Green Pathways Out of Poverty: Including Green Collar Workers from the Gound Up

Image Credit: Medical College of Georgia

According to a recent USA Today article by Annette Fuentes, the emerging green economy fueled by investments in new technology, business, and renewable energy sources is contributing to a rise in green-collar job opportunities.

Wonderful, but her well put question is "who will participate in the blossoming and profitable green economy?"

She says, "Unless environmentalism becomes a more inclusive movement to protect the health of our natural environment and of people living in the most polluted areas, it will never achieve more than minimal gains in air quality, energy efficincy and climate stability."

Right on.... As important as they are, it's going to take a lot more than "Prius driving Ph.D's", to put this place back together. We've fouled our nest to its impending tipping point long enough. It's time to make and take real progress to the struggling streets of our nation and the globe.

What we need is much more work along the lines of Green for All, which was launched at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on September 26, 2007.

Green for All was created by Van Jones, co-founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and seeks to capitalize on the growing green economy while ensuring that the rising tide includes the disadvantaged and the urban poor.

Along with a group of srategic partners, Green for All is working to combine solutions to America's two biggest problems: social inequality and environmental destruction.

The basic idea is to greatly expand federal government and private sector commitments to green-collar jobs.

“We’re not going to solve global warming just with expensive consumer choices like buying hybrid cars and shopping for organic food. People need to realize that you don’t have to be white or wealthy to benefit from going green,” says Van Jones.

The group's mission is lofty but simply makes sense:

• Help build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.
• Harness the growing power of the green economic revolution to fight the war on poverty.
• Find new avenues of opportunity for those who have traditionally been left behind by the nation's economic growth.
• Give the crusade against global warming a broader social base, extending the green revolution to the neglected streets of cities like Oakland, Detroit, Baltimore and New Orleans.
• Advocate for a national commitment to job training, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy – especially for people from disadvantaged communities.
• Fight both poverty and pollution at the same time.
  
  You can learn more about the movement here. Take the time to look into this one. It's vitally green.
  
  Step up....
  
  @peace