Now For A Green Bailout: Twice The Bang, Half The Bucks

Maybe the Wall Street bailout package is a good idea.

But the only thing I know for sure is this: even if we avert a total economic meltdown, we will still be in a recession. Millions of Americans still will be without jobs -- or in real fear of losing their job. Worse, we will still be dependent on dirty fuels like oil and coal, which are draining our monetary resources and cooking the planet.

The Earth and everyday people will still be suffering.

I wrote a new book to propose elegant solutions for our economic and environmental crises. The Green Collar Economy offers a green cure for the dilemmas we face and the financial messes we are in.

At this point, I am willing to concede that Wall Street and the big bankers need some propping up. But while we are at it, we should find a way to bail out the little people -- and the planet, too.

So how about a green bailout -- to help both? We already took an important step in that direction today. Perhaps the only thing in the whole bailout package that is inarguably good is the support for the U.S. clean energy sector.

After unconscionable delays, Congress finally gave a boost to our wind power industries and our solar power industries by extending the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and the Production Tax Credit. The price tag was about $9 billion, but the cost was entirely offset, mostly by changes that were made to oil and gas tax rules.

What does America get for that no-net-cost shuffling of the tax code? Plenty. The 8-year extension of ITC alone will create 440,000 jobs. And $230 billion of private investment would be created in the solar and other industries, according to a recent report by Navigant Consulting.

Green Bailout: Half The Money, Twice The Impact

That's a good start. Let's keep going. An all-out "green bailout" could give America TWICE the bang ... for half the bucks.

We just found $700 billion. Let's find another $350 billion. That's half the price tag of the Wall Street rescue - which has no guarantee of success. But with $350 billion investment, we absolutely and positively could retrofit and repower America using clean, green energy - and create millions of new jobs, in the process.

A new report just released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors says that we can create over 4 million green jobs if we aggressively shift away from traditional fossil fuels toward alternative energy and a significant improvement in energy efficiency.

Another report just released by the Political Economy Research Institute and the Center for American Progress shows that the U.S. can create two million jobs over two years by investing $100 billion in a green economic recovery plan. The report also shows that this investment would create four times more jobs than spending the same amount of money within the oil industry.

Green For All and its partners are proposing a Clean Energy Corps that includes a revolving loan fund to finance the ambitious retrofitting of the nation's building stock. An investment of less than $3 billion per year would provide financing and can be expected to create close to 120,000 green jobs a year and 600,000 over five years, while also lowering home heating and electricity bills for homeowners and small businesses.

Clean Energy Corps: Retrofitting & Repowering America

The United States should have a Clean Energy Corps, combining community service with green-collar job training. Such a program could get hundreds of thousands of people ready to go to work, greening the nation's infrastructure.

The New Apollo Program is a comprehensive economic investment strategy developed by the Apollo Alliance to build America 's 21st century clean energy economy and dramatically cut energy bills for families and businesses. It estimates that the investment of $500 billion over the next 3 years and create more than 5 million high quality green-collar jobs.

It will accelerate the development of the nation's vast clean energy resources and move us toward energy security, climate stability, and economic prosperity. And it will transform America into the global leader of the new green economy.

A massive green economic stimulus package like this could even pay for ITSELF in energy savings and in tax dollars generated by new jobs and businesses.

As Thomas Friedman says, "We don't just need a bailout. We need a buildup." In my new book, The Green-Collar Economy, I spell out other green remedies for our economy.

Friedman: Not Just a Bailout, A Buildup

The bottom line is: we can't base a national economy on credit cards. But we can base it on solar panels, wind turbines, smart bio-fuels and massive, a program to weatherize every building and home in America.

Rather than giving platinum parachutes to those who wrecked the economy, let's throw a green lifeline to the ordinary people who want to rebuild it. We can't drill and burn our way out of our present mess. But we can invent and invest our way out.

Our present economy is based on consumption, debt and environmental destruction. The next U.S. economy should be based on production, smart savings and environmental restoration. You can't have a stable economy based on unregulated greed at the top. But you can have one based on unleashing green, at the bottom.

Millions of green jobs would be a Main Street solution to the Wall Street meltdown.

America's number one resource is not oil or mortgages. Our number one resource is our people.

And it is time to put our people back to work - retrofitting and re-powering America.

That's what my book is all about.

Comments

[SeveredinTwain]

Thanks for telling me about your new book Van, I'll be reading it just as soon as it comes to the Public Library, because that is the only way I can afford to read it in this crap economy that Republicans have bestowed upon us...

[janereally]

Where is conservation in all this Van? No one wants to say that simply replacing fossil fuel energy with renewable sources is not enough. We have no water, no resources, to continue to manufacture the billions of tons of junk we think is our birthright today - who cares if the plants are powered by wind and solar. How much more plastic can we produce? What do we use other than petroleum? What do we use instead, wood?

