Green Jobs

By Judith Stein The political tsunami in Massachusetts has concentrated the Democratic mind on the economy and employment. President Obama had thought he could turn his attention to health care while banking on the trinity of finance, retail, and housing for jobs and revenue. Massachusetts was proof that the old recipe is bankrupt. Obama's State of the Union proposals to ease some of the anxieties of retirement, education, and child care will help at the margins, but they skirt the job question.

WITH A QUARTER of the city's population living in poverty, jobs are a key issue for Philadelphians. Both Democratic presidential candidates have pledged to create jobs. U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have released plans to generate more green-energy jobs, to fund more job training and to keep more jobs in the United States. But neither is thinking creatively enough about job creation, according to Amy Liu, deputy director of the the Metropolitan Policy Program for the Brookings Institution.

Green jobs - or, as our president calls them, the "jobs of the future" - have been notoriously tough to define and count. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics recently did it, though, and now it's the result that's notorious. Facing an admittedly difficult project, the BLS created a definition that is so broad as to make it a meaningless measure of the green economy. Here's a sneak preview: There are 33 times as many green jobs in the septic tank and portable toilet servicing industry as there are in solar electricity utilities.

Raymond Manuel has just two more checks coming, then next month his unemployment runs out. The situation led Manuel, 37, a married father of three who was bundled in a puffy tan coat, to sit in the first chair of the front row in the gymnasium of the Dixon House on a recent afternoon for an orientation on a green-jobs training program. The pilot program, held at the South Philadelphia social-service center, is part of a federal initiative to get people like Manuel, stuck in the mud of joblessness, outfitted for a new career and back to work.

Government is not especially good at picking winners in the free market, including in the energy sector. Despite a lot of hoopla and subsidies, for example, corn-based ethanol has proven for the most part to be a nonstarter. On the other hand, entrepreneurs have discovered that recycled cooking oil can be used to fuel vehicles, and many major energy companies are looking at algae as a potential alternative-energy resource. Today, we have state and federal subsidies being poured into solar and wind power, although these may not turn out to be the most practical options (certainly not in every region of the country)

Liz Robinson long ago reconciled herself to the naysayers, the folks who thought that green jobs were some figment of a tree hugger's imagination. "I think people don't understand," said Robinson, executive director of the Energy Coordinating Agency , a Philadelphia nonprofit that trains people to perform energy audits on houses and buildings in the city. Maybe more will now. On Thursday, the mother source of all job statistics, the office that provides research data to battalions of labor economists and academicians, released its first report on green jobs and services.

The winds of change blew across the rapidly evolving green-technology landscape earlier this year, taking with them nearly 200 jobs from Lower Bucks County. The latest generation of wind turbines needs bigger blades than the 140-foot-long, 6-ton models that Gamesa Technology Corp. Inc. has been making at its factory in Fairless Hills. So company officials announced 184 layoffs in January and said the blade work would be transferred to a larger Gamesa plant in the center of the state, near Altoona.

Today, in Philadelphia, the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families is holding its inaugural meeting. Our charge is to assess current polices and develop new ones aimed at helping the middle class, the economic engine of this country. The economic-recovery package that President Obama signed into law last week contains more than $20 billion for investment in a cleaner, greener economy, including $500 million for green job training. The task force's first order of business is to evaluate how investing in green jobs will help build a strong middle class.

While Vice President Biden launches an initiative in Philadelphia tomorrow focusing on using green jobs to raise living standards for middle-class Americans, Suechada Poynter, 39, will be crawling around the basement of a Philadelphia rowhouse. Checking for air leaks and improperly functioning furnaces in her job as a home energy auditor, Poynter will not be available to talk to Biden, but she has a message for him: "Green jobs have opened a lot of doors for a lot of lower-class people to get into this field," said Poynter, a Thai immigrant and mother of seven who lives in Philadelphia's Logan section and earns $11 an hour for her work.

TWO POINT 6 million U.S. jobs were lost last year, and unemployment continues to climb, with many experts predicting the rate will exceed 10 percent by early next year, if not sooner. The situation is far worse for younger workers, minorities, single moms and millions of others living on or below the poverty line. While faith organizations continue their work serving those in need in their communities, many groups also recognize that we need to support serious efforts from our political leaders to reduce poverty.

