Is green energy the key to economic stability in the United States? A new report from the progressive think tank Center for American Progress says emphatically yes!
The report, “Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy,” demonstrates how a program that spends $100 billion over two years would create two million new jobs, with a significant proportion of those jobs created in the struggling construction and manufacturing sectors. Written in conjunction with the Political Economic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, the report goes on the state that a major investment in green energy could doubly protect the U.S. from climate and economic crises faces today.
This $100 billion investment would direct funding toward six energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies, including retrofitting buildings to increase energy efficiency, expanding mass transit and freight rail, constructing “smart” electrical grid transmission systems, wind power, solar power, and advanced biofuels.
Benefits of directing this money toward a green recovery are many, argue the report writers. For starters, the program would create nearly four times more jobs and roughly triple the number of good jobs (defined as those paying at least $16 an hour) than spending the same amount of money within the oil industry. Employment in construction, which has fallen from 8 million to 7.2 million jobs over the past two years due to the housing bubble collapse, would also be bolstered. In fact, the writers indicate that the program would bring back all of the lost jobs and maybe even net an increase.
Just how does a measly $100 billion – $52 billion less than the cost of those checks we all received to “stimulate” the economy and only 14 percent of the cost of the bank bailout/rescue plan – turn into an economic recovery and solution to the energy crisis?
The report proposes $50 billion for tax credits that would assist businesses and homeowners to finance both commercial and residential building retrofits, as well as investments in renewable energy systems. Forty-six billion would go to direct government spending for expanding mass transit, freight rail, smart electrical grid systems, and new investments in renewable energy. Four billion would go to federal loan guarantees that would underwrite private credit financing for retrofits and other investments - all of which could ultimately be repaid by future carbon cap-and-trade revenues, a policy that both presidential candidates support.
“It is time for a new vision for the economic revitalization of the nation and a restoration of American leadership in the world,” said John Podesta, president and CEO of Center for American Progress.
“We must fundamentally change the way we produce and consume energy and dramatically reduce our dependence on oil. The economic opportunities provided by such a transformation are vast, not to mention the national security benefits of reducing oil dependence and the pressing need to fight global warming. The time for action is now.”
Podesta says that the recovery plan is doable within the early days of a new administration. While both Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama campaign on the idea of clean energy promoting economic growth, Senator Obama has been more specific about creating green jobs, promising to invest $150 billion over 10 years to create some 5 million jobs.
Whichever candidate takes over the White House in January, the reality is very clear: the economic crisis is not going away and neither will our need to develop clean energy that lessens our dependence on foreign oil.
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