February 2, 2009

More Green Jobs Please!

by Environmental Building Strategies in Energy, Green Building, Renewable Energy 449 Comments

This weekend I was driving in traffic on the Oakland toll Bridge reading Van Jones’s The Green Collar Economy and was blown away by his forward thinking and by my multi-tasking abilities. Although I was impressed with my ability not to crash I think it is more important that I share with you Van Jones’s four main action items to get our country out of our recession.

1) A carbon cap-and-trade system design to put downward pressure on carbon emission.
2) Revamp the nation’s antiquated high-voltage power-transmission system so the United States could distribute solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy across the country.
3) The federal government needs to work with state authorities to open up the grid, allowing clean-energy innovators to fairly compete for investment, space, and customers.
4) Connect a much smarter power grid to vastly more efficient buildings and machines. We need to create open national markets where individuals who devise new ways to produce or conserve power can quickly profit from their innovations.

Van Jones’s continually harps on the importance of the United States becoming energy independent and how the federal government has to take every action necessary to reward companies that strive to help us with this. When we start rewarding companies it will “unleash America’s entrepreneurial energies to solve our most urgent national problems—global warming, national security, our staggering debt and a stagnant economy.”

I highly recommend that everyone reads this inspirational book. Van Jones’s really breaks down how to make a green collar economy and explains how easy it would be for the United States to adopt it.

–The EBS Team