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The Blue-Green Alliance (BGA), a partnership between the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club, believes that the U.S. is “missing an enormous opportunity to create middle-class green jobs that will reinvigorate our economy, increase our energy independence, and fight the global-climate crisis.” The BGA released its comments on Friday, following news that the unemployment rate has reached a four-year high and after Congress failed to extend renewable-energy tax credits. “The future of our economy depends on investments in renewable-energy sources like wind and solar power,” BGA Executive Director David Foster said. “We already know that hundreds of thousands of Americans work in jobs that could contribute to a green economy. Failing to extend these tax credits would be a missed opportunity to simultaneously create jobs and make our country more energy independent, while at the same time doing our part of improving the environment for our kids and grandkids.” The Department of Labor announced on Friday that U.S. employers eliminated 51,000 jobs in July. Meanwhile, the Jobs, Energy, Families, and Disaster Relief Act of 2008—which would have extended $18 billion in renewable energy tax credit—stalled in the Senate. The American Wind Energy Association has estimated that $19 billion in investment and 116,000 jobs were at risk in the renewable-energy industries if the tax credits expire, the BGA said. “We need a new energy policy that invests in America,” Foster said. “Extending these renewable-energy tax credit is a necessary step to moving our country and our economy forward—keeping and creating good jobs here at home that reinvigorate the economy and combat the global climate crisis.” In June the BGA released a report, produced by the University of Massachusetts PERI and the Center for American Progress, which concluded that “workers at every skill level will be in high demand and enjoy greater job security in key industries essential to building a clean-energy economy in America and fighting global warning,” the BGA said. “Hundreds of thousands of workers in the U.S. already possess the vast majority of skills and occupations necessary to reduce global warning and make the shift to a clean-energy economy.”
Posted 8/6/2008
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