CONTROL OF
JOBS
WHAT'S A GREEN JOB?
Green jobs make life easier for everyone by reducing the costs of fuel, food and housing. Green work expands America's economy by reducing waste of resources and wealth. Green work repairs soil, water and air, making these cleaner and healthier. There are hundreds of kinds of green work. Some of the jobs offered here are deep green jobs; some are pale green. Deep green jobs create genuine alternatives to resource depletion-- trains, bicycles, solar and passive solar, tree-free paper, organic fibers, compost toilets, urban agriculture, and so on. These prove that billions of humans can enjoy this planet while repairing it. Pale green jobs reduce damage to the environment but continue it-- like fuel-efficient cars, low-flush toilets, 'clean' coal. We need and respect these transitional technologies. But most normal tools of civilization need to be gradually replaced by tools serving the future. All skills can be adapted to green enterprise.
Deep Green Labor
The green jobs movement parades as many green hues as any forest, ranging from deep green work to pale green employment. All green work expands the economy by reducing waste of resources, workers and wealth. Green jobs make life easier for everyone by reducing the costs of fuel, food, and housing. Green work repairs soil, water and air, making these cleaner and healthier. Looking deeper, green jobs can also build profound solutions to resource depletion, by expanding use of green technologies: passive solar HVAC, trains, bicycles, superwindows, deconstruction and depaving, rainwater catchment and solar distillation, earth shelters, cellulose insulation, tree-free paper, compost toilets and greywater systems, urban farms and orchards, edible landscaping, greenhousing, solar windowboxes and solar water heaters, green roofs and white roofs. These humble tools prove that billions of humans can enjoy this planet while repairing it. All American cities are today chained to crumbling and costly centralized grids -- sewers, freeways, power plants. Deep green technologies can gradually supplant these grey, outdated systems. Reliance on fossil fuel can be reduced toward zero, shrinking taxes by avoiding repair fees. Liz Robinson, whose Energy Coordinating Agency last year trained over 600 Philadelphians to insulate and weatherize, says, "You're going to be shocked how big these efforts are. The tipping point in Philadelphia is very exciting to see. Efficiencies are the cleanest, safest, most labor-intensive, and cheapest sources of energy." Philadelphia projects a doubling of green jobs as workers are employed in areas such as weatherization, green infrastructure and other industries that have the potential for growth and career-track, family-supporting jobs.
Deeper Still
Yet the deepest green jobs do even more than sharply cut fossil fuel dependence, and provide more than a paycheck. They serve the broader social mission to shift economic power
PATRIOT ECO-GOALS (PEGS)
200,000,000 berry bushes 160,000,000 superwindows 140,000,000 fruit trees 120,000,000 solar electric panels 100,000,000 solar hot water heaters 80,000,000 biodigester toilets 60,000,000 green roofs w/rainwater barrels 10,000,000 ecolonies 1,000,000 neighborhood gardens 400,000 community land trusts 100,000 local currencies 80,000 miles of bicycle paths 40,000 miles of ultralight trolley 10,000 farmers markets 50% trolley & bus commuting 30% bicycle commuting 20% pedestrian commuting
toward lower-income neighborhoods. They replace the Poverty Industry (charity, police, courts, jails) with worker-owned neighborhood light industries. They enable low-skilled neighbors to employ one another to create work that lowers their living expenses. Exemplary of such grassroots enterprise are Chicago's Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland, sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation and the City of Cleveland. They grow fresh hydroponic vegetables, perform brownfield remediation, photovoltaic installation, weatherization, and operate a waterconserving nontoxic laundry. Back home in!Kensington, the Emerald Street Urban Farm sells fresh greens to neighbors while hosting the Earthship Project, featuring an earth-sheltered greenhouse made from neighborhood discards. Project RISE facilitates green business starts among exoffenders and at-risk youth. Says director Bernadine Hawes, "The vision should be based on what the population being served sees, and not just on the standards and traditions of the professional business development community." John Churchville, green jobs planner for the American Cities Foundation, agrees. "The mind switch from seeking a job to creating a green business has the potential to single-handedly bring our entire nation back from the brink of economic ruin. Building a green economy that has the capacity to employ the majority of America’s unemployed and underemployed residents will be critical for our future thriving as a city." This is a big job, since the United States hosts 25 million unemployed, the world's highest incarceration rate, plus thousands of abandoned factories and shopping malls.
Funding this Future
Even so, America is wealthy in this poverty, because deep green jobs that fix the above rise from vacant lots and vacant lives, from Americans hungry for dinner and hungry for respect. Our empty lots invite planting, and our old houses need laborintensive retrofit or deconstruction. There are tons of vagrant bricks and tires, discarded pallets and newspapers that are feedstock for simple energy-efficient neighborhood industry.