The Growth in 'Green-Collar' Jobs
While much of the hype around the emerging "clean tech" economy has centered on celebrity venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, most of the jobs, says [Van] Jones, [founder and president of Green For All], will be created in less glamorous sectors: weatherizing homes and offices, installing solar panels and retrofitting factories with energy-efficient technologies. "This is not an eco-elite, eco-chic movement for people who can afford to buy hybrid cars and shop at Whole Foods," says Jones. "The green economy to come is going to be a broad-shouldered, mass movement of American labor."
As they crisscross Pennsylvania before its Democratic primary this month, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama stopped in at Gamesa, which has hired 1,300 people in the state in the last two years, to pitch their plans for boosting the alternative energy sector. (Obama even autographed a 130-foot windmill blade.) John McCain will hold his own climate-change-and-jobs tour on the West Coast next month.
The candidates' visits say a lot about the appeal of green-collar jobs as a campaign slogan in these anxious times. "Energy prices are going up, greenhouse gases are going up, and the economy is going down," says Van Jones, founder of Green for All, an Oakland, Calif.-based organization that promotes green job training for the poor. "The new president will need to hold the country together through a difficult economic and ecological period."
While much of the hype around the emerging "clean tech" economy has centered on celebrity venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, most of the jobs, says Jones, will be created in less glamorous sectors: weatherizing homes and offices, installing solar panels and retrofitting factories with energy-efficient technologies. "This is not an eco-elite, eco-chic movement for people who can afford to buy hybrid cars and shop at Whole Foods," says Jones. "The green economy to come is going to be a broad-shouldered, mass movement of American labor."
