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At a recent economic forum put on by Sustainable Industries in San Francisco, Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems gave an inspiring speech. Several discussions on Construction Exchange have focused on one major issue facing workers in the construction industry in this current economy, and that is the loss of jobs. Many of us are feeling the pinch right now and although we can follow the sentiment that we should just go out there and get our boots dirty, the truth is that there are fewer projects available and more companies scrambling for those which means fewer jobs available for individuals.Whether we on this website are for government intervention or not in this economic crisis is irrelevant because the government will be putting money somewhere. I can't pretend to understand the financial machinations of hedge funds and credit derivative swaps and banks and entire industries being bailed out, but it seems to me that if money is going to be put somewhere it should be put towards infrastructure. Twice in this country's history, the federal government has invested in large-scale, national infrastructure projects, both times for reasons of national security. Out of that infusion, we got the national interstate system and the information super highway. It would be hard to imagine our country without either of those systems.Our dependence on foreign oil, our crumbling economy and the negative environmental impact that so many of our daily practices yield seem to me to all be national security issues. Clean water, clean air and jobs. These issues are all intertwined. Given this and the fact that federal money will be going somewhere, the direction of this new infusion can also mean the creation of green jobs in the construction industry.Two legs of the three-pronged approach to saving our economy and our environment at the same time that Van Jones proposes include putting people to work retrofitting buildings with existing technology and expertise and creating a clean energy smart grid so that there is a way to connect the energy coming from solar and wind resources to the buildings that need them. One method to pay for this retrofitting would be for the feds to loan municipalities money for retrofitting buildings with simple, green technologies (energy-efficient windows, caulking, etc.) and the money made through the energy savings would be used to repay the loan. All of those retrofitting jobs would be construction jobs.Check out Van Jones at http://www.vanjones.net/page.php?pageid=3
Our company is well versed in green retrofits. Any ideas on how we can best position ourselves to be in line for government funding when it becomes available?
Senator Bingaman, quoted recently in the NY Times, suggests that some of Van Jones' (and others, btw) proposals are being seriously considered. More specficlly, the idea of weatherizing "hundreds of thousands of homes" would immediately do three important things; create jobs for unemployed construction workers, create demand for construction materials, lower homeowners energy costs; and get us off of foreign oil -- oops that was 4, a bit of idea inflation
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