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Green Collar Jobs: Climate Change Meets Civil Rights
“People are either thinking about civil rights or they are thinking about climate change. Rarely are they thinking about both.” The two issues are inextricably linked, argued Majora Carter at a panel on “green collar jobs” at the Center for American Progress this Monday.
Carter, the Executive Director of Sustainable South Bronx, and other panelists discussed efforts in the Bronx, Oakland, CA, Chicago, and Washington D.C. to create new jobs in green industries in areas that need the most economic stimulation. Billions of investment dollars will soon flow into green technologies as more businesses work to transform the United States into a low-carbon economy. That investment has the potential to create a new “green collar” workforce that translates new energy technologies into practical commercial, industrial, and residential infrastructure.
Van Jones, President and Founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, described programs in Oakland that provide job training for workers to learn how to install solar paneling and how to weatherize and improve the energy efficiency of homes. These job skills create opportunities for people low income communities—and the green technologies these workers implement reduce energy costs for consumers and mitigate carbon emissions. “How can we create a linkage between the people who most need work and the work that most needs doing?” Jones asked. For him, training a green workforce is the perfect answer.
The discussion highlighted the importance of ensuring that green investments that can energize the U.S. economy do not simply benefit the middle and upper classes. Scientific and technology policy decisions must do more than dictate emissions and energy efficiency standards and open markets for Wall Street traders and solar startups. These policy decisions can connect the energy future of the United States with the cause of social justice through the creation of a new workforce of quality jobs that companies cannot outsource. Sound policy can improve the environment, spur economic growth, and lift people out of poverty on a tide of new jobs. As Carter explained, “environmental justice is civil rights in the 21st century.”
For more:
Green Collar Jobs Event
Time For Green Collar Jobs
Comments on this article
As I am from England this is quite an alien debate – I don’t really see how being environmentally concious has any negative impact on civil rights. From where I am standing – a low income person living in London – wealthy people are the main problem when it comes to HUGE carbon emissions, they are the ones who drive the big cars, own the big houses and take the most flights (etc). True, some suggestions that are aimed at the ordinary person leave me cold – I do not compost as I do not have a garden, I do not use public transport instead of my car as I don’t have a car and ride a bicycle, I do not insulate my home as I live in a block of flats – you get the gist.
All I can take from this is that the American ‘blue collar worker’- by this you mean working class – is going to get done out of a job because people are going to be consuming so much less? Well, you know that that is not going to happen – the US already consumes enough to need 8 planets if we all lived like you, and I get the distinct impression that the average American equates consumption (of US goods) with a bizarre form of patriotism. The link with civil liberties I find tenuous and in spite of reading the article twice, I really do not know what they are driving at.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:12 pmAre my civil liberties undermined because I am too poor to drive a car? Is this ameliorated by the fact that I do not want to drive a car for environmetal reasons as well as financial?
Will I be surprised to find that most green savings are aimed at richer people? No, and I am glad, they should be, as the richer people are the ones with the biggest carbon footprint, and therefore have the most to do about it.
Good question about the article’s discussion of civil rights. On my reading, it seems that civil rights in this context is taken to indicate that, if and when green technology and infrastructure is deployed/created/built, the social goods generated by the technology are justly distributed.
In other words, as the article alludes to, the U.S. just might be able – if the leadership gets on board* – reduce our ridiculous emissions and waste while simultaneously retooling workers for a green(er) economy.
* It’s perhaps a significant statement about US politics that I as I wrote that phrase “if the leadership gets on board,” I laugh. It’s a desperate laugh, please believe.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:30 pmI may have glossed over some important points in the post, and I think dwein’s response to ellesar fills in the gaps I left.
Civil rights, in broad terms, can encompass the right to economic opportunity and the ability to pursue decent, well-paid work. Blue collar jobs in growing industries like energy-efficient housing, solar, and wind energy offer such opportunity.
The other half of the situation is that low-income areas also tend to bear the brunt of environmental degradation in terms of poor zoning and pollution. Projects like Majora Carter’s Sustainable South Bronx improve living conditions in low-income areas by cleaning up the environment and simultaneously creating economic opportunities.
And as dwein points out, it’s important that green technologies don’t just benefit the wealthy through companies that sell green technologies and through products marketed to middle-class and upper-middle-class consumers. The economic and environmental benefits should be shared with everyone.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:52 pm