Clean Energy Jobs Go Swimming: $300 million per year for 10,000 jobs

This is part of a series of brief posts on 'clean energy jobs' opportunities for sparking meaningful employment, quickly, in the United States.

Legislation is, they say, analogous to making sausage. Sometimes, in the mixing and mashing, seemingly well-intentioned and sensible options can create counter-productive situations and leave many valued goods on the table. One small example of this could open the door to creating employment, lowering costs for state & local governments (including educational institutions), improving 'customer' satisfaction, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

When it came to the stimulus package earlier this year, "swimming pools" were explicitly excluded from ARRA funding mechanisms.  While, amid serious economic stress and government investment to keep the economic from continuing in freefall, it might have seemed morally appropriate to do this, this restriction simply flies in the face of reality and good sense.

"Almost heaven, West Virginia ..."  An anthem immediately recognizable to millions.  Yet, an anthem under ever mounting threat.   West Virginia, as with much of the world, faces a clear choice between an ever-dirtier fossil fuel path and moving toward a prosperous, climate friendly economy.

While this is a global challenge, in West Virginia the choices are quite stark and, well, quite immediate:

• Mountaintop removal (MTR)  or

• Wind farms on the tops of mountain ridges and within valleys
  

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Front-page of the Metro section is not where readers typical turn to a tall tale suitable for the fiction section, something with an "H" for Horror.

In With Close Contacts, Md. Wind Project Gets Boost, Post readers discover that a well-connected industrialist (Goliath) has run roughshod over concerned environmentalists (the David) through a legislative end run to gut environmental protections for the construction of windmills that will "kill millions" of birds.

A compelling story of a lobbyist-connected Goliath running roughshod over that poor citizen activist David?  Absolutely.

Fact?  Well ... not necessarily.

I believe it is so important to have Al Gore and others out here speaking as advocates for people and to mobilize smaller companies into taking on the task of becoming involved in the biofuel market in a way that will sustain the environment and the livelihoods of the people indigenous to those areas. What Mr. Gore is doing as a global environmental advocate is now the most important thing he could be doing in standing up to the status quo and in seeking a new way of not only doing business, but living.

The leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of Massachusetts has a plan that could become a model for Democrats nationwide.  Deval Patrick proposes to make alternative and renewable sources of energy the center of his economic program for the state. He envisions Massachusetts as a global leader in the field.  

Patrick is the kind of man who, if elected, will instantly become the standard by which prominent democrats will have to measure themselves as to how serious they are about everything from global warming to reducing dependence on foriegn oil. No matter what angle from which you look at it, this is a bold propositition -- but Patrick is just the guy to do it.

Patrick, like few leaders for any office in my experience, is willing to embrace bold ideas and necessary new directions and go about it in eminently practical ways. And in this instance, he has particularly unusual credentials: He is a former oil company executive who is a clear-eyed advocate for the development of the alternative energy business, and making state government a dynamic engine for driving the marketplace for alternative and renewable energy.

This morning, the Washington Post published an outrageous column by Robert J. Samuelson. In this travesty of a column, Samuelson argues the futility of trying to do anything re Global Climate Change other than new research.

Samuelson's Global Warming's Real Inconvenient Truth has factual errors, misleading statements and conclusions, and provides a counterproductive path for thinking about and achieving change for a better future.

If you are not, you should be, terrified about the prospects of the world we are creating for ourselves and future generations.  An Inconvenient Truth is an incredible movie whose fault, if anything, is that it is not pessimistic enough. Samuelson's OPED looks to be part of the effort to diminish AIT's impact and to derail efforts to turn the world toward a better tomorrow.