Mountain Holler
Sierra Club and the United Steel Workers together at last
March 18th, 2008
I just returned from the "Good Jobs Green Jobs" conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The conference was put on by the Blue Green Alliance, an unlikely and important alliance formed by the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers. The focus of the conference was how to invigorate an economy gutted by trade deals unfriendly to labor with leaders stuck in the old days of dirty energy.One speaker said that "if you're comfortable with everyone in your collaboration, your collaboration isn't strong enough." People came from all different sides of the spectrum, but we all agreed that we need clean green jobs in order to restore the nations faltering economy as well as avert global climate chaos.
Perhaps the most pertinent speaker to me was Micheal Peck, of Gamesa Energy, a Spanish based Wind Energy company which recently located a plant in Pennsylvania and now employees 1400 + people in that state with over 1000 of those jobs being factory jobs. In his speech Peck said that when looking for a labor consultant they were approached by many organizations and finally settled on the United Steelworkers. That's right, that's over 1000 UNION jobs. Peck said that lots of people asked how he settled on Pennsylvania out of the 22 states that where competing for the plant and he said that it was the Governor and that where the principles are right, the projects will follow. Thanks Joe Manchin. Maybe your right, West Virginia doesn't need over 1000 new Union jobs.
And while there was talk of Carbon Sequestration, most notably from the likes of the BP reps at the conference, there was quite an eruption of applause when a representative from Architecture 2030 put up slides calling for no new coal fired power plants of any kind and rather focus on energy efficiency through building design. This would create hundreds of thousands of jobs that could not be shipped over seas and we wouldn't have to wait 20 years (if ever) for the technology to be available as is the case with carbon sequestration.
Overall this was a very positive step forward. We all stand to benefit from a healthy planet with lots of good jobs. Cities and States that have accepted this mentality are already benefiting as is the case with Pennsylvania and many others. We'll see how long it takes for West Virginia's government to get on board.