– by James Parks
The Blue Green Alliance (BGA), a strategic partnership between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Sierra Club, has joined with the Alliance for Climate Protection, the nonprofit organization founded by former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, to take action to solve the climate crisis.
In a first-of-its-kind program, the BGA and USW will work jointly with the Alliance for Climate Protection to educate members about global warming and mobilize them to support solutions that promote economic prosperity for everyone. The member-to-member program will build a blue-collar constituency for global warming solutions, highlighting the opportunities for high-paying domestic jobs in renewable energy, clean technology and “green” manufacturing, while also explaining the environmental and economic risks associated with accelerating climate change.
Last week, the Alliance for Climate Protection launched a multi-year, multi-faceted campaign designed to create a movement to address solutions to the climate crisis. The alliance’s three-year “We” campaign draws from the best practices of successful commercial, social marketing and political campaigns. The campaign’s first commercial hit the TV airwaves last week. (See video above).
Says USW President Leo Gerard:
We are looking towards a future—a very near future—in which good, high-paying American jobs will be created with the onset of a green economy. Developing, manufacturing, installing and maintaining new technologies to fuel our homes and businesses will create a whole new industry that will translate into millions of new jobs.
The United States is approaching a historic moment when thinking green will soon become our new “common sense”—and the norm in the business world, says BGA Executive Director David Foster.
We believe a renewable energy strategy can get our economy moving again and create a new generation of domestic manufacturing jobs while solving global warming. During World War II, we built more than 50 planes a day. We should be able to build a renewable energy plant a week to protect our environment, end our addiction to foreign oil and lead to new industries that will create thousands of real jobs. We look forward to bringing the voices of working Americans into this critical national discussion.
Earlier this month, the BGA coordinated “Good Jobs, Green Jobs,” the first national green jobs conference. More than 1,000 participants from 70-plus organizations took part in the conference, which was held in Pittsburgh’s Lawrence center, the nation’s only entirely green convention center. Participants shared best practices about revitalizing our manufacturing sector, driving green building, promoting safer chemicals and realizing the economic benefits of global warming solutions.
The AFL-CIO also is pushing initiatives to create a healthy economy and a cleaner planet. In the federation’s Executive Council’s statement on “Greening the Economy” approved during its meeting in San Diego, the council says:
The greening of the economy means that every job that contributes to a low-carbon future is a green job.
Some of the steps the council calls for to reduce carbon emissions include:
- Diversity in the electric utility industry and the retention of all current generating options, including fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro and renewable energy.
- New investment in a sustainable energy infrastructure must be structured to create good jobs and ensure stable energy prices.
- An economy-wide cap-and-trade program that is transparent and requires all sectors to come to the table to reduce their carbon emissions.
- Energy incentives and investments by the federal government must be based on a set of economic development principles that clean the environment and create jobs but will not encourage offshoring of manufacturing jobs.