As I read through posts and comments this morning I collected critiques, quips, and rants clawing at last night's State of the Union address - anyone for a side order of solution with that bellow?
Let's start with something simple. What can we all agree upon? The country is in crisis. Ok, agreed. Anything else? Jobs, we need more jobs.
Agreed. Great, let's stop there. As soon as we start to discuss the specific role of the Obama Administration, our endless drones silence the crippling crank of rising unemployment. Conversations, debates, the push & pull, it's all crucial in the "noisy democracy" President Obama described last night, but there's a way to amplify civic engagement to pump new blood into the pale economy at the same time as the legislative wrestle.
Here at WeatherizeDC, we're coordinating community energy meetings and interfaith energy meetings to get people talking about their own energy bills, local small business growth and job creation. The voices from these meetings are starting to become louder than the hum of political wordplay. Meetings turn into action and community action turns into actual job creation locally.
Weatherizing Every Home in America Will Create 2-4 Million Jobs: A Community Solution for Economic Recovery
While inefficient homes contribute over 20 percent of the nation's carbon pollution and upgrades can quickly save residents up to 30 percent on energy bills, less than 5 percent of these 130 million homes have undergone an energy efficient retrofit, or weatherization.
Using guiding calculations provided by the Center for American Progress, we can project that weatherizing 130 million homes will create 2.6 - 4.6 million sustained full-time jobs.
Nationwide Weatherization the Right Way
1. Local. In order for weatherization to create sustained full-time jobs that provide family-sustaining wages, benefits, and career mobility, we must work locally to build partnerships between local home performance businesses, local organized labor, and a local non-profit or community engagement organization.
2. Community. Community Engagement is the missing link in the weatherization industry. A local grassroots or community engagement organization will work directly with residents through door-to-door canvasses, community energy meetings, and other regionally powerful energy events to educate and empower people through their home weatherization process. The community engagement organization can then help neighborhoods weatherize together, which will efficiently bundle work for the growing and hiring local home performance business.
3. Performance. Performance based weatherization will take a building science approach to each home by starting with a home energy audit and ending with efficiency improvements to create real energy savings and real career pathways.
4. Access. Full-scale weatherization will require the implementation of policies and mechanisms to incorporate residents of a full variety of incomes.
5. Now. Weatherizing every home in America, which will build a sustainable clean energy economy, requires that we start having conversations about energy and energy savings with our neighbors and businesses now.
WeatherizeDC is non-profit initiative guiding 200 homeowners through their weatherization pathway by March, which will generate 4-7 good local jobs, save homeowners up to 30% on their energy bills and offset 3,645 metric tons of carbon, which is equivalent to taking 600 cars off the road or saving 750 acres of forest.
Together, we will reenergize our nation's economy.