New Reports on Economic Benefits of Green Jobs!

As clean energy and climate legislation moves through Congress, new data shows that a $3 billion investment in clean energy would create 39,000 new jobs in Tennessee; an $815 million investment in Nashville would create 10,407 new jobs, 5,849 of which will be for workers with high school diplomas or less. According to the analysis, shifting to a clean-energy economy will help millions of low-income Americans by creating more accessible job opportunities -- with the potential for advancement -- and by lowering utility bills and transportation costs.

Two complementary reports -- prepared by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (PERI), Center for American Progress (CAP), Green For All, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) -- outline how investment in a clean-energy economy will produce significant economic and job creation benefits.

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News item: A couple of dozen different organizations have teamed up to form the new Climate Equity Alliance. Read about it in this article (link).

Green Jobs. Susan Shann, of Earth Revolution, interviewed Nell Levin, (Coordinator of TAP) and Dr. Sekou Franklin (Political Science Professor at MTSU). They discussed their work to create a Green Jobs Corp in Nashville, to train and provide solid, living-wage and career-track jobs for potentially thousands of Tennesseans.

The Committee for Green Jobs in Tennessee was initiated by the Green Collar Task Force of Nashville and Davidson County.

The mission of the Green-Collar Jobs Task Force of Nashville-Davidson County is to create family-supporting career-track jobs that directly contribute to preserving or enhancing environmental quality. We focus on creating recruitment and training opportunities for people with barriers to employment, such as lack of job skills, lack of education, language/cultural barriers or history in the juvenile/criminal justice system. We seek to fight poverty and pollution simultaneously by connecting the people who need work the most to the work that most needs doing and thus providing green pathways out of poverty.

The Green-Collar Jobs Task Force has been meeting with key members of the administration of Mayor Karl Dean to work with them to create a Green Jobs Corps in Nashville, using stimulus money from President Obama's recovery plan. The proposal that was presented to the Mayor's administration can be read here. green collar jobs-March 2009.doc

The Green-Collar Jobs Task Force is working with other groups around the state that want to bring or are bringing green-collar jobs to their communities. (A list of other groups will be added here..)

Making a 'Sacred Zone' in Appalachia
It's not enough to stop mountaintop removal coal mining. The goal is to build a new Appalachia.
by Bob Kincaid

It is April 4, 2009, as I write. A year ago, a handful of community residents gathered on a mountain here in Fayette County, West Virginia, to pray for a mountain that has stood sentinel over our homes for generations. We prayed because, like so many other mountains in Appalachia, it, and we, are under attack.

That attack is prosecuted is by a coal company willing to sacrifice us for a load of coal. A day more than forty-one years ago, Dr. King said, "It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do."

... article continues at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/04-4

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