Policy & Legislation
What Is a Green-Collar Job?
Published September 07, 2009 @ 04:19PM PT
"Green-collar jobs" have become a daily facet of the national conversation on energy policy, as well as economic revival. At the most fundamental, these are jobs that link rapid decarbonization of the nation's energy economy, with reviving the nation's eviscerated manufacturing base.
Here's how Apollo Alliance chair Phil Angelides defined green-collar jobs to Time Magazine last year:
It has to pay decent wages and benefits that can support a family. It has to be part of a real career path, with upward mobility. And it needs to reduce waste and pollution and benefit the environment.
The green jobs vision is creating some refreshing new advocacy partnerships, like the Blue Green Alliance, a joint effort of environmental groups and labor unions.
And it's not a particularly partisan issue -- or at least it wasn't a few years ago. The expansion of the green-collar jobs sector got its first major federal boost in 2007, with the passage of the Green Jobs Act, as Title X of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
Van Jones' Departure: A costly error for the Obama administration?
Published September 06, 2009 @ 08:46AM PT
Van Jones, green jobs advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, resigned his Obama administration post early this morning.
"Jones found himself in conservatives' crosshairs after it was revealed that he signed a petition in support of 9/11 "truther" conspiracy theorists and called Republicans "assholes" in a video taped before he was tapped to head up the White House's green jobs program," reports Slate. "Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., [photo, left] was calling for a congressional inquiry into Jones' past," which included membership in activist groups that some, including Fox News fantasist Glenn Beck, have termed "radical."
The most immediate downside here is that one of the nation's most eloquent, effective advocates for improving the lives of millions of lower-wage workers, and righting long-endured social and economic injustices -- all via creating a low-carbon, more climate-neutral economy -- will no longer be at the service of the president.
That's a loss to the entire nation.
This debacle is unlikely to be the undoing of Van Jones, however. He is inspired at communicating and realizing his vision of an inclusively better future, and well-respected in the progressive political community.
If and as the truth emerges, I don't think it will be those 9/11 investigation endorsements that led the Obama administration to toss Jones overboard. Yes, he should have given those petitions a closer read. But remember how you were feeling about the attacks and the Iraq war in 2004? 'Nuff said.
It won't even be for calling Republicans assholes in public.
Victory for Transparency: White House will make visitor logs public
Published September 05, 2009 @ 12:45PM PT
The Obama administration has offered more proof that it will let the sunshine in on the workings of government, announcing on Sept. 4 that it would release logs of visitors to the White House on a regular basis.
While the White House is calling the move a "voluntary disclosure policy," it comes after a nonprofit organization filed lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act to open up the records.
The nonpartisan watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), announced yesterday that with the change in policy, it has settled the four cases it initiated regarding access to the visitor logs: two against the Bush administration, and two against the Obama administration.
Of the two recent cases, one requested records of visits by coal company executives to the White House. CREW has learned that none of the 16 coal company executives listed in its FOIA request visited either the White House or the Vice President's Residence between Jan. 21 and July 31, 2009.
Ohio Enviros Dress as Cavemen to Protest GOP's "Stone Age" Energy Stand
Published September 03, 2009 @ 08:25PM PT
Above: Highly amusing video by Bring Ohio Back about the Stone Age 5 -- GOP representatives who oppose the ACES energy and climate bill.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), an avid opponent of federal climate and clean energy policy reform, got a special welcome yesterday from constituents dressed as cavemen to protest "stone age" GOP energy policies.
Or as the group Environment Ohio puts it, "backpedaling, coal- and oil- promoting alternative to the historic clean energy legislation finally being considered in Congress."
The occasion was a panel discussion in Columbus, where Rep. Boehner was joined by Rep. Steve Austria (R-Beavercreek), Bob Latta (R-Bowling Green), Pat Tiberi (R-Columbus) and Jean Schmidt, (R-Loveland). The five legislators appeared before the public to discuss the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which passed the House in June; most House Republicans voted against the bill. The public was not invited to comment at the hearing, which according to a local TV station, also featured several invited speakers who supported the Republican position.
Outside the meeting, around 60 protestors from Environment Ohio dressed up as cavemen to protest the GOP's prehistoric energy policies. “We think we need clean energy tax credits, clean energy programs, programs that will drive innovation in wind, solar, geothermal and other clean, renewable energy resources,“ Amy Gomberg of Environment Ohio told NBC 4 Columbus. “We’re suggesting we need to shift our energy policies to actually get us on a path to a clean, sustainable and renewable energy future,“ Gomberg said.
