Green Jobs Champion Hilda Solis Gets Secretary of Labor
by Stacy Feldman - Dec 19th, 2008
Good news, green jobs proponents. President-elect Obama has picked Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA), original author of America's "Green Jobs Act of 2007," to be the nation's next Labor chief.
In Congress, Solis sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Natural Resources Committee, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. She has been a fierce advocate of a green jobs revolution. Here's Solis in a speech at the National Clean Energy Summit in August 2008 (full clip above):
Our nation, as you know, is at a crossroads right now. We can choose to transition to a clean energy economy that secures our energy supply and combats climate change or we can continue down the same old path of uncertainty and insecurity that we’re currently in. Current economic conditions, particularly for under-served, under-represented minority communities underscore the need to transition to clean energy technology.
Likening the green jobs revolution to the Industrial Revolution, Solis said that jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy will "revive our neighborhoods that have suffered from high levels of unemployment, job dislocation and are an important answer to the devastation resulting from the offshoring and outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs."
Van Jones, green jobs crusader and founder and president of Green for All, said he's "thrilled" with the Solis pick.
President-elect Barack Obama got it right when he announced Representative Hilda Solis as his pick for the next secretary of labor. Headlines are heralding her as the first Latino to hold the post. But the green jobs movement is jumping for joy not only because she's brown. It's because she's green. Through Solis, Obama makes clear his commitment to creating green jobs to lift the nation out of its current economic crisis.
The Green Jobs Act of 2007 authorized $125 million in funding to train 35,000 people a year in green-collar jobs. But it was never funded, as Wonk Room notes.
In August, Solis said that she was working hard with her colleagues in the House and the Senate "to secure funding to push the Department of Labor to move quickly" to establish the green-jobs program.
How times change. Soon, Solis will be the Department of Labor.
Expect the program finally to get funded -- and then some. Remember: Barack Obama has pledged to help the private sector create 140 times that number of new green jobs -- five million in fact with a government clean energy investment of $150 billion.
See also:
Obama Science Advisor a Home Run
Energy Secretary Pick Steven Chu on Climate Change, In His Own Words
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Post new comment