Green Jobs

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.

During the last 10 years the prices of oil, natural gas and now coal have increased about 400 percent. Higher fossil-fuel prices are adding to our economic pain and soon will be reflected in electricity bills, since we make 70 percent of our electricity by burning fossil fuels. Electricity rate caps in Pennsylvania that capped prices at 1996 levels have ended in six electricity-service territories and will end throughout the state by January 2011. Gov. Rendell has been sounding the alarm since February 2007 on energy prices, urging swift passage of a package of energy bills that would create great green jobs and give consumers practical tools to cut their electricity bills.

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.

Former Mayor Bill Green is apparently close to leaving his Philadelphia law firm to work for MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., a New York investment company owned by Ronald O. Perelman, a former Philadelphian and long-time friend of Green's. Green, a partner at Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen, could not be reached for comment yesterday. But according to associates at Wolf, Block, his departure from the law firm is considered imminent. "I spoke to Bill recently and he said that nothing is final," said Charles A. Kopp, co-chairman of Wolf, Block.