green jobs

The Dream Reborn conference hits Memphis this weekend

Yesterday in Memphis, a crowd stood outside the Lorraine Motel to quietly honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the place where he died 40 years ago. All day long, it rained.

A couple blocks away, another sort of commemoration was going on. There was chanting. A man played a drum and a choir sang. There was lots and lots and lots of clapping.

Several hundred people had gathered in a conference room to kick off The Dream Reborn, a weekend-long event designed to ignite discussion and collaboration among leaders of the green jobs movement.

Green jobs have gotten a lot of attention lately, but in case you haven't caught the buzz, here's the idea: Green industries, including everything from solar panel manufacture to community garden construction, are creating thousands of new jobs. The green jobs movement is helping poor people find those jobs and use them to break out of poverty.

Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx and a leading voice in the movement, explained it like this: "America must be green for all. We believe that the transitional green economy should be used to move people out of poverty, so our country can finally set the example on how to treat people with dignity and protect the earth at the same daggone time!"

Ron Sims on MLKJr., climate change, and green jobs

Ron Sims, the African-American executive of a county whose name now honors Martin Luther King Jr., has led efforts to make King County one of the climate leaders among American counties. In today's Climate Solutions Journal, he writes about Dr. King's dream and how it connects to climate change, green jobs, and social justice. (County residents a number of years ago decided to shift from honoring 19th century slaveowner and political figure Rufus King to MLKJr. Recently the county logo finally caught up -- see upper left-hand corner.)

Forty years gone: MLK’s dream today would be colored green

The following are my introductory remarks to the Dream Reborn conference, beginning today and running through the weekend in Memphis, Tenn.

Forty years ago today, on April 4, 1968, a sniper assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King had come to Memphis, Tennessee, to aid striking sanitation workers. The preeminent civil rights leader of his time, he was only 39 years old.

Four decades have passed since that fateful day. As of this month, Dr. King has been gone from us longer than he was ever here. As we pass this milestone in history, we gather in Memphis to remind ourselves and the world that a bullet killed the dreamer -- but not the dream.

Dr. King had a vision of an America as good as its promise, and a world at peace with itself. That vision lives on in the hearts of hundreds of millions, including two generations of adults and a rising generation of teenagers, all of whom have been born since Dr. King's passing.

The time has come for us to step forward. We must take full responsibility to advance the cause of justice, opportunity, and peace in a new century.

And yet it must be said that we are stepping onto history's stage at a frightening time -- a time of global warming and global war. A time when "the market" is free and the people are not. A time of mass incarceration of people and mass extinction of species. A time of no rules for the rich and no rights for the poor. A time of increasing profits for the few and decreasing options for the many. A time of buyouts and bailouts for the powerful and convictions and evictions for the powerless.

And yet, inside the United States, the tide has begun to turn.

Van Jones on Colbert Report

Am I the only one who just doesn’t much like the Colbert Report? The interviews, especially. Colbert always comes off like a dickhead — that’s his shtick — but the guests are in a catch-22 as well. They look bad if they play along and bad if they try to play it straight. It just […]

Americans favor conservation and see economically sound opportunities in protection

Standard survey questions often uphold (or manufacture) false dichotomies. Case in point: the perpetual practice of pitting the environment against the economy. Nonetheless, these questions can reveal interesting trends over time. And every now and then, the numbers show that the public sees right through "either/or" questions that just don't add up -- like recent research that shows Americans link economic opportunity to environmental protection.

First, recent trends on that pesky "environment vs. economy" question:

According to a new Gallup poll conducted March 6-9, despite fears of a looming recession, Americans continue to favor protecting the environment even at the risk of curbing economic growth: 49 percent to 42 percent. But this seven-point margin is down from the 18-point margin of a year ago, when 55 percent favored the environment. Further, the 49 percent of Americans currently favoring the environment over growth is only two points above the historical low over the past couple of decades.

Two NYT pieces exploring green jobs

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.

-----

If you're interested in the media's version of Green Jobs 101, a good place to start is Wednesday's New York Times article, "Millions of Jobs of a Different Collar." But it's not a perfect start, because the article fails to demonstrate an understanding of the scale of this movement, and the author could have taken heed to one of his co-worker's pieces on green education and job-training.

Here's how the article describes green jobs (emphasis added):

Presidential candidates talk about the promise of "green collar" jobs -- an economy with millions of workers installing solar panels, weatherizing homes, brewing biofuels, building hybrid cars and erecting giant wind turbines. Labor unions view these new jobs as replacements for positions lost to overseas manufacturing and outsourcing. Urban groups view training in green jobs as a route out of poverty. And environmentalists say they are crucial to combating climate change.

For those reasons, the issue of green jobs is something the Center for American Progress has given a lot of attention. This is the creation of a workforce to power a low-carbon economy.

However, in the same places the article shows skepticism of green jobs, the article reveals that it does not entirely understand or convey the concept of a green workforce for a green economy.

Notable quotable

“We need to create new jobs in this country — green collar jobs that can help our economy and our environment. And I’d like to point out that that’s my term — ‘green collar’ jobs. See, I can come up with exciting phrases.” — Hillary Clinton … at least according to The Onion.

One last word from the National Green Jobs Conference

I’ll soon be tackling new eco-job and career issues, but I’ve got one last piece of business related to my time at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference last week. I’ve recounted what happened and who was there, and explained how we might define green jobs. Now, I’ll address one final question from Grist readers: […]

More from the National Green Jobs Conference

Welcome back to the Grist review of the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference last week in Pittsburgh. In my last post, I gave it two thumbs up and noted that Van Jones was particularly outstanding in one of the lead roles. Let’s continue this conversation with a particularly hot topic these days. Based on your […]