Green Jobs

The creation of green jobs – guiding the economy towards environmentally friendly, zero- and low-emission technologies while creating jobs in a down economy – is a relatively new but extremely timely issue. If you believe that:

* The United States and California need to lead the way in entrepreneurial innovation, as we have in the past;

* Current business and economic practices don’t take into account the true cost of doing business — that is, the short- and long-term health and environmental costs of using polluting fossil fuels are borne by future generations; and that

* Our lingering economic woes (12% unemployment in California and rising) call for job creation similar to that which helped us out of the Great Depression (New Deal programs such as WPA and CCC)...

Then you likely believe that creating and investing in green jobs is one way to help meet our most pressing challenges.

Examples of actions that create green jobs: California has been awarded $1.14 billion (of which $158 million has been received) from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; former Governor Schwarzenegger among other elected officials allocated significant amounts of this aid to the creation of and training for green job. In 2009 Schwarzenegger announced the creation of the California Green Corps, which uses federal aid to place at-risk young adults aged 16-24 into jobs in California's emerging green economy.