Al Gore is about 50 times richer than he was when he left the vice presidency in 2001. According to an Oct. 11 report by the Washington Post's Carol D. Leonnig, Gore accumulated a Romneyesque $100 million partly by investing in alternative-energy firms subsidized by the Obama administration. Two days after that story ran, Mitt Romney proclaimed at a rally in Ohio's Appalachian coal country: "We have a lot of coal; we are going to use it. We are going to keep those jobs. " Thousands cheered.

By Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic Where have all the copy boys, blacksmiths, and elevator operators gone? We could ask the same of coopers, the artisans who crafted wooden barrels back in the days before plastic bottles - when households needed churns, casks, and hogsheads to hold liquids. The word milliner might ring a bell with some hat-wearing church ladies. But, really, when was the last time you bought a custom-made, hand-fitted hat? Jobs must change with the times.

Let the power games begin. On Wednesday, Philadelphia became the largest U.S. city to join an Environmental Protection Agency program aimed at getting more people, businesses, institutions - and more towns - to purchase electricity generated by solar panels, wind turbines, and other "green" sources. The program is voluntary, but once a city opts in, competition can heat up. Until Philadelphia's entry, Washington had bragging rights as the largest municipality in the program.

Again, Obama bypasses Congress Once again, President Obama has bypassed Congress, this time to establish a new immigration policy ("Obama shields younger migrants," Saturday). In December 2010, the U.S. Senate defeated the "DREAM Act," but the president has, once more, thumbed his nose at our elected officials. I am just amazed that he continues to ignore the U.S. Constitution. I wonder if this new policy is a reflection of his concerns about November 2012?   James J. O'Donnell, Ocean City     Tools of a dictatorship The Obama administration has usurped the authority of Congress with an executive order "DREAM Act" on immigration.

Green jobs - or, as our president calls them, the "jobs of the future" - have been notoriously tough to define and count. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics recently did it, though, and now it's the result that's notorious. Facing an admittedly difficult project, the BLS created a definition that is so broad as to make it a meaningless measure of the green economy. Here's a sneak preview: There are 33 times as many green jobs in the septic tank and portable toilet servicing industry as there are in solar electricity utilities.

Liz Robinson long ago reconciled herself to the naysayers, the folks who thought that green jobs were some figment of a tree hugger's imagination. "I think people don't understand," said Robinson, executive director of the Energy Coordinating Agency , a Philadelphia nonprofit that trains people to perform energy audits on houses and buildings in the city. Maybe more will now. On Thursday, the mother source of all job statistics, the office that provides research data to battalions of labor economists and academicians, released its first report on green jobs and services.

The State of the Union address is a political exercise in the best of times. But when a president is running for reelection and Congress is dominated by his most bitter opponents, there's even less pretense than usual. The State of the Union address that President Obama delivered this week was, in a sense, the first formal speech of his reelection campaign. It was his chance to wedge himself into the noise of the Republican primary campaign for 66 minutes of uninterrupted television time, and he took advantage of it. It was a blue-collar speech, aimed largely at the swing voters the president needs to woo most - the middle- and low-income workers still struggling in the recession's wake.

  Jobs, jobs, jobs. A green economy can bring them on. That was one focus of a sustainability forum Friday led by Mayor Nutter, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira. Nutter cited the replacement of 85,000 incandescent traffic signals with LEDs in the last year. Besides saving the city $1 million a year on energy costs, "someone had to make them, and someone had to install them. . . . It is about putting people to work.

Kevin Brown is cofounder of Cleantech Alliance Mid-Atlantic (cleantechma.org) Philadelphia identifies with underdogs: Rocky, the Eagles, and now energy. When business people or policymakers think of Philly, they naturally jump to the Big Five: pharmaceuticals, higher education, legal, finance, and technology. Clean tech, or renewable energy, rarely makes the list. But that's about to change. We have the potential to be a full-fledged front-runner in one of the hottest growth industries.