Touting Green-Collar Jobs. By Bryan Walsh, Time, May 27, 2008. "They all love green-collar jobs. Obama promises to spend $150 billion over 10 years to create 5 million new green collar jobs. Clinton references the term repeatedly on the trail, and says her energy plan will create millions of new green-collar jobs as well. McCain is less willing to cite numbers, but he too assures campaign audiences that action to decarbonize America's economy will produce 'thousands, millions of new jobs in America.'... Phil Angelides... chair of the Apollo Alliance, defines a green job [as follows]: 'It has to pay decent wages and benefits that can support a family. It has to be part of a real career path, with upward mobility. And it needs to reduce waste and pollution and benefit the environment'… Angelides notes that between now and 2030, 75% of the buildings in the U.S. will either be new or substantially rehabilitated. Our inefficient, dangerously unstable electrical grid will need to be overhauled. The jobs that will go into that kind of work can be green collar -- provided that the government adopts the kind of policies that incentivize environmentally friendly choices... Environmentalism has usually been the reserve of the elite -- but we'll never have the power to tackle global warming unless we create a coalition that extends well beyond traditional white-collar greens. Touting green-collar jobs can convince skeptical, blue-collar Americans that they have an economic stake in curbing climate change."
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