Duke Energy Quits Coal Group Over Its Opposition to Climate Action
Published September 02, 2009 @ 07:01PM PT
Above: Pro-coal lobby's "Clean Coal Carolers" campaign was last December's Christmas jeer.
Major electric utility Duke Energy has left a prominent coal industry lobby group over the group's opposition to climate change action. But some critics wonder why its CEO is still involved with another business group that's determined to derail energy policy reform.
Citing disagreements with "influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010," Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke yesterday announced that it would drop out of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, reports the National Journal.
Duke Energy's move has cheered prominent voices in the climate change blogosphere, but only to a point.
Climate Legislation Roundup: Will delay benefit a Senate climate bill?
Published September 01, 2009 @ 06:19PM PT
Senate Democrats have announced that they will introduce climate legislation "later in September," rather than next week.
Does this improve or worsen the prospects getting a bill onto President Obama's desk before December's climate treaty negotations in Copenhagen? It's become nearly axiomatic in climate circles that the talks will founder if the U.S. has not enacted carbon emission controls.
Joe Romm of Climate Progress has been consistently advocating waiting until 2010 to introduce a climate bill. Of this latest delay, Romm believes that it gives Senators Boxer and Kerry time to line up more, and more strategic, support for Senate legislation.
He also sees "little point in a final Senate vote before China spells out at least some of what it is planning to do."
But most important, says Joe Romm: Putting off climate legislation will give the Obama administration and Senate leadership time to apply the biggest lesson learned from the healthcare reform fight: "get in front of the messaging and framing of the climate bill."
Or as Treehugger's Matthew McDermott puts it, "develop a new way of framing the climate bill so as to avoid getting bogged down in public shouting matches and disinformation campaigns."
A grassroots effort is gathering strength to do just that -- control the framing on climate action and counteract misinformation. This week a rainbow coalition of over 300 groups across civic boundaries is delivering a letter to senators nationwide. The coalition, whose members range from the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment and Focus the Nation, to Greenpeace and the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, is urging the Senate to make the House-passed climate action legislation stronger, including "an economy wide cap on greenhouse emissions that is consistent with the best available science and that can be ratcheted down as necessary."
How to Fail at Climate Change Journalism
Published September 01, 2009 @ 12:36PM PT
When does reporting on climate change become reporting fail?
When The Washington Post, one of the nation's most important national newspapers, leaves off sifting for useful facts and dialogue on climate change, in favor of republishing a lot of lowest common denominator yammer.
This is what veteran reporter Doug Feaver did when he lifted around two dozen reader responses to a story, published in yesterday's print and online editions, about how environmentalists are coping with oil lobby tactics for defeating climate policy reform this year. The article focused in particular on the lobbies' efforts to fend off establishment of a carbon dioxide emissions cap, as well as a market for trading carbon emissions credits -- both included in the House-passed climate and energy bill.
As the Senate prepares to take up its versions of the House bill, reporter David Fahrenthold writes, oil and coal lobbies are organizing astroturf rallies. They're also running TV ad blitzkrieg campaigns in the Mountain West, the region that's home to several crucial Senate swing votes.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, are staying largely inside the Beltway, and in his analysis "are struggling in a fight they have spent years setting up."
[Environmentalists] are making slow progress adapting a movement built for other goals -- building alarm over climate change, encouraging people to "green" their lives -- into a political hammer, pushing a complex proposal the last mile through a skeptical Senate.
Even now, these groups differ on whether to scare the public with predictions of heat waves or woo it with promises of green jobs. And they are facing an opposition with tycoon money and a gift for political stagecraft.
"Progressives and clean-energy types . . . made a mistake and slacked off" after the House of Representatives passed its version of a climate-change bill in June, said Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who blogs on climate issues. "And the other side really kept making its case."
[Then again]..."People have been naysaying all year long," said Josh Dorner of the Sierra Club. But, he said, "We got a bill through the House, and you know . . . all signs point to yes" in the Senate.
That's not to say it's a level playing field: climate change activists are by and large not sitting on the giant pools of money available to fossil energy lobbyists and campaign operatives.
Still, this is a provocative and useful bit of reporting. My own professional observations often support it: When it comes to a substantial "national dialogue" on energy policy and climate change action, I still hear crickets chirping.