Someone needs to step up as the Van Jones of conservation. We need to use less, buy less, but then, that would mean fewer jobs so no one wants to talk about it. Van Jones' is not new thinking, it's old thinking with just a different power source. Still Industrial Age thinking. Communities and people need to change how they live, or they will be forced to, renewable power or not.

[joebhed]

That and $700BILLION will get you a subway ticket.

We can't borrow our way to economic democracy.

Nor a greener future.

The tools are available.

Public credit.

Read C.H. Douglas.

If you can read this, then you can understand the difference between the system we have and the system we need.

We don't need to pay for everything we do three times over, with two of those going to the private banker.

Wake up, folks.

The answers have been available since the monied interests' first attempt to bankrupt our confederation of Colonies, an act that led to the Revolution.

And to Jefferson offering the following unheeded warning:
""I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks, and restored to the people to whom it belongs.""

Public credit.
No debts.
What's wrong with that?

[mamacat]

Mr. Jones, you are making a pretty good point.

Why is it that we can always find a trillion dollars for invading the wrong country, or a trillion dollars for bailing out the greediest corporate thieves in the nation, but we can't find the resources to do what needs to be done for our people?

I am pretty sick and tired of hearing the old lie about Democrats being fiscally irresponsible. They are now the mainstream party, pushing for universal healthcare, a green economy, a common sense foreign policy, a balanced budget, and keeping government out of people's personal lives.

The GOP has been and continues to be the party of greed, incompetence, dirty politics, homophobia, rights for rapists, and outright lies.

[Robert59]

I don't concede Wall Street needed a little help. Companies absorbing other companies means there's money out there. Do you know what the real cost of the 700 billion bailout plan is? The green solution you call for.

No bucks means no Buck Rogers. This year we taxpayer have been saddled with about 1.5 trilliion in new debt (Wall Street bailout 700 billion, budget deficit 500 billion, Fannie and Freddie 80 billion, AIG 85 billion, Bear Sterns 35 billion). In addition we are facing an economic slowdown, inflation due to higher fuel costs, and a war that is getting more, not less expensive.

Where is Obama going to find the bucks to make the transformation possible? He won't because he just signed out future away. The bailout plan might have been good politics, but lousy public policy.
Bush wins again.

He sucks as a president, but he's batting 1000 when it comes to dismantling our safety net and eroding the middle class. When paying the interest on the national debt eats up every spare cent how do we take on more debt? The oil companies won't have it because they will suddenly cry, 'what windfall? we're huritng, look at oil prices."

[mtnman]

As glad as I am to see solar and alternative credits extended, I am saddened by the fact that the credits were tied to a Wall Street bailout. This comes from a builder who has used solar technology as well as water conservation techniques in northern New Mexico for over 20 years.

[mamacat]

Were the Dems able to get the tax giveaways for Big Oil removed from the bill, or are they still in place?

[unenergy]

One of the major benefits in pursuing investment in renewable generation is also that electricity is not a commodity import. So it has to be produced close to where it is consumed. No more money goes off shore.
The Solar incidence studies, wind mapping studies and geothermal resource study recently talked about by Google, show that right across America there is potential for tapping into a renewable source of energy of one kind or another.
Where wind power may not suit solar power may. When solar is not the best, there is geothermal, Where there may not be geothermal there is wave power. Where wave power may not suit, biomass. So on it goes.
The jobs will be in the small businesses which will need to start up to help install the solar panels, on and off shore wind turbines, the manufacturing facilities to produce the panels, the blades, the turbines, hardware, the engineering houses which will need to be manned up to design the facilities, the construction jobs to build them, the maintenance and operations jobs to run them, the drilling jobs for geothermal wells. And it goes on and on.
The Green Collar ecomony idea is smart, it is clean, it will save you money if not make money for the US, it will revitalize small towns and best of all, instead of being dependent on other countries to provide the bulk of day to day energy needs, it means being dependent on 'home grown' energy.

[thefalcon7]

Thanks Mr. Jones for your valuable new book. My husband and I will buy it and will recommend it to our family and friends.

We saw you on the "Live From Main Street" panel at "Big Tent" in Denver during the Democratic Convention and were awed by your genius as well as your commitment and fortitude to fight for the less fortunate and the environment.

In our family, you are one of our strongest inspirations, who helps to lead us by your *deeds* not just your words.

Thank you for keeping up the good fight for environmental justice and political justice for all.

[LLO]

Republicans are now Democrats and Democrats are now Communists.

[mtnman]

Hmmmm... then why are the Republicans so proud of being the RED states? Why is it that Republicans always seem to foster war and use lies to back up their positions? I grew up knowing the Reds to be communists who used lies to begin wars... sounds like modern day Republicans to me. I'm a true BLUE American and am sick and tired of greedy Republicans using false rhetoric to fool the less educated in order to have their way running and ruining OUR nation.