How Can I Support a Green Economy?

In this sermon of the Green Jobs Gospel, we'll look at what you can do to help build up the green economy.

At the beginning of this year, Obama passed the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to boost our struggling economy. $41 billion of that act are allocated to clean energy and energy efficiency projects. Below, I've described some of the ways that money has been allocated and what you can do to make sure the money is used to make our economy clean, green, and fair for everyone.


:: Weatherization Assistance Program

Goal: To reduce the energy bills of low-income families through energy efficiency or renewable energy. Examples of ways the funds can be used include:

• Adding insulation
  
• Tune-ups, repairs, or replacement of A/C or furnace.
• Installation of fans
• Weatherstripping and caulking around doors and windows

Allocated Funds: $5 billion distributed through states

Eligibility: Dwellings occupied by families with income below 200% of the federal poverty level. (The federal poverty level for a family of four is $22,050; 200% of that is $44,100.) Both renters and homeowners are eligible for this program.

What can I do?

• Find out if you're eligible for this program and apply for assistance through your state.
• Spread the word to others who might be eligible.
  

More information:

• U.S. Department of Energy: Weatherization Assitance Program
  
• Green for All: Understanding the Weatherization Assistance Program
  

:: State Energy Program (SEP)

Goal: To promote energy conservation and reduced dependence on foreign oil. Examples of ways the funds can be used include:

• Energy efficiency projects, including energy audits of buildings
• Renewable energy projects
• Transportation energy efficiency
• Education and training for building designers and contractors

Allocated Funds: $3.1 billion

Eligibility: States, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. Depending on the state's plans for the money, there may be subgranting to businesses, public and private organizations, and local governments.

What can I do?

• Find out how your state plans to use its portion of the money and advocate for the projects you feel are important.
  
• Find out if your business or organization is eligible for a subgrant.

More information:

• U.S. Department of Energy: State Energy Program
• Green for All: Understanding the State Energy Program
  

:: Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program (EECBG)

Goal: To improve energy efficiency and reduce energy use and fossil fuel emissions

Allocated Funds: $2.8 billion ($1.6 billion has already been distributed)

Eligibility: U.S. states, territories, local governments, and Indian tribes

What can I do?

• Find out if your state or local government has applied for a grant. If so, advocate for the projects you feel are important. If not, ask why not.
  

More information:

• U.S. Department of Energy: Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program
• Green for All: Understanding the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program

:: Competitive Grants for Green Jobs Training

Goal: To prepare workers for careers in energy efficiency and renewable energy. The funds can be used in training for jobs such as:

• Construction of energy efficient buildings
  
• Renewable energy
• Energy efficient vehicles
• Biofuels
• Deconstruction and materials reuse
• Energy audits
• Manufacturing of sustainable materials
  

Allocated Funds: $500 million divided between five separate grant programs:

• State Labor Market Information Improvement
• Energy Training Partnerships
• Pathways Out of Poverty
• State Energy Sector Partnerships and Training
• Green Capacity Building

Eligibility: Varies from program to program but includes non-profits, government agencies, and labor organizations

What can I do?

• Find out if you are a part of an organization that is eligible for any of these grants.
  

More information:

• Green for All: Understanding the Competitive Grants for Green Jobs Training

What else can I do?

• Support The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act which supports improvements in the green jobs sector and also provides provisions for job training.

• Elect officials that support a green economy.

• Write or call your officials to let them know you support a green economy.

• Be informed about the ways your state and local governments are using the federal money.

• Get involved with local organizations that advocate for green improvements in your community, such as public transportation, energy efficient construction, and renewable energy.

• Support national organizations that push for green jobs and climate legislation, such as Green for All and 1Sky.

Read more...

Sustainability or the Price of Sweet Tea

This post is my submission for the Green Moms Carnival which will be hosted this month by Mary Hunt at In Women We Trust. The topic is "standards" with a specific look at Walmart's sustainability index.

Yesterday, I gave a little background information in preparation for my post today. With this background in mind, Mary asked us to ponder the following statement:

"Wal Mart and other big box stores are developing a sustainability index. I don't have the $250,000 it costs to get a seat at the table, but if I had a seat there, this is what I'd want to make sure is in that index criteria..."

Thinking about this subject reminded me of a novel I read last year called Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill. It was a sad but beautiful account of a brave woman in the mid-1700s, describing her abduction from her home in Africa, her trials as a young slave on an indigo farm in South Carolina, her escape to freedom in Canada, and finally her aid to the abolitionists in England.

