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Stewart Acuff

Stewart Acuff

Posted: January 25, 2010 05:18 PM

What's Good for the Environment is Good for the Economy.

What's Your Reaction:

Our economy is mired in the worst crisis we've had since the Great Depression. The one seemingly insurmountable barrier to reviving the economy is the lack of consumer demand caused by 30 years of stagnant and declining wages and now rising unemployment.

At the same time there is growing awareness that our continued reliance on fossil fuel energy generation is bad for our climate, bad for our economy, is ultimately unsustainable, and is harmful to our nation's security and future. More and more Americans realize that unless we maximize the use of sustainable, domestic sources of energy, our future is threatened.

So we have arrived at the intersection of what is good for the economy is what is good for the environment. We realize now that there is not an inherent conflict between good jobs and a healthy climate and environment. In fact good jobs and a healthy environment complement one another.

It is very hard for the average worker to care about the environment if s/he is worried about how to provide dinner for the family or pay the rent on Friday.

Moving to sustainable energy generation means, among other things, wind farms in the natural wind tunnel through the heart of America, solar farms in the Southwest, installing solar panels, weatherization, retrofitting buildings, domestic manufacturing, carbon capture and sequestration for coal, and more.

Altogether we believe this work could create as many as 2 million good paying, middle class producing jobs.

It is critical that we are very intentional about how we create these jobs to ensure that they maximize the benefit to the economy and maximize the political constituencies they attract by pumping good wages into the pockets of working families to create more consumer demand and provide benefits essential to healthy families. These jobs must pay prevailing wages. Good jobs, a healthy environment, sustainable work, sustainable economy, sustainable environment. Now is the time.

 
 
 
 
 
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
joshuak2077
06:48 AM on 01/27/2010
All said could be right if markets a sense related but for now they are profit related, and also production ralated thus the environmental enhancements are considered overhead expenses and in this kind of production economics set businesses as less competitive where we well compete countries like China, Japan and India, therefore our businesses are to be competitive or just die.
Finally, we are coming to the real point of change of the production related economics to a proactive environmentally friendly economics: which point should remain the main if a solution is reasoned, the question will still hang out: what kind of alternative economics will be the most feasible: one ruled by the governments to a total socialization or another still relying on free entrepreneurship more businesslike economics but still not production related: this second one would be closer to current Capitalism and that first would be closer to the Soviet Communism.
This choice may establish a relatively free World or create a bureaucratic monster.
Joshua Konov
HUFFPOST PUNDIT
realpolitic
GOP is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!
09:06 PM on 01/25/2010
"The one seemingly insurmountable barrier to reviving the economy is the lack of consumer demand caused by 30 years of stagnant and declining wages and now rising unemployment." Yes, the Republican war against unions, against raising the minimum wage, and for deregulation has helped to make it so workers have little leverage at all in wage negotiations. Even as corporations in many industries make record profits the wages of workers stagnant and if workers make a fuss the corporations can always relocate to some third world spot with cheaper labor. Republicans always think corporate profits are what is best for the economy without realizing that without money in their pockets people can not spend and demand suffers. One day perhaps the demand will be made up for by rich consumers in China and India and corporations will still be flush with profits. Then conservatives will argue for even lower wages for American workers. The middle class will be a distant memory.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Overtone
See bio on the Aesop Institute website
08:56 PM on 01/25/2010
TWO PATHS TOWARD MILLIONS OF JOBS!

President Obama recognizes the need for employment tax credits. Congress eliminated them from pending programs. He should urge them back on the agenda.

A Human Investment Tax Credit program was designed to generate 3 to 6 million jobs and encourage 1 to 4 million men and women to become self-employed.

The 1977 job tax credit program generated 20% of all new jobs the following year.

An updated program is available at: http://www.aesopinstitute.org

Read there also about future cars that pay for themselves - becoming power plants when parked.

These can create millions of well-paid jobs.

The technology will understandably be greeted with disbelief.

However, Rowan University has performed experiments that provided more heat than can be explained by existing science, suggesting a new source of energy, fractional Hydrogen, is involved.

GEN3 Partners, advisers to Fortune 100 firms, reproduced the experiments.

Both opened a door toward proving that new technology can allow a barrel of ordinary water to replace 200 barrels of oil!

Further experiments are likely to lead to acceptance by scientists and fractional Hydrogen will change much of the conventional wisdom concerning energy.

Our firm's is developing fractional Hydrogen as a fuel for hybrid engines.

This will allow the auto industry to create a great many jobs and accelerate economic recovery.

Once the technologies are well proven, development could incorporate a 24/7 program.

Imagine the implications for generating millions of jobs in the utility and automotive industries!
07:34 PM on 01/25/2010
Flaws with this blog: 1. We have no domestic shortage of the most hated fossil fuel, coal. 2. If we sign any treaty or legislation that puts an energy tax on our country, it will push even more of our manufacturing jobs overseas. Those solar panels will be even more likely to be made in China or India, because they won't burden their industry with a carbon tax or cap and trade.