Green Jobs Act of 2007
Complain all you want about the other things not done, but this kind of legislation could only be done by a Democratic majority in Congress.
(T)he media so far has missed one of the most interesting and innovative proposals that will be voted on: the Green Jobs Act of 2007.
This ground-breaking legislation will make $120 million a year available across the country to begin training workers (and would-be workers) for jobs in the clean energy sector. When the bill becomes law, 35,000 people a year will benefit from cutting edge, vocational education in fields that could literally save the Earth.
Lofty as that sounds, the Green Jobs Act is responding smartly to an important, practical need. To beat global warming and meet the energy challenges of the future, the United States will need hundreds of thousands of "green-collar workers." Such workers will be needed to install millions of solar panels; weatherize homes and other buildings; create a sufficient quantity of bio-fuels; build and maintain wind-farms and much, much more. Without these workers, the country will not have the working muscle and hands-on smarts to change our trajectory and fashion a different future.
There is an added bonus found in creating a strong, green-collar workforce: these energy-saving, air-quality-improving, carbon-cutting jobs can do more than just save the planet or help avoid oil wars in the future. For tens of thousands of Americans who are falling behind in the global job market, these work opportunities can also create "green pathways out of poverty." Read on...
Great idea! But now, let's see which DINO's will cross the aisle to vote against it.
yay for working on modernization :)
"avoid oil wars" I LIKE THE SOUND OF THAT
Wow... Great find Nicole.
Finally, jobs for all the [illegal] migrant workers who will be out of work when global warming destroys the crops.
I find this so odd that we have not heard anything on MSM about this...it is a signifigant issue, and will have impact on so many,....oh, that's right it is not oil related...
It will get a veto from W
A drop in the bucket in the right direction.
"This ground-breaking legislation will make $120 million a year available across the country to begin training workers (and would-be workers) for jobs in the clean energy sector. When the bill becomes law, 35,000 people a year will benefit from cutting edge, vocational education in fields that could literally save the Earth."
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
US$120m a year. To improve life on the planet. And how much are we spending on warring every year?
$120 Million for 35,000 people is $3428 per person, per year for training, this number goes down once companies are hired to conduct the training, trainers/teachers are retained and trained, etc. etc.
How big is this program really? How far does $120 Million stretch? It is it enough?
What kind of training does this bill mandate?
Who will conduct the training?
How much will the training corporations make?
How much in the wait of the remaining dollars will be directed to actually teaching people what they need to know to help save the earth?
Lots more questions where that came from. Great job tho Congress. Keep it up, do it again, do it again.
Hell yeah....where do I sign up?
Yeah Baby.... Say what you will but this Congress IS getting things done. With bush in the whitehouse the best they can..
Read the whole article from the link. Pretty cool what they're doing.
I'm VERY glad the legislation is aiming at employing low-income people to get 'em out of poverty.
It's a simple fact, undisputable.
The Democrats support working people, the environment, sane foreign policy, health, education.
The Republics support HUGE Corporations (not small business as they claim), the Mega-Rich, the Radical RightWing Christianists and Military Contractors....
NOT THE MILITARY, Republics in fact HATE Solidiers, they're just lower class cannon fodder to the Republic heirarchy.
It's too bad the media buys the spin from the Republic party, cause what I just stated is the facts, jack!
I think what the Democrats need to do is to reach out to blue-collar working class people who are religious.
These people are very hard hit by the GOP's union busting activities and thus they turn to religous faith for some hope, which is very understandable!
The GOP gives recourse through religion, but unless the Democrats actively try to reach out to workers in red states, the GOP is gonan keep winning.
Bush will veto this bill without a first thought, let alone a second one.
"Weak tea". Hahaha.
But I guess it's a start...
Great legislation. I like some of the forward thinking ideas the congress is pushing forward
RasslinGod @ 14:
The Republics use Christianism like a bludgeon, a weapon of hate, anti gay, anti woman, Xenophobic....
And, there is NOTHING in their version of Supply Side Christianity except rich is good, poor is bad...
