green jobs

Perceptions of whether California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, is going to save or destroy the California economy depends on who’s doing the talking.

Opponents, like Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, say the measure is too expensive and will destroy jobs in California. In fact, she has made suspending the greenhouse gas reduction law a cornerstone of her campaign. She also suggests that California’s Environmental Quality Act, a model for environmental protection laws in other states, needs drastic reform.

Whitman and other opponents of AB 32, including those trying to get an initiative on the November ballot to suspend the law, argue that if the regulations are implemented, more than a million jobs in California may be lost.

Supporters of AB 32 say Whitman has it backwards: Implementing AB 32 will create jobs and without it, the California economy cannot recover from its current 12.4% unemployment level.

While economists bemoan the rising U.S. unemployment rate, nearing 10 percent, there's a part of the country that has long struggled with unemployment many times higher – the Navajo Nation.

The unemployment rate across the sprawling region is 44 percent right now. But on Tuesday, its leaders approved groundbreaking legislation that they hope will bring change for their people.

The Navajo Nation became the first Native American tribe to pass green jobs legislation intended to grow thousands of jobs in ways that follow the Navajo traditions of respecting the Earth. The Navajo Nation Council voted to establish a Navajo Green Economy Commission that will draw on federal, state and foundation funding to pay for green initiatives ranging from farmers’ markets to small-scale energy projects.

“This is huge,” says Wahleah Johns, Field Organizer for Black Mesa Water Coalition, part of the Navajo Green Economy Coalition, which lobbied for the legislation.

“One of the largest indigenous nations in the U.S. is paving a pathway for green jobs development in Indian country. It could be a model for most Indian nations throughout the world.”

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Green jobs go far beyond the hands-on renewable energy and energy efficiency work that the Obama administration emphasizes with each new project and grant announcement.

To deal with the effects of climate change, jobs will be springing up across the spectrum of research and development, fueled by billions of dollars in Department of Energy grants and scientific funding provided by the economic recovery program and proposed through the Markey-Waxman bill’s National Climate Change Adaptation Program and Fund.

As Energy Secretary Steven Chu likes to say, borrowing from hockey great Wayne Gretzky:

“The United States should skate to where the puck is going to be."

U.S. universities are starting to lace up their skates.

In the shadow of a sluggish U.S. economy and unemployment at 8.5 percent, green jobs are beginning to take root across the United States, and they’re expected to grow rapidly as the federal stimulus money works its way into the economy in the coming months.

In 2007, the nation had 504,000 jobs directly involved in renewable energy technologies: wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass, fuel cells and hydrogen. It claimed 8.6 million energy efficiency jobs in the areas of recycling, reuse and remanufacturing, household appliances, HVAC systems, construction, and auto manufacturing.

By 2030, the American Solar Energy Society estimates those numbers will swell to 7.3 million and 30 million respectively.

Most folks by now know about China’s wind power boom. At the end of 2007, the nation's installed base of wind energy was just over six gigawatts. By the end of 2008, it will climb to ten gigawatts. By 2010, experts predict 20 gigawatts. And by 2020, 100 gigawatts.

That’s more than all of the world's wind power today, which stands at 94 gigawatts.

But here’s the thing that’s really striking: China is gaining speed as the global leader in the manufacture of wind power parts, too. Indeed, its equipment may feed the whole planet's appetite for wind energy one day.

Think toys, but healthier.