Green is Gold: US Clean Energy Agenda

I'm writing from the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington, D.C. The conference centre is packed with labour representatives, people working in green jobs, politicians, business leaders, environmental activists, municipal and state civil servants and more. And they're all here to share stories and strategies for creating new, good jobs retooling to a clean energy economy.

Some highlights from today include:

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kicked off the conference this morning, highlighting the importance the Obama administration is placing on clean energy and climate. "Green is gold," she said, and that she thinks clean energy and climate legislation can soon land on the President's desk. This is encouraging coming from the same woman who wrestled health care through the House.
• The Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, talked about building America's Solar City.
• A presentation showing the possibility for the U.S. to dramatically reduce the amount of oil used in transportation, and that twice as many jobs were created per dollar spent on public transit compared to highway construction through the stimulus spending. The majority of tar sands oil feed the U.S. thirst for oil for transportation.

I presented on a panel on U.S. and Canadian climate and energy policy this afternoon and highlighted our new report on Canada's 66,000 lost clean energy jobs. The audience, mainly Americans, followed up with several questions about the tar sands. A few years ago, most Americans knew little or nothing about the tar sands. That's changing now as concerns mount over the environmental impacts of tar sands pipelines and refineries coursing through the U.S.

The devastating oil spill unfolding now in the Gulf has been a big topic of discussion at the conference. It adds a renewed urgency to the transition from polluting fossil fuels to clean energy as the risks and consequences of increasingly dangerous and dirty sources of oil - tar sands, oil shale, offshore - are being felt.

Gillian McEachern
Program Manager, Climate and Energy
Environmental Defence