Posts tagged as:

green jobs

Is Energy Opportunity Going to Blow Right by the U.S. and Land in China?

by Erika Yost on April 24, 2009

chinese economy 600 300x216 Is Energy Opportunity Going to Blow Right by the U.S. and Land in China?Yes it is. It has been for a long time. We have a chance to grab on and stem some of the loss, but you better believe that Big Oil is going to do everything possible to undermine our efforts. In two weeks, there’s a vote on President Obama’s plan for a new energy economy. But, according to moveon.org, key Democrats are wavering in the face of a flurry of Big Oil ads claiming America can’t afford clean energy.

From a recent letter from the MoveOn team: “If we don’t pass this bill, we’ll lose our chance to create millions of good, green jobs for laid-off workers. We’ll lose our chance to give our kids a vibrant economy. And we’ll lose our chance to pay down our national debt. U.S. investment in wind power lags far behind, but when it comes to solar power, the story is even more infuriating: In the 1990s, the U.S. actually led the world in solar cell manufacturing. But in the Bush-Cheney years, China, Japan, and Europe all zoomed ahead of us in solar production. We can catch up, but only if we start quickly. Obama’s plan would aggressively scale up American wind and solar production-creating millions of new jobs and tackling climate change in one fell swoop.”

MoveOn cites a new report by Ben Furnas of the Center for American Progress. Please read the full report here and consider helping MoveOn counter the dirty-energy companies!

Popularity: 77% [?]

Sphere: Related Content

  • Share/Bookmark

{ 0 comments }

Green Jobs Not Necessarily Good Jobs, Report Says

by Rob Kellogg on February 20, 2009

images3 Green Jobs Not Necessarily Good Jobs, Report Says

A report recently commissioned by the labor federation Change to Win, the Sierra Club, the Laborers International Union of North America, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters titled High Road or Low Road: Job Quality in the New Green Economy concludes that so-called “green jobs” are not automatically good jobs and concerted effort has to be made to make them so.

Key findings include: 1) Low pay is not uncommon in the “green” workplaces; 2) Wage rates at many wind and solar manufacturing facilities are below the national average for workers employed in the manufacture of durable goods; 3) Some U.S. wind and solar manufacturers have already begun to offshore production of components destined for U.S. markets to low-wage havens such as China and Mexico; and 4) Very few workers at wind and solar manufacturing workplaces identified in the course of our research are covered by collective bargaining agreements.

To view the report, click here.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Sphere: Related Content

  • Share/Bookmark

{ 0 comments }