It might seem strange that Wal-Mart would remind me of a novel about slavery, but there was one particular scene in the book that I've often thought of as I've learned more about environmentalism and social justice.

The heroine, Aminata, is talking to an Englishman who is connected to the slave trade. Aminata tells him about her life, and seeing his sympathy, she asks him how the British can continue to participate in slavery.

The man replies, "Ninety-nine Englishman out of a hundred take their tea with sugar. We live for our tea, cakes, pies, and candies. We live for the stuff, and we will not be deprived."

The price of sweet tea...

I recognize that the scene from this novel was completely fictional, but I have heard this same attitude in real life from modern corporations. And that includes Wal-Mart. "Our customers demand cheap products," they say. "Manufacturing our products in countries with fewer environmental regulations and lower human rights standards is the only way to meet the demand for cheap products."

I have also heard that attitude from the mouths of consumers. "We are just pawns in the system," one friend said. "It's not our fault, and there's nothing we can do about it...But that doesn't mean we shouldn't take advantage of it!"

It seems like everyone wants to blame everyone else for the problems with the system. The corporations blame the consumer for demanding cheap products. The consumer blames the corporation for making poor manufacturing decisions. It's everyone's fault and no one's fault. And nobody really cares...As long as we all get what we want.


Even those of us who don't regularly shop at Wal-Mart have to recognize the importance of the development of this sustainability index. While laws and regulations stutter to a standstill in Congress, Wal-Mart's index will force their 100,000 suppliers to action, leading to improvements and accountability throughout the manufacturing world and hopefully providing customers with an easier way to make informed decisions in the marketplace.

But the demand for ever cheaper products by Wal-Mart and other big box retailers is at the base of our environmental degradation and global human exploitation. The case could be made that Wal-Mart is the root of many of our problems. Can the world's biggest bully make an about face to become the biggest influence in our transition to sustainability?

So this is what I would say to Wal-Mart: Are you committed to sustainability? Are your intentions true? Will you make the standards strong enough to make a difference? Will your lifecycle assessments push for a cradle-to-cradle standard? Will you put an end to ridiculously wasteful packaging? Will you take a stand for safety and quality? Will you establish accountability for social injustices? How will you measure compliance to the standards? (Right now, it looks like they just have to be able to answer "yes" to a bunch of questions. Honestly, that's a fairly meaningless way of measuring sustainability.)

Most importantly, I want to know, if compliance to sustainability standards means higher prices and your customers balk, will you drop out of the game?

And since Wal-Mart only deserves a portion of the finger-pointing, I would ask everyone to ask themselves: Was cheap sweet tea worth the price of slavery? Are cheap products today worth the cost to sustainability?

Photo by prakhar


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What Is a Green Collar Job and Why Should I Care?

In this sermon of the Green Jobs Gospel, we'll start with the basics.





What Is a Green Collar Job?

:: blue-collar employment that has been upgraded to better respect the environment

:: family-supporting, career-track, vocational, or trade-level employment in environmentally-friendly fields

(as defined by Van Jones in The Green Collar Economy)

A green collar job is blue collar work transformed to meet the needs of a greener economy. In general, it requires higher education than a high school degree (such as vocational training or a trade license) but not necessarily a college degree. Most importantly, green collar jobs involve good pay, job security, and career potential.

Industries with green-collar opportunities and sample jobs in those fields include:

Waste Management

"More than 56,000 recycling and reuse centers across the country already employ over 1.1 million people. Entry-level jobs in recycling include collection, sorting, driving, and loading and can lead to advanced positions like operations manager. Entry-level jobs in materials-reuse operations include salvaging, sorting, driving, warehousing, packaging, and retail sales, after which an employee can move up to warehouse manager or floor manager."*

• collecting, sorting, and processing recyclables
• composting
• salvaging materials and deconstruction of old buildings
  
• refurbishing computers and other electronics
  

Construction

• construction of new green homes and buildings
• weatherization of existing homes and buildings
• water-wise plumbing
  

Landscaping

"TreePeople predicts that about three hundred jobs will be created, including manufacturing and installation of water-capture systems, adapting landscaping to function as watershed, and maintaining the landscapes, trees, berms, cisterns, and other elements of the system." - referring to a specific landscaping organization and project in Los Angeles to build cisterns to capture rainwater*

