by Alan Durning
$100 billion for green jobs. Billion!
The Associated Press reports plans for a massive new green-collar federal stimulus package:
Obama has also embraced calls for a "green jobs" program that invests as much as $100 billion in projects to slash harmful emissions. This could include projects such as retrofitting buildings to make them more energy-efficient, upgrading the electrical grid and improving mass transit.
"It turns out that putting money into green technologies ... has a very large positive employment effect relative to tax cuts," said Robert Pollin, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst economist who has written extensively on what he calls the "green recovery."
"It's very efficient in terms of creating jobs for a given amount of spending, and it has the added benefit that the short-term effects are compatible with long-term needs in the economy," Pollin said.
Exactly as I’ve been saying!
On Monday morning, December 1, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. (Cascadia time), the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, will webcast a forum including some of the nation’s leading voices on green recovery. RSVP for the webcast.
You can sign this letter asking Barack Obama to take action on climate change here.
This piece originally appeared on The Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Blog.
