10 Ways to Solve the Jobs Problem

by Fran Korten

Imagine a no-holds-barred “summit” that comes up with ideas to solve both our job and environmental problems. What might it come up with?

Photo by Alex Ferguson

As the midterm political season heats up, one word on every politician’s lips is “jobs.” And for good reason. People are hurting—they can’t pay their mortgages, send their kids to college, pay their dental bills. Young people are wondering if they have a place in the work world.

So the economic pundits cheer when car sales go up, housing starts rise, consumer confidence strengthens. But as the oily ooze in the Gulf tars yet another beach, we all sense something is terribly wrong. We can’t keep tearing up the planet to keep ourselves employed. There must be another way.

So—imagine a no-holds-barred “summit” that comes up with ideas to solve both our job and environmental problems. What might it come up with?

Here is my starter list. You can add your own ideas in the comments to this article on the YES! website.

 1. More farms, less agribusiness. Agribusiness substitutes chemicals and machinery for labor and employs remarkably few people. Small organic farms are far more productive per acre and bring the people back.

 2. More repair, fewer products. Instead of tossing those shoes, that toaster, that computer, let’s fix them—and employ repair people in the process.

 3. More recycling, less mining. Ray Anderson of the Interface flooring company says we already have enough nylon to meet the world’s carpet needs forever. The same may be true for aluminum, steel, copper, and other easily recyclable materials. We just need good systems for recovering them.

What if we stopped subsidizing advertising with tax breaks and focused on educating people to lead satisfying lives?

 4. More renovations, less construction. Our nation has 129 million housing units. We build new ones and let old ones deteriorate. How about renovating what we have and in-filling our cities to use existing sidewalks, gas pipes, water mains, and roads?

 5. More restoration, less destruction. Whether it’s forests, Superfund sites, or oil-laced wetlands, it’s time to restore. Some restoration can even pay for itself, as in restoration forestry where folks make products from the fire-prone, small-diameter trees normally considered too small to market.

 6. More bike paths, fewer highways. They both cost money, but one is good for our health and good for the planet. What’s not to like?

 7. More local businesses, fewer megastores. Locally owned stores employ more people per goods sold and you can often talk to a decision-maker about your purchase.

 8. More dishwashing, fewer throw-aways. What if we got rid of all the disposable containers in fast food restaurants? At my friend Ron Sher’s Crossroads Shopping Center near Seattle, the food court vendors share a common crockery supply. No trees needed. It works.

 9. More education, less advertising. Let’s face it. Advertising is about making us feel inadequate for something we don’t yet have. What if we stopped subsidizing advertising with tax breaks and focused on educating people to lead satisfying lives?

10. More clean energy, less fossil fuel. Here we do need new stuff—wind turbines, solar panels, insulation, passenger trains. Politicians are providing some—though not enough—funding for these sources of “green jobs.” It’s the other items on this list they’re not even talking about—but need to.

You may be thinking that my list isn’t realistic because these options cost more or depend on government funding. But that’s partly because governments subsidize oil, agribusiness, nuclear plants, ports, highways, advertising, and other unhealthy choices.

So the next time you hear a politician talk about jobs, try comparing the solutions offered to this list. By breaking out of the narrow range of options that keeps policy discussions stuck, we can create jobs that not only sustain families, but also build community and restore the living systems of our planet.

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Fran Korten wrote this column for A Resilient Community, the Fall 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Fran is publisher of YES! Magazine.