Jesus would throw them out of the temple for the money grubbing whores they are....
120 mill? not enough,, but nice little baby step.
if we do not take a 180 degree turn on energy things will get more drastic then they are now.
turn your lawn into a garden and maybe the market will speak for itself
Bout time. My entire investment portfolio is invested in this stuff.
Maybe I'll actually make some money before I die.
Apparently a few others had the same thought/concern as myself. $120 million doesn't buy a hell of a lot these days. About 2/3 of ONE DAY of an illegal war in Iraq is about all you can get for that amount now.
Yep. In a world of uncertainties one thing's for sure. The sun rises and sets and there is always wind and a running stream somewhere. Might as well take advantage of it. Sounds too simple to make sense.
I could sure use a green job after being kicked out of the IT workforce thanks to outsourcing. Don't see it happening though. The consultancy firms that aggressively push visa holders into IT jobs, like Tata, will do the same for green jobs.
Yay for alternative energies!!!!
Biofuels are another scam by the energy brokers. Biofuels are 25% less efficient than petroleum equivalents and more expensive to produce. The energy giants are building ethanol refineries so fast your head will spin. Just google Brazillian and US ethanol treaties. Biofuels will cause a major world famine as growers switch to corn for ethanol production instead of food production, driving the cost of edible corn products through the roof.
The heart of the plan is a huge, taxpayer-subsidized expansion of use of bio-ethanol for transport fuel. The president's plan requires production of 35 billion US gallons (about 133 billion liters) of ethanol a year by 2017. Congress has already mandated with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that corn ethanol for fuel must rise from 4 billion gallons in 2006 to 7.5 billion in 2012.
To make certain it will happen, farmers and big agribusiness giants like ADM or David Rockefeller get generous taxpayer subsidies to grow corn for fuel instead of food. Currently ethanol producers get a subsidy in the US of 51 cents per gallon (13.5 cents per liter) of ethanol paid to the blender, usually an oil company that blends it with gasoline for sale.
As a result of the beautiful US government subsidies to produce bio-ethanol fuels and the new legislative mandate, the US refinery industry is investing big-time in building new special ethanol distilleries, similar to oil refineries, except they produce ethanol fuel. The number currently under construction exceeds the total number of oil refineries built in the US over the past 25 years. When they are finished in the next two to three years, the demand for corn and other grain to make ethanol for car fuel will double from present levels.
And not just US bio-ethanol. In March, Bush met with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to sign a bilateral "Ethanol Pact" to cooperate in research and development of "next generation" biofuel technologies such as cellulosic ethanol from wood, and joint cooperation in "stimulating" expansion of biofuel use in developing countries, especially in Central America, and creating a biofuel cartel along the lines of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with rules that allow formation of a Western Hemisphere ethanol market.
In short, the use of farmland worldwide for bio-ethanol and other biofuels - burning the food product rather than using it for human or animal food - is being treated in Washington, Brazil and other major centers, including the European Union, as a major new growth industry.
The great biofuel fraud
By F William Engdahl
Here's the link.
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/engdahl/engdahl072607.html
Sounds like a back-asswards approach to efficiently dealing with the issue... Is spending millions of dollars to train people to perform work that may or may not exist really the best Congress can come up with? Wouldn't a smarter approach be to deal with the demand side of the equation? Suppose, instead, Congress created monetary (tax?) incentives to "install solar panels; weatherize homes and other buildings; create bio-fuels; build wind-farms, etc". Such incentives would create the demand for such workers (on a much broader scale) and the free market system would then create the trained workforce to meet that demand without the need for the government to pay people to to obtain that training. Instead, Uncle Sam is going to waste our tax dollars on creating workers for which there may or may not be work. Seems like a dumb idea to me and a poorly thought out political solution to a problem that needs a more thoughtful and comprehensive approach.
Salmineo @ 10:
Check out http://www.ellabakercenter.org/ -- Van Jones, author of the Huffington Post article referenced here, is President and Co-Founder of this Oakland, CA-based organization. Our green-collar jobs campaign helped create the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, which provides a model for a national clean energy job training program.
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