United States – Jan 20

January 20, 2009

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Green-collar economy taking root in Chicago

Ted Gregory, Chicago Tribune
The lot where Isaac Wright Jr., ex-con, tends vegetables next to abandoned railroad tracks and across the street from a boarded-up house is the intersection of social justice, environmental righteousness and economic prosperity.

He is part foot soldier, part guinea pig in a movement that starts in the Englewood garden and may reach all the way to the Oval Office, although he may not fully appreciate it. “I’m not going to lie to you,” Wright said one crisp morning while working a row of radishes in a greenhouse. “I needed a job. Long as I was plugged in somewhere, that was OK.”

Wright works for Growing Home Inc., which offers “social business enterprise” job training for low-income people. It and he are part of the “green-collar economy,” a movement toward an environmentally sound, robust economy with a vast array of jobs, some of which are rooted in withering small towns or decimated inner cities. And guess what metropolis experts say provides the most fertile environment for the green-collar economy? Chicago, Rust Belt capital and adopted hometown of the next president, whose New Energy for America plan calls for investing $150 billion over the next decade to create 5 million new “green jobs.”

“I just think Chicago is the symbol of what a green-collar renaissance can look like,” said one of the leading gurus of the movement, Van Jones, founder and president of Green for All, a national non-profit working to build “an inclusive, green economy” that would lift people from poverty. Jones wrote the book “The Green Collar Economy,” which rose to The New York Times’ best-seller list in October.
(19 January 2009)
Also at Common Dreams.


Advice To Pres. Obama (#3): Change you must

Euan Mearns, The Oil Drum: Europe
Dear President Elect Obama,

The chart shows US crude oil production (blue) and consumption (red) and shows that the USA has been living well beyond its means for over 40 years. This lies at the heart of current global problems creating economic, social, political and environmental imbalance on an unprecedented scale.

Translating these figures to $ shows how allowing this imbalance to persist for far too long has destroyed the US economy. Granted, these existing problems are too large to solve within the term of a single presidency, but your actions in the first 100 days and ongoing thereafter must singlemindedly focus upon eliminating US dependence upon imported oil. This inevitably means reducing oil and energy consumption whilst boosting indigenous primary energy production in a sustainable manner. Some of the policies you must enact will be unpopular, but as the behavior and expectations of individuals changes slowly, so will the attitude of society – until eventually the benefits of these tough policies will shine through and be embraced by society as a whole.

By way of introduction, I am a European, living in Aberdeen Scotland. I was born in Asia and lived in Norway for 8 years. I have traveled the world, including visits to the USA on many occasions. I have BSc and PhD degrees in Earth Science, ran my own business for over a decade and for 3 years now have written articles for The Oil Drum. Much of what I have to say here is based on information gleaned from and interacting with the readers of this blog.

In this letter my focus is on US oil consumption in relation to transportation policies.

… Energy prices

Politicians and political advisers need to accept that higher and rising energy prices are a good thing and are indeed inevitable since we have now used much of the cheap and easy to access reserves of fossil fuels. Higher energy prices will provide the capital to invest in new energy systems. It is therefore imperative that the profits from high energy prices are invested in energy and not frittered away buying back stock and paying excessive bonuses to executives who had good fortune to be in the right place at the right time.

The public need to be educated that higher energy prices are a good thing. The choice is between having more expensive energy or not having enough energy.
(19 January 2009)
The latest in a series of letters to Obama from TOD contributors.


Not Advice, But a Warning

Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book
Dear Mr. President-Elect (you can take that last modifier off in 24 hours),

I’m not writing this to give you advice – I think you could heat the White House for the next decade on the printouts of advice that have poured in from the famous, the not famous, the right, the wrong, the righteous and the self-righteous. Some of it is very good – I would commend to you the material on The Oil Drum, for example, which begins from a set of assumptions both radical and alien to most of the people you have hired. But I will not, from my own perspective, offer anything that resembles advice.

Instead, I would write to warn you about two dangers you face – one a danger to the moral and perhaps practical legitimacy of your presidency, and the second, a danger to the people you are supposed to protect.

…You’ve decided your job is to save the economy, and to restore the American people to prosperity. Everyone expects it of you – your own party has made this the central agenda, as the Republicans did for Lincoln. But that way lies tyranny, and moral failure. To do so represents the tyranny of the present over their posterity – the extraction of resources that will be urgently needed by your daughters and my sons and their children.

…So my first warning is this – you must find another way, if you wish to walk anything like Lincoln’s path. I know this will be difficult – and more difficult because most of those surrounding you most closely are not equipped to tell the truth, simply because they cannot see it. Their worldviews are built around the enslavement of future generations for the preservation of the present. They decline to see the cost of that enslavement – you cannot afford not to see it.

…The tyranny of the present over the future works only if those who guard the future do not rise up, and recognize the moral illegitimacy of any government that enslaves its children to pay its debts.

…Thus I also warn you of this – pay attention to your means, to your costs, and to the price you are asking others to pay. If the price is too high, or the objective a false one, they will not pay it…
(19 January 2009)


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