• http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-resilient-community/10-ways-to-solve-the-jobs-problem

The Green-Collar Jobs Campaign Teaching Tools

Lesson Plans from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights The Green-Collar Jobs Campaign Teaching Tools offers a five-part series of lesson plans designed for use in high school classrooms. Ranging from one to three class periods in length, these interactive activities explore key themes surrounding Green-Collar Jobs Campaign's work, including: the green economy, eco-equity and eco-privilege, model cities, and restorative justice. We've identified compelling YES! articles to support teaching with these activities and help your students go deeper with the issues raised. INTRODUCE THE LESSONS: with this 2 minute video of Van Jones on Eco-Equity DOWNLOAD TEACHING MATERIALS: :: Teacher Guide complete with all five activities, hand-outs and additional remarks :: Green-Collar Jobs Campaign Glossary of Terms :: Tools are aligned with California's Content Standards EXPLORE RELATED YES! STORIES FOR EACH ACTIVITY: :: The Green Wave and My Community :: Exploring Eco-Privilege :: Green Jobs, Not Jails :: Model Cities and You :: Finding the Solutions The Green Wave and My Community The blossoming green economy (which includes things like hybrid cars, wind turbines, green buildings, and solar panels) is impacting communities across the U.S. In this activity, students explore the meaning of "green," learn about the green economy, and then team up to investigate how the Green Wave is (or isn't) impacting their city. DOWNLOAD ACTIVITY: The Green Wave and My Community Green Jobs for All People left out of the fossil fuel economy stand tall in the green economy. By Ian Kim. YES! Magazine #45 :: Climate Solutions Green-Collar Jobs for Urban America A green-collar job involves environment-friendly products or services. Construction work on a green building, organic farming, solar panel manufacturing, bicycle repair: all are green jobs. The green-collar economy is big money, and it's booming. Including renewable energy and clean technology, green is the fifth largest market sector in the United States. By Van Jones and Ben Wyskida. YES! Magazine #40 :: Go Local! Local Energy, Local Power Native peoples have an eye to the horizon, where wind turbines, solar panels, and a movement for local control of energy are rising. By Winona LaDuke. YES! Magazine #40 :: Go Local! Exploring Eco-Privilege Thanks to the growing green economy, many people now have access to products and services for sustainable lifestyles. But many more do not. And often, those who enjoy such access do not realize that it is a privilege—a privilege denied to many others across the country. In this activity, students use a self-assessment tool to examine if, and in what areas, they benefit from eco-privilege. DOWNLOAD ACTIVITY: Exploring Eco-Privilege Danny Glover—An Interview It's important for people of color to link up with issues around globalization, food security, health, the environment. It's also important for those who promote those issues within the white community—the somewhat privileged community—to talk about issues affecting people of color. By Sarah van Gelder. YES! Magazine #17 :: Working for Life Just, Green & Beautiful Cities The movement toward just, livable cities—the regional equity movement—is working to recapture some of this lost vibrancy, envisioning a new pattern of development that incorporates all the ecological ideas to grow a more equitable society. By Carl Anthony. YES! Magazine #34 :: What Makes a Great Place? White on Black, Black on White Hear two participants in a gathering about social change describe their feelings about talking about race, privilege, and how we can move forward together. By Carol Estes and Robert Jeffrey. YES! Magazine #15 :: Is it Time to Close the Prisons? Green Jobs, Not Jails! "Green Jobs, Not Jails" is the strategic concept underlying Green-Collar Jobs Campaign. It stands for the principle that zero pollution, living wage jobs—not more police and prisons—provide the most logical, humane and cost-effective pathway to safe, healthy and peaceful cities. Two powerful concepts are at the heart of this approach: restorative justice and restorative economics. In this activity, students examine their personal experiences with the dominant justice and economic systems in their communities. After exploring the concepts of restorative economics and restorative justice in depth, they investigate the strategic concept of Green Jobs, Not Jails. DOWNLOAD ACTIVITY: Green Jobs, Not Jails! American Gulag Why does the "home of the free" lock up 2 million men, women, boys, and girls—most of them people of color? By Jerome G. Mille. YES! Magazine #15 :: Is it Time to Close the Prisons? Navajo Justice The Navajo Nation quit jailing people for dozens of offenses that used to land people behind bars. Now tribal courts are turning to peacemakers. By The Honorable Robert Yazzie Chief Justice of the Navajo Nation. YES! Magazine #15 :: Is it Time to Close the Prisons? Guantanamo on the Mississippi Katrina makes New Orleans justice even harsher. Jordan Flaherty talks with those who experience the correction system on both sides of the fence. By Jordan Flaherty. YES! Online :: Post Katrina Model Cities and You Photo by