Why?  Because the tide has turned in the public mind.  There is now a massive constituency for these ideas.  They’re trying to turn it into dollars; we have to turn it into votes, and into political opportunity.

LOHAS – “Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability.”  Includes solar panels, organic groceries, alternative health care, etc.  Green economy now is $230 billion.  Clean Tech has jumped into top 10, then top 5 (behind only biotech and software) in 2006 in venture capital investment.  Clean energy projected growth over next 10 years: from $30-40 billion to $170 billion.

So, who’s going to get all this money?  If we think about how to leverage these dollars, there’s a big opportunity here.

Three possible futures — two not so good, one really good.

1: Eco-apocalypse.  That’s the bad one.

2: Eco-apartheid.  The world of ecological haves, and ecological have-nots.  And it’s already happening.  In an age of floods, we don’t need an ideology that says sink or swim.  We need an ideology that says we’re all in this together.

3: Eco-equity.  It is possible to bring everyone along.  Because as well as being immoral, eco-apartheid won’t work — it’s just a speedbump on the way to eco-apocalypse.  If only 20% are participating in the green economy, the other 80% are still in the old pollution-based economy.

So: “The Fourth Quadrant.”

Two axes: gray (problems) to green (solutions), and rich to poor.  Rich/gray: polar bears.  Poor/gray: dumps and factories in the neighborhood.  Both are right; neither is complete.  Rich/solution: solar panels, hybrid cars — business opportunities for the rich, consumer choices for the affluent.  Poor/solution: focus is on jobs, health, wealth-building opportunities.  Green-collar jobs.

Green-collar jobs are vocational jobs — like blue-collar jobs, but for green industries.  Teach a kid how to install a solar panel, or how to winterize a building, they are on their way to good jobs, joining a union, economic empowerment.  The challenge: how to do we make sure that the people who most need these jobs, get these jobs?  And they cannot be outsourced — the buildings have to weatherized here, and the solar panels have to be installed here.

Northern CA does not have the trained workers for green construction — a labor shortage.  Coming to MA next.  Need new or retrained electricians, carpenters, etc.  In Oakland, decided to go forward only if they have 100% support from city council, trades councils, etc. — too important to get tied up in local politics.

Recommendations:

1. Green Enterprise Zones, where the city works with local labor and businesses to bring green businesses into underserved neighborhoods.

2. Prepare a green workforce.  Start with “people with barriers to employment” — e.g., conviction, no high school diploma, etc.  Don’t just start with people already in the workforce.  It will cost more up front ($8-10,000 vs. $1-2,000 per person).  But it saves a lot more elsewhere.  These folks are not out hurting the neighborhood — instead, they’re working to benefit their communities, take care of their families, etc.

Why do this?  It’s not just the economic opportunity, or the ecological opportunity.  It’s the opportunity to be one country again, and to lead the world again toward green solutions — to use our genius and our labor for the right reasons.

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Much applause, and a standing ovation.  Now a break before the panel discussion.