Green Jobs Are Red, White, and Blue

The door-to-door outreach program of Working America here in Canton, OH, has found a sweet spot. In this economically devastated corner of northeastern Ohio, people understand and believe -- with Barack Obama -- that green jobs are the key to their and America's economic revitalization. The job loss caused by recent U.S. trade policies is part of the reason people are embracing the idea that clean energy could be the driver of economic recovery. Voters here understand that if you are going to harvest the wind energy of Lake Erie, you have to harvest it in Ohio, not Mexico; and that if I retrofit my house with new windows in San Francisco, I can't ship my house to China to have it done. So it's exciting and heartening, after hearing Obama make energy reform his first priority, to hear that there is an eager constituency in America's heartland that's excited about that fact.

Ingrid Jackson, the young women who asked the two candidates at the debate about global warming, sees this need very clearly. While she says Obama's answer got her off the fence to vote for him, she didn't feel that either candidate really got the urgency or the opportunity of the issue.

"I don't think either one dealt with the urgency issue," she said. "I think it's very feasible for them to do things within the first two years, especially since the green jobs would help the economy..."

Amen. The sooner we invest in clean energy solutions, the sooner we put Americans back to work, and the sooner our economy turns around.

Paid for by Sierra Club Political Committee, www.sierraclub.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.