Andy Wright. www.flickr.com/photos/agentd Creating cities that work for people and with nature is a challenge being taken on by communities all over the world. Cities from Curitiba, Brazil to Oakland, California are trying to become "Model Green Cities"—cities designed for both environmental and social health. In this activity, students divide into small groups. Each is assigned a "green city" that is taking a lead in environmental and social sustainability. After researching the characteristics and accomplishments of this city, each group makes a class presentation. DOWNLOAD ACTIVITY: Model Cities and You Curitiba: Story of a City To learn from Curitiba, the rest of the world would have to break some long-standing habits. And the hardest habit to break, in fact, may be what Lerner calls the "syndrome of tragedy, of feeling like we're terminal patients." By Bill McKibben. YES! Magazine #10 :: Cities of Exuberance Diverse, Green, Beautiful Cities: an interview with Carl Anthony A multi-cultural coalition can lead the way to greener and more vibrant cities that work for all residents, says Carl Anthony in this interview with YES! executive editor, Sarah van Gelder By Sarah van Gelder. YES! Magazine #10 :: Cities of Exuberance Resurrect New Orleans: A Better City Is Possible They want to set a bold agenda for reconstruction, ensuring that the new New Orleans is resurrected, not as a corporate theme park but as a thriving eco-city—designed in accordance with the best ecological thinking and built largely by local labor. By Van Jones. YES! Online :: Post Katrina The New City Beautiful It can happen in your town: Streetscapes blooming with wildflowers, industrial waterfronts transformed into parks, and creeks once again dancing with salmon. A green urban renaissance is growing. By Francesca Lyman. YES! Magazine #34 :: What Makes a Great Place? It Took a Village In Miami, homeless citizens didn’t wait for the city. They created their own home and found dignity and safety. By Heather Mueller. YES! Magazine #44 :: Liberate Your Space Mayors Stand Up In the vacuum left by federal inaction on climate change, social movements have launched in unexpected places—including city hall. By Madeline Ostrander. YES! Magazine #45 :: Climate Solutions Finding the Solutions Though we are often assaulted by negative images and stories that make it appear otherwise, people in urban environments all over the world are taking a stand for both healthy ecosystems and healthy communities. A new politics is being born—a Politics of Solution that emphasizes multi-issue, solution-oriented change in urban communities. In this activity, students learn about accomplishments in the areas of sustainability and social justice happening both locally and globally. DOWNLOAD ACTIVITY: Finding the Solutions Two Crises, One Solution Van Jones believes there is a better future for young people than prisons and there is a better future for the Earth than ecological collapse. The solutions for the two may be the same. By Van Jones. YES! Magazine #34 :: What Makes a Great Place? Mother Nature's School of Design I believe that as Native people, we are the land and the land is us. Those of us in the environmental justice movement have started to educate the larger environmental movement that our work protecting the environment is spiritual work. By Tom Goldtooth. YES! Magazine #19 :: Technology: Who Chooses? In the Native Way In Miami, homeless citizens didn’t wait for the city. They created their own home and found dignity and safety. By Heather Mueller. YES! Magazine #20 :: Can Love Save the World? Seeds of Justice, Seeds of Hope In the midst of the toxic atmosphere of Watts, seeds are sprouting, organic gardens are thriving, young people are discovering a vocation, and healthy, whole foods are becoming part of everyday life. By Anna Marie Carter. YES! Magazine #25 :: Our Planet, Our Selves The Hour Before the Dawn Hope, says Professor David W. Orr, is not the same as wishful thinking. Hope recognizes hard realities, like the difficulty of inventing a new energy future, but chooses to act anyway. Here are 10 reasons to be hopeful. By David W. Orr. YES! Magazine #31 :: Can We Live Without Oil? Youth Feel the Power Youth are tired of living in a broken system built on the back of racism. And we are ready for this opportunity to change the systems to actually serve the people—all people. By Shadia Fayne Wood. YES! Magazine #45 :: Climate Solutions The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a strategy and action center working for justice, opportunity, and peace in urban America. Based in Oakland, California, the Center promotes positive alternatives to violence and incarceration through four cutting-edge campaigns. The center's Green-Collar Jobs Campaign creates opportunities in the green economy for low-income people and people of color. Part social enterprise, part think-tank, and part grassroots advocate, Green-Collar Jobs Campaign's mission is to help build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Activity Design by Lea Endres, Green-Collar Job Campaign Education Director. Reprinted with kind permission from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The above resources accompany the March 2008 YES! Education Connection Newsletter READ NEWSLETTER: How to Teach Climate Change Solutions

