What is a green Collar Job?
President Obama has made green-collar jobs a major part of his approach to the economic crisis. On Dec. 6, he said, “We will create millions of jobs by making the single-largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.” But what exactly is a “Green Job”
From Wikipedia A green job, also called a green-collar job is, according to the United Nations Environment Program, “work in agricultural, manufacturing, research and development (R&D), administrative, and service activities that contribute(s) substantially to preserving or restoring environmental quality. Specifically, but not exclusively, this includes jobs that help to protect ecosystems and biodiversity; reduce energy, materials, and water consumption through highefficiency strategies; de-carbonize the economy; and minimize or altogether avoid generation of all forms of waste and pollution.”
Phil Angelides a venture capitalist and the 2006 Democratic candidate for governor of California (he lost to the political world’s best-known Austrian-American), Angelides is the chair of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of business, labor and environmental groups championing green employment. Here’s how he defines a green job: “It has to pay decent wages and benefits that can support a family. It has to be part of a real career path, with upward mobility. And it needs to reduce waste and pollution and benefit the environment.”
From americanprogress.org The following: Green jobs” represent new demand for labor that results from investments in transitioning our economy away from carbon-intensive energy, minimizing degradation of our natural resources, maximizing the efficient use of our natural capital, and protecting humans and the planet from pollution and waste.
Broadly, most green jobs are familiar jobs, repurposed and expanded through new investments in a low-carbon economy. Most green jobs will be in familiar occupations that people already work in today. Constructing wind farms creates demand for steel workers and long-haul freight shipping. Energy-efficiency retrofits for buildings require roofers and insulators. And expanding mass transit systems employs electrical engineers and dispatchers. Green jobs are not a new set of specific job classifications, but instead are like “blue-collar jobs” in that they represent a broad category of work to be done in a range of productive activities. Green jobs, in short, are the “person-hours” involved in realizing the clean-energy transformation.
Here is a list of typical jobs that are listed today as Green Jobs
Based on the research, there is no such thing as a true Green Job. It is basically doing the same thing you have done in the past, but now do it for an environmentally friendly company and bam ….green collar job. One could be an accountant for a a coal fired electric generation plant and would be seen as the enemy of the environment. However that person could change jobs an work for an Wind farm that produces “clean or green energy” and suddenly they would be working as a green collar worker.
