Edwards Initiative Would Train 150,000 American Workers A Year For "Green Collar" Jobs

[JohnLocke]

Edwards Initiative Would Train 150,000 American Workers A Year For "Green Collar" Jobs
Confronting the Challenge of Global Warming Also Brings Opportunities for New Iowa Jobs
John Edwards for President
Friday, July 13, 2007
----
Des Moines, Iowa – Senator John Edwards today announced a new initiative he would pursue as President to ensure that regular Americans share in the benefits of the new energy economy. His investments in a new energy future are projected to create over a million new jobs economy-wide, and the new Green Collar Jobs training plan will offer job training and placement for up to 150,000 workers a year.

"We can turn the crisis of climate change into an opportunity for a new energy economy, right here in America – and Iowa in particular," Edwards said. "Now is the time to make sure that the economy of tomorrow is an all-aboard economy where nobody is left behind."

John Edwards has already proposed an ambitious plan to cap global warming pollution and reduce it by 80 percent by 2050. At the same time, he will sell carbon pollution permits to build a New Energy Economy Fund to bring struggling family farms back to life, revitalize America's manufacturing base and harness American innovation.

The initiative announced today would ensure that this aggressive battle against global warming also translates into new Iowa jobs. In particular, the Edwards plan will:

--Provide Green Collar Jobs Training Grants that will help train and certify up to 150,000 workers a year for jobs in the new energy economy - meeting the needs of industry and Americans seeking better jobs and opportunity, as well as our environment.
--Create 50,000 stepping-stone jobs in the new energy economy. As part of his plan to end poverty in America, Edwards called for the creation of government-subsidized stepping stone jobs that give people with barriers to employment a chance to learn new skills and work their way up. Edwards would dedicate 50,000 of these jobs to companies involved in the new energy economy.
--Use grant funding to encourage partnerships between states, businesses, labor unions, community groups and educators to train these workers – so that workers actually get the skills and training that businesses need.
--Provide grant funding to community colleges to partner with companies involved in the new energy economy to develop job training programs specifically tailored to meet needs of this growing industry.
--Ensure that high school students are prepared for jobs in the new energy economy. Edwards would create Green Career Academies -- small learning communities within high schools that use a college preparatory curriculum with a career theme and engage employers, unions, and local colleges to participate.

http://johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20070713-green-collar-jobs/
http://johnedwards.com/issues/environment/green-collar-jobs/

[saltpoint]

1. Green is good. Edwards' idea is good, too.

I believe FDR would recognize the benefit to both the economy and to the principle of citizenship in this initiative.

[draft_mario_cuomo]

2. Great idea, thanks for posting JLocke. K and R nt

[mzmolly]

3. Very nice.

:toast:

[usregimechange]

4. kick

[waiting for hope]

5. Kick and Rec -

Making lemonade out of lemons....

Way to Go, Johnny!

[MasonJar]

6. Great idea! Now that gets my attention, Edwards.

[JohnLocke]

7. Kick (nt).

[robcon]

8. Lousy idea, IMO.

Training for jobs is the least of our 'problems.' Making the technology work - so we can find out what training/jobs will be needed - is far more important. Edwards puts the cart before the horse... how do we know what training will be needed until the technology matures into practical solutions?

[saltpoint]

9. I believe the issue Edwards includes in his proposal shifts focus

from jobs for the sake of having jobs to work which is meaningful and essential.

Providing a job so someone can produce something that is inessential is counter-productive in the long term. Work -- meaningful work -- toward an ecologically balanced and economically fair labor environment -- is a more purposeful goal.

For Edwards to make it realizable as well is a huge step forward.

[robcon]

13. "Training" people for jobs that most likely will not exist is useless.

Will we train them to be windmill operators? Solar-power installers?

Shouldn't we wait for the technology to mature before defining the jobs needed. This is a classic pie-in-the-sky approach - as if technological advances and inventions can be predicted in advance, and the job requirements, duties and skills can be defined before the products are produced.

There is no shortage of training for real jobs, IMO. This is a make-work scheme that is bound to fail.

[saltpoint]

14. Well, it suggest hope and possibility to me, as well as practical

application for a good cause.

That's the machine that drives my personal politics.

Would we have told FDR that his work programs in the Depression years were useless? I hope we would not have. Surely the people who took those jobs and did that work did not feel they were contributing to a useless set of circumstances.

[robcon]

15. You didn't suggest what we should train them to do.

Will it be hydrogen car maintenance?

Will it be fuel cell installation?

Will it be solar cell electric grid connection?

Will it be shale oil recovery?

Will it be biomass conversion of other plants?

Will it be in-home nuclear power plants?

Will it be battery technology improvements?

Will it be a technology currently unforeseen at all?

If you don't know what to train them in, why would someone like Edwards announce a vague "training" plan? Training is not the first, or even the tenth, priority right now.

All of the above technologies are promising. None are mature enough to need a lot of "trainees" to manage them or execute them, until the technology is more practical than it is today. And, if industry needs to train their employees, there is no shortage of training done by those industries, or by local community colleges or universities.

[saltpoint]

16. It's Senator Edwards who's running for president, not myself.

I don't have the chops.

Also I hate Republicans, so I'd be essentially worthless on bipartisan initiatives.

The Edwards camp is relentlessly generous with information on the Senator's various positions. They're at:

http://johnedwards.com/

[saltpoint]

10. Kick. I'm pro-Labor and pro-Environment and I'm in a good mood.

[waiting for hope]

11. Glad you are in a good mood OC!

I'll give it a kicky too!

[saltpoint]

12. Hi, waiting for hope. Good to run into

you on DU today.

I love this idea by John Edwards.

[RandomKoolzip]

17. Wow. THIS is a great idea.

:thumbsup:

Another reason why Edwards is currently my favored candidate right now.

[saltpoint]

18. I'll second that, RandomKoolzip.

As DUer Catchawave has pointed out earlier, there's a strong resonance of the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy in this tour of Edwards'.

[halobeam]

19. timed out for a rec.... such a shame...

This is one area where we need serious minds to get together and create... Edwards terming it "Green collar jobs" is excellent conceptually. The posters on this thread all have great points and considerations that need to be expanded on...

I hope a kick will help w/ that. So happens, I know a few people who are interested in changing their careers into this field, and the investigation into it is exhausting, because it's very difficult at this moment to see which alternative power is more advanced and closer to the marketplace and how to help get a variety of alternative energies directed in the right place in order for it to get to the point where his concept of training comes to fruition.

Maybe talking about it, feeding off one another's ideas is the place to start, where something tangible will result. It's by far the next field that will boom.. industrial era, technological era, green era... ?? The alternative is not ok.

(Just shooting off some thoughts)