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=2429

A 'Green New Deal' can save the world's economy,

A 'Green New Deal' can save the world's economy, says UN

"Top economists and United Nations leaders are working on a "Green New Deal" to create millions of jobs, revive the world economy, slash poverty and avert environmental disaster, as the financial markets plunge into their deepest crisis since the Great Depression.

The ambitious plan – the start of which will be formally launched in London next week - will call on world leaders, including the new US President, to promote a massive redirection of investment away from the speculation that has caused the bursting “financial and housing bubbles” and into job-creating programmes to restore the natural systems that underpin the world economy.

It aims to convince them that, far from restricting growth, healing the global environment will be a desperately -needed driving force behind it.

It envisages basing recovery on providing work for the poor, as well as reform of financial practices, after a crash brought on by unregulated excesses of the free market and the banking system.

Switching direction and concentrating on 'green growth', he says, will not only prevent such catastrophes, but rescue the world's finances. “The new, green economy would provide a new engine of growth, putting the world on the road to prosperity again. This is about growing the world economy in a more intelligent, sustainable way.

“The 20th century economy, now in such crisis, was driven by financial capital. The 21st century one is going to have to be based on developing the world's natural capital to provide the lasting jobs and wealth that are needed, particularly for the poorest people on the planet”

Achim Steiner, UNEP's Executive Director, says for example, that it makes more sense to invest in preserving forests, peatlands and soils, which naturally absorb carbon dioxide, than destroying them and then developing expensive technology to do the job".

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World

“Real potential, formidable challenges”

The report “Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World” produced in the framework of the UNEP/ILO/IOE/ITUC Green Jobs Initiative assembles evidence - quantitative and conceptual - on existing green jobs. The report Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World is the first comprehensive and authoritative report which provides an overview of the complexity and policy relevance of global environmental challenges —climate change— and employment. It gathers data on employment on different sectors —renewable energy, energy efficiency in buildings, sustainable transportation, and organic agriculture— and draws conclusions and recommendations for policy makers, business and industry, workers and trade unions in the context of the transition towards a low-carbon economy, which may yield a real potential, and yet is faced with formidable challenges The pace of green job creation is likely to accelerate in the years ahead. A global transition to a low-carbon and sustainable economy can create large numbers of green jobs across many sectors of the economy, and indeed can become an engine of development. Current green job creation is taking place in both the rich countries and in some of the major developing economies. The report emphasises the need for increased investment to create green jobs, facilitate the just transition from traditional to low-carbon economy, and further analyses the major shifts in employments and skills patterns The Report makes an important contribution to the wider economic, social and environmental research communities and NGOs and others, including local authorities interested in these issues. The report commissioned and funded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), was produced by the Worldwatch Institute, with technical assistance from the Cornell University Global Labour Institute. For more information contact us at civil.society@unep.org Download the summary - Policy messages and main findings for decision makers [English], [Français], [Español] Download the report Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World” Launch of the report 24 September 2008, New York