New York’s Green-Collared Future

Over lunch yesterday, my friend Liz, a teacher at a Brooklyn public high school, told us about a student who can read only monosyllabic words.  Liz works with students with learning disabilities, many of whom will end up in jail and/or chronically under- and unemployed (consider this: America has 5% of global population yet 25% of the world’s incarcerated, the direct result of the loss of fair-wage, blue-collar jobs and decades of underinvestment in public schools and other after-school programs.)

Since she started teaching, we’ve heard countless similar stories from Liz — but yesterday, finally, I had good news: it is becoming ever-more certain that in the next five years, New York will begin investing in green collar jobs, and her students will have both a pathway out of poverty and a crucial role to play in the new, ecologically-sound economy.

What gave me such hope?  On Friday, I attended a policy briefing called “Green Jobs NY,” sponsored by the Center for Working Families (CWF) and attended by many key activists and state politicians.  The keynote speaker was Van Jones, a community activist entrenched for the past 15 years in Oakland’s low-income communities and communities of color.  He’s made it his mission to prevent “ecological apartheid,” a nation of “eco haves and have-nots,” by ensuring that “this beautiful green wave lifts all boats.”

The emerging green economy, led in no small part by Mr. Jones, promises to restore the kind of skilled labor jobs that went overseas in the end of the 20th century.  Weatherizing buildings and homes (sealing the cracks and installing insulation to minimize leaked — that is, wasted — energy), installing sonar panels, building wind farms: these are jobs that will be integral to reducing our collective carbon footprint and, crucially, cannot be outsourced.

CWF’s proposed plan for New York has the potential to change both the fate of many of Liz’s students and the ecological impact of New York.  The goal is is to retrofit one million homes in five years — and in so doing, create 30,000 jobs (in addition to “up-skilling” thousands more jobs.)

Standing in the way are still significant hurdles, principally economic.  A representative of the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation noted that banks are uncomfortable with lending homeowners the money for weatherization work, despite a body of studies that show predictable energy cost savings as a result of the improvements.  The Foundation is leading an effort in the philanthropic community to develop a $30 million loan fund, which is but a fraction of the total estimated cost of weatherization, but would be the signal to the public and private sectors to invest in job training programs and would send a message that New York is setting a determined pace.

On Friday, New York’s Governor Paterson announced $49 million for energy efficiency initiatives to help low-income families pay their ever-increasing heating bills this winter.  It’s a first step — but the fact that efficiency is so central to the plan is encouraging.  In the closing remarks at the briefing, Majora Carter, the founder of Sustainable South Bronx, a ground-breaking economic justice organization, blinked back tears as she invoked the new green-collar worker: “he has traveled the road from being a societal burden to an environmental hero.”  This is the hope I shared with Liz.