Pittsburgh Jobs Conference to Focus on Greening of US Industry, Spurring Transition to 'Green-collar' Workforce

The emergence of ecological economic trends, methods and industries, means that a wave of job creation could be the stabilizing factor which helps American industry recover both momentum and public appeal, potentially helping to ease pricing pressures and banks' concerns about lending to individuals and small and medium-sized businesses.

An industry-environmentalist joint conference in Pittsburgh starting today will focus on the modes and the meaning of green job creation. According to the Houston Chronicle, "The growth of renewable energy should produce some 850,000 new jobs at existing U.S. companies alone, said David Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance, a group formed by the United Steelworkers union and the Sierra Club."

The conference has as its aim the education of public officials, industry executives and other decision-makers, in light of new directions in energy, in public funding, in the long-term virtues of green industry, for both private interest and public good. And ultimately, the goal is to promote and to measure the progress made toward recasting the American industrial economy to survive in a globalized economy where environmental sustainability —still seen as costly and frivolous by many in leadership positions— is a basic requirement.

• Houston Chronicle: "Conference to Focus on 'Green Jobs'"

Green Investment Boom Gets Traction: Fund Promises $10 Billion for Clean Energy

HotSpring.fm :: The private investment fund Ceres, a group of institutional investors, has promised to devote $10 billion to investment in clean energy sources. The news comes as 3 of the world’s major oil companies call for coordinated policy on how to face climate change, constrain emissions, and a couple of months after 150 global corporations asked for a major boost in subsidized research into transitioning to clean energy technologies.

The Financial Times reports “A group of nearly 50 institutional investors has pledged to invest at least $10bn (£5.1bn) in environmental technologies and to incorporate ‘green’ standards in investment decisions”. The fund’s president, Mindy Lubber, said during the press conference at UN Headquarters in New York, “This action plan reflects the many investment opportunities that exist today to put a dent in global warming pollution, build profits and benefit the global economy”.

The cost of the climate change burden is increasingly on the minds of corporate leaders, financiers and investors, and the glittering potential of economic windfall in pioneering the green economy is catching the eyes of investors and political leaders. Bio-ethanol, a crop-based fuel source, considered cleaner than fossil fuels, and having the benefit of being a renewable fuel source, has shown tremendous potential for financial growth.

In July 2006, Sentido.tv [a project of Hot Spring and Quipu's publisher], reported that:

The global wind-generation resource has been estimated at 72 terawatts, 40 times the entire global demand for 2000. Eliminating peat bogs and other highly vulnerable ecosystems from that resource potential will cut into the global capacity, but at 40 times demand, or 20 times or even at 10 times, there is clearly room to work with.

Finding the right combination of resources, in terms of cost-effective construction and maintenance, infrastructure development and ugrading, and stabilizing the role of consumers in both production and usage (solar and wind energy permit fitted individual homes to become production mechanisms expanding grid potential), will allow for the creation of a far more efficient and by extension, economically viable and sustainable energy market. This could be extended to a global scale, if investment accurately discerns and follows opportunity. [Complete Text]

Final Bush Budget Shows Economic Weakness, Policies at Odds with Marketplace, Moment

Among the numerous scathing criticisms leveled against the record $3.1 trillion federal budget proposal —which will be the last of the George W. Bush White House— are fiscal irresponsibility, near record deficits, and plans to cut or eliminate fully 151 federal programs, in an effort to save just $18 billion, while base Defense Dept. spending increases by 8%.

Economists worry that spending priorities laid out in the budget will only exacerbate current economic slowdown. Democrats in Congress have vowed the budget "will not be the model" for the legislation they will put forth to govern spending for 2009. But the White House insists the budget is fiscally responsible and will in fact reduce spending.

Some $160 billion could be tied to a planned "economic stimulus package", currently being debated in the Senate, already approved by the House, and Iraq war costs severely inflate the overall amount of spending. It is believed that 2008 spending will also exceed $3 trillion, when all war costs are tallied. Total Defense spending for this year was a record $670 billion, including war costs.

One surprising budget cut would be funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which could be a major necessary component in responding to any sort of biological weapons attack, a danger often cited by the administration in its warnings about terrorist attacks on American soil.

The Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which put huge numbers of additional police on urban streets, and helped integrate police work into the fabric of communities, thus further reducing crime figures, would be cut 100%. Homeland security apparatus would see significant budget increases, however, of some $4 billion, while the Homeland Security Department would see its budget cut by $2.5 billion.

Democrats have already seized on such contradictions as evidence that the budget does not take real security for the American citizen seriously and misdirects vital government spending to what opponents see as ill-advised cash-drains, like the surplus-eliminating tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, and the war in Iraq.

The Congressional Budget Office in January published its own projections showing concern that budget deficits would jump by $250 billion in 2008, in part a sign of the poor state of economic performance at the individual and corporate level. Economic stimulus would sharpen those deficits, though long-term tax-revenue gains may offset some of the cost.

The state of the American economy at present is in part why the president is not able to fund his own priorities (border-security, Iraq war, the $635 billion 5-year price of making his tax cuts permanent) without slashing much-needed government spending in other areas, leaving even then a likely record deficit.

The result is that Congress will not start with the White House budget proposal as a baseline, but will likely initiate an entirely parallel process of negotiation and planning, as even top Republicans in Congress have complained about the massive deficits and potentially unpopular spending priorities.

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AP: "Congress Looks Askance at Bush's Budget