Playing catch up in the race for green jobs
Posted on June 2, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |
by Willy Ritch
Competition for green jobs is hot and heavy these days and according to this article in a Massachusetts newspaper, the folks in the Bay State have some catching up to do.
…some area business leaders say that the United States in general and Massachusetts in particular are playing catch-up and that the real leaders in the environmental jobs and technology wave are in Europe. And in this country, they say, states like California, Vermont and even Connecticut lead Massachusetts in funding green-tech companies and creating ‘green-collar’ jobs.
“There are so many things we could be doing that we aren’t doing,” said Mark Guay, a Newburyport attorney who recently took part in a panel discussion on sustainable economic development at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill. “Look at Europe. What we call green innovation, they call compliance with the law.”
When Guay and others describe the path that green job development has taken in Massachusetts the story has a familiar ring to it: the federal government has done as little as possible to encourage clean energy development and it’s left to states to step in. In Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick has gotten behind a $100 million initiative. (The problem is that former Governor Mitt Romney wasn’t so keen on clean energy, and the state fell behind.)
It’s not just jobs and climate change that argue for investment in clean energy, says Congresswoman Niki Tsongas: “There is no denying we need an energy revolution. It’s not just the impending threat of global warming. It’s people being forced to choose between food and gas.”
Meanwhile in a blog post on the Foreign Policy in Focus website Jason Walsh and Sara White write that the “reframing” of the jobs vs. the environment argument is critical to building the public support necessary to really get us off fossil fuel. They make the excellent point that the dynamic is that protecting the environment doesn’t cost jobs, it creates jobs.
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