Earth Equity News

Climate Legislation: Something We're Doing for the Economy, Not to It. By Kate Sheppard, Grist, June 16, 2008. "After last week's debate [on the Climate Security Act], it's clear that, with all due respect to God's polar bears, sponsors of future climate legislation will have to tackle economic concerns head-on. To be successful, they'll need to make the case that an aggressive carbon cap-and-trade bill will be a jobs-generator rather than a jobs-killer, stimulating expansion of clean-tech industries and invigorating the desiccated U.S. manufacturing sector. As green-jobs activist Van Jones put it, proponents of climate legislation need to make the case that 'this isn't something we're going to do to the economy, it's something we're going to do for the economy'... 'It is essential to getting the... consensus we need in the U.S. that we be able to say... unequivocally that the clean energy economy is going to be a fairer one than the one we're living in,' said David Foster... of the Blue-Green Alliance, a partnership between the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club... 'What we have is the most important piece of environmental legislation for the next 50 years, the most important piece of economic legislation, the most important trade negotiation that any of us will see in our lifetime, all wrapped up in one.'"