• water-wise landscaping
• urban forestation
• green roof maintenance
• watershed creation and management
  

Energy

• solar panel manufacturing and installation
  
• wind turbine manufacturing and installation
• geothermal
  

Public Transit

"Transit investments actually create many more jobs than highway construction boondoggles: per $1 billion invested only 42,000 jobs are created in highway construction versus 80,000 in transit capital projects and an additional 100,000 jobs in transit operations. And many more local and long-term jobs are created in transit than in highway construction." - referring to a study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project*

• manufacturing of trains and construction of rail lines
• operation of buses and trains

Automobile Industry

• manufacturing hybrids and electric vehicles
• maintenance and repair of hybrids and electric vehicles
  

*All quotes from Van Jones in The Green Collar Economy


Why Should I Care?

The availability of blue-collar jobs in America has been declining in recent years. Greening those jobs will revitalize many dying industries, fight outsourcing, create sorely needed employment opportunities, and give a boost to our floundering economy.

In some cases rather than creating new jobs, a transition from blue-collar to green-collar will create new opportunities for existing labor. For example, construction workers that have been out of work since the housing bubble burst will be able to find new employment in retrofitting homes and buildings. And the many people who've lost jobs in the collapse of the automobile industry would benefit from a transition to hybrids and electric vehicles (or even transitioning to manufacturing solar panels).

Additionally, gaining green collar skills can make a blue collar employee more marketable. A plumber that can install a solar-powered water heater or an electrician that can set up a solar power grid will be much more valuable to our future economy than plumbers and electricians who stubbornly cling to old skills.

Finally, even white collar employees should recognize a vested interest in this subject since each category of possible green collar jobs has the added potential for entrepreneurship and white collar employment.


How Can I Find Out More?

• 1Sky
• Corps Network
• Union of Concerned Scientists
  
• Green For All
• Apollo Alliance
• Urban Habitat
  

Read more...

The Green Jobs Gospel

Earlier this month, I was really upset when the conservative media used smear tactics to force Van Jones to resign from his position with the Obama Administration. Jones admittedly had past affiliations with the radical left, but he left that past behind many years ago to focus on a new goal. Not to spread communism, as Glenn Beck claimed, but to help create a new future for capitalism by building up the green sector of our economy.

I read Jones' book, The Green Collar Economy, several months ago, and I loved it. Throughout the book, my thoughts were a constant chorus of yeses and that's rights and exactlies.

Environmentalism covers a very broad range of ideas and goals. It would be nearly impossible to be actively involved in every environmentally-related movement, so we greenies tend to focus on one or two areas that really get our blood boiling. Some people care most about food policy, some about water conservation, others about climate change. For me, I have to tell you, this is it. More than anything, I believe in clean, green, and fair for everyone.

I don't believe that everyone should have equal everything, but I do believe there are certain rights that all human beings are entitled to, and those rights include access to clean water, healthy food, and an unpolluted environment. For too many people, those rights do not exist. For too many years, poor communities have taken the brunt of our environmental damage.

I found The Green Collar Economy so inspiring because it is a capitalist solution to two of our biggest problems. Fix our ailing economy by saving the planet. What a beautiful, beautiful concept that, as Jones says, should be common ground for both the right and the left:

We’re not talking about expanding welfare, we’re talking about expanding work. We’re not talking about expanding entitlements, we’re talking about expanding enterprise and investments. We’re not talking about redistributing existing wealth, we’re talking about reinventing an existing sector, and creating new wealth by unleashing innovation and entrepeneurship. This should be common ground. We should be able to stand together and be one country on this.

A couple weeks after his resignation, Van Jones asked his supporters to "spread the green jobs gospel." I strongly support a green collar economy, and that's why I've decided that for the next month or two I'll be devoting several posts here and at The Green Phone Booth to explaining what a green collar job is and how we can make this country a little cleaner, greener, and fairer for everyone.

If this is a subject you care about, help me spread the word. Grab a copy of The Green Collar Economy and start preaching the green jobs gospel.


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• Book Review: The Green Collar Economy
• Clean, Green, and Fair for Everyone
• Book Review: Nickel and Dimed
  

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Double Documentary Weekend, Part 2: God Grew Tired of Us

As I wrote yesterday, I was in a documentary watching mood last weekend, so on Saturday night I watched The Disappearing Male (about the effects of chemical use on the male reproductive system) and on Sunday night, I watched God Grew Tired of Us.

My husband has this annoying habit of adding documentaries to our Netflix queue, but when they arrive, he doesn't watch them. So they sit on top of our TV for weeks, sometimes months (completely negating the value of renting from Netflix rather than a video store), until finally I beg him to watch them so I can get some cheesy chick flicks.

When God Grew Tired of Us arrived in our mailbox, I showed it to my husband, and he said, "I don't remember adding that to the queue." It's from 2006, and it has probably been in our queue for about that long. Knowing that meant he was going to hold up my video enjoyment again, I almost popped it right back in the mailbox. But then I read the description and thought it sounded pretty interesting and green-related in a round about way, so I decided to watch it.

Documentary #2: God Grew Tired of Us

In the 1980s during a bloody civil war, over 25,000 boys in southern Sudan were orphaned or fled their homes during attacks on their villages by government troops from the north. The boys, dubbed the "Lost Boys of Sudan," wandered for five years across Sudan into Ethiopia and then down to Kenya where they found refuge in a UN camp. In 2001, the United States invited 3800 of the boys to relocate to America.

God Grew Tired of Us introduces us to three of the Lost Boys (by this time, grown men in their twenties) who have been chosen to journey to the U.S. to make a new home for themselves in a completely foreign environment. The film follows them for four years as they transition into their new lives, get jobs, attend college, and finally work to improve the lives of the boys they left behind in Sudan.

I had a number of thoughts as I was watching this film. First, as the young men were shown around their new apartments and cities, with all their technological modern conveniences, I was struck by how lucky we are to have such bounteous wealth. For instance, these young men, who had struggled to survive for five years in the wilderness and who had watched many of their fellow travelers starve to death (children watching children die and then having to bury them) - these young men marveled at all of the foods in a supermarket. How do you eat this? they kept asking. What do you do with this?

Watching the young men discover supermarkets and refrigerators and TVs, I felt so blessed for all we have available to us and that most of us here in the U.S. don't have to struggle to survive. And I thought that even as we work to make the world greener and cleaner, we can't discount the fact that technology has in many ways made our lives better.

But as the movie went on, I was surprised to see that although the three young men were grateful for the opportunity to be in the U.S., they weren't really happy. They deeply missed the other boys and families they had left behind. One young man found his lost family through the Red Cross, so he dropped out of school and worked three jobs so he could save enough to bring them to America. The other two young men planned to return to Africa as soon as they could - one to establish a school and the other to marry his girlfriend.

That brings up the question - what makes us happy? Supermarkets and refrigerators and TVs? Even after living through the terrible trauma of their childhoods, all the Lost Boys wanted was to be reunited with their friends and families.

My final thought was that although the subject of this movie seems more like a social justice issue than an environmental issue, the two subjects are actually entwined throughout this movie, as they are in so many aspects of life. According to the film, two of the main causes of the war were oil and gold. Our dependence on cheap fossil fuel and our insatiable appetites for stuff has a much farther reaching effect than just polluting the air or filling up landfills. There is also a human factor, and I hope we environmentalists never forget that.

This film was a deeply moving account of three amazing survivors, and I definitely recommend adding it to your own Netflix queues.


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Book Review: Nickel and Dimed

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
by Barbara Ehrenreich

Rating: ***

Synopsis:

In the late 1990s, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich sat down with Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's, to discuss possible future articles she could write. The conversation made its way to poverty, and Ehrenreich wondered, How do people live on the meager wages of the unskilled? Could someone really get by on $6 to $7 an hour? Lapham challenged Ehrenreich to find out.

Over the next year or two, Ehrenreich joined the ranks of the low wage worker, finding employment as a waitress, maid, and finally Walmart associate. She moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, searching for the highest paying available work while struggling to pay rent and afford food. Along the way, she met women who bypassed the rent problem by living in their cars. She lived for almost a month in a hotel room with a window with no screen and a door with no bolt in a room with no air conditioning or fan. And she did physical, mind-numbing labor - sometimes holding down more than one job at a time while still barely making ends meet.

At the end of her experiment, Ehrenreich concluded:

I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: "Work hard and you'll get ahead" or "It's hard work that got us where we are." No one ever said that you could work hard - harder even than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking even deeper into poverty and debt.

My Opinion:

I bought my first car by doing temp work one summer at a factory - one of four factories that employed me during college. I saved up for my semester abroad by working as a maid for Motel 6. And I earned spending money during college as a sandwich artist at Subway. I have a lot of experience with unskilled labor.

So rather than opening my eyes to some hidden aspect of America, this book brought back a flood of memories of all of those past jobs. I've often compared working at a factory to snapping beans for canning. It's repetitive, dull, and requires no skill whatsoever. But imagine that instead of snapping beans in front of the TV, or with the radio on, or with a group of gossipy friends, you have to snap beans standing up in one spot for eight hours straight (or twelve hours at night, as in one of my factory jobs). There's no air-conditioning, you can't stop to pee without asking for permission, and every now and then, a manager walks by to tell you to move faster. And you do this every. single. day. all. day. long...

For years after, I went around saying that every person that worked in management should have to spend a day or two a month in the factory. Just so they would know what it was like. Just so they would give their employees a little respect.

Did I think we factory workers should have been earning wages equal to management? Definitely not. Our jobs were physically hard but took no skill and we were easily replaceable. But surely, we were worth more than we were paid. The lowest I earned at a factory was $7 an hour, the highest was $12. And we factory workers were lucky - at $12 an hour, you might be poor, but you could get by. Unlike at $5.50 an hour like I earned at Subway.

And I might have forgone any dreams of higher earnings if they would have at least let me sit down when I was doing a job that could have been done sitting down. Or installed air conditioning. Or at the very least turned on the radio.

My point is that none of Ehrenreich's descriptions of her jobs, co-workers, or bosses were new to me, and I'm sure they weren't new to many of her readers. Her experiment was entertaining, but beyond that, it was almost pointless. She didn't need to go undercover to find out if a healthy person with a middle class background could survive the physically intense demands of most minimum wage paying jobs. She could have asked me, or any number of people who've worked those jobs to get through college.

And struggling for one month to make ends meet on minimum wage doesn't shed any light on how millions of people do it every single month. Particularly single mothers with children. How do they get by? I still don't know the answer.

Overall, I enjoyed the brisk and light pace of this book. But it wasn't the expose I expected it to be.


Up next on my reading list...No Impact Man


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Book Review: The Green Collar Economy

The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems
by Van Jones

Rating: *****

Van Jones proposes that establishing a strong green collar economy is the solution for both the climate change crisis and the economic crisis. His subject is timely as the economy continues to stagnate, prices continue to rise, and the effects of climate change become more and more evident. Ironically, Jones notes in his afterword that when he first began writing the book, "very few people had heard the term 'green collar job'," but by the time the book was published, it was a political buzzword.

I've been seeing this book mentioned all over the Internet, and at first I thought, "That is not a book that would interest me." I figured it would be a heavy read full of economic jargon (read: boring). I don't know why I had that impression because I was completely wrong. Just shy of 200 pages, this book is brisk and pleasant, but at the same time, thought-provoking and inspirational.

Jones proposes that to revive the collapsing economy, the government should establish a Green New Deal by building up the green collar jobs sector in energy, food, waste, water, and transportation. He details how investment in each category would lead to thousands of jobs in technology and labor, and as an added benefit, we would save the planet. Some examples:

• A group in Milwaukee has come up with a way "to retrofit practically every building in the city to save money and put lots of people to work...Property owners or renters (with landlords' cooperation) receive an audit listing all conservation measures that can be paid for out of energy savings in a given period. They repay the cost of the measures via their utility bill."
• "The first turbine on Native lands was installed in early 2003 on the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota. It produces enough clean electricity to power over two hundred homes...Rosebud alone aims to produce 50 megawatts by 2010."
• LaDonna Redmond turned her backyard in Chicago into an urban farm. Neighbors got involved, "one thing led to another, and today the Redmonds' organization, the Institute for Community Resource Development, secures empty lots from the city, oversees a whole network of lots-turned gardens, manages a farmers market, provides technical support and nutritional education, and is planning the opening of a retail store."
• "A nonprofit in Baltimore called Second Chance launched its architectural salvage and deconstruction services in 2003. Over the next four years, the company grew quickly, filling a 120,000-square foot warehouse space and engaging more than 50 employeese - three deconstruction crews and a retail store crew."

The most inspiring chapter for me was Jones' analysis of the division between the environmental movement and the social justice movement. He asserts that the two sides need to come together, creating a powerful forward-looking group that would be able to solve both environmental and social problems. Environmentalists would benefit from the grassroots growth, and workers in social justice would benefit from the establishment of green jobs. He used the term "environmental justice activists," which is not a term I've heard before but perfectly describes the type of activist-thinking that I'm drawn to.

My only criticism of this book is that it focused so much on how the government (rather than the average joe) can build up the green jobs sector, boost the economy, and solve the climate crisis. Jones' ideas would make a great handbook for President Obama, Governor Bev Perdue, or Mayor Meeker, but they are less useful for the average person, like me, for example. I kept waiting for him to say, "If you want to see this kind of change in your area, you should..." Write letters to my congressman? Lobby my mayor? Establish my own non-profit? Go door to door handing out copies of The Green Collar Economy? Or just keep doing what I've been doing...

Overall, this was a great book, and I strongly recommend that you read it. And then maybe mail a copy to your mayor.

Next up on my reading list...Your Money or Your Life

Read more...

Clean, Green, and Fair for Everyone

This post is my submission for the Green Moms Blog Carnival. The topic is "I believe...." Check out the musings of all the great Green Moms on February 9 at The Smart Mama.

Last August, Slow Food USA held a festival in San Francisco to celebrate and promote their belief in local and sustainable food. The slogan of the Slow Food movement is "good, clean, and fair food," but over and over when I read media reports describing the event, it was labeled as an elitist gathering for wealthy yuppies. Admission to the various pavilions and panels was expensive, and the many displays of high-priced artisinal foods made slow food seem out of reach for the average American, used to Walmart and McDonalds prices.

Sadly, the stereotype of the 21st century environmentalist is a white college graduate driving a Prius, shopping at Whole Foods, wearing over-priced organic cotton clothing, and reprimanding everyone for not doing the same. The stereotypical image of environmentalism from the last century was a poorly dressed, Birkenstock-wearing, treehugging hippy...but still white.

But is environmentalism really just a movement of the white and affluent, who have the time and the means to enjoy a green lifestyle while the poor and minority populations are left behind?

I don't think it has to be that way. I believe there is a green hat to fit every head, blonde or brunette, buzzcut or dreadlocks, black or white (or as First Son would say...peachy or browny.) I believe in clean, green, and fair for everyone.

But how do we make going green accessible and desirable for everyone?

Here are some possibilities:

Promote Energy Savings

The media has done a good job of selling compact flourescent lightbulbs as energy and money savers. But I recently learned that an energy efficient home retrofit can shave as much as 30% off of the average home energy bill. Why isn't the media advertising that? For low-income families who can't afford to retrofit their homes, the U.S. government has created a Weatherization Assistance Program. But let's face it. Government sponsored programs are slow and often ineffective. If we're going to have clean, green, and fair for everyone, we need more programs, perhaps sponsored by charities and non-profits, that help low-income people make their homes energy efficient.

Promote Green Jobs

If the future of America is clean, renewable energy, we are going to need lots of people to make that happen. Instead of bailing out companies that have already demonstrated bad business practices, we should be investing in future jobs: installing and maintaining solar panels, building wind farms, retrofitting houses, and rebuilding America's infrastructure. We will also need people to develop these new green technologies. Going green will provide thousands and thousands of people with a new reliable source of income.

Promote Affordable Public Transportation

As energy prices rise, it's going to be more and more important to improve public transportation options in our cities. Besides reducing energy consumption and pollution, a good transit system can stimulate economic development by revitalizing aging downtowns and urban neighborhoods. Clean and affordable public transportation will be especially beneficial to poor and minority populations, the majority of which live in cities.

Promote Health Benefits

Huge numbers of low-income people live near oil refineries, garbage dumps. waste treatment plants, polluted waterways, and other sources of pollution, leading to higher incidents of cancer, asthma, and other illnesses among the poor. A cleaner, greener world would lead to fewer health problems among the poor, as well as less money spent treating those health problems.

Promote Urban Gardening

Organizations such as Urban Farming, Food from the Hood, and The Garden Project teach urban gardening techniques to low-income people, at-risk youth, and former offenders, providing educational opportunities, skills, and food for people in need. Additionally, urban gardening can provide independence and self-sufficiency, important qualities in hard times.


I believe that if we don't show environmentalism in a way that will attract more diversity, we will fail. Our green umbrella must cover a broader group of people or we will never build up the momentum to have a long term impact. If we are going to succeed, we need to declare, "Clean, green, and fair for everyone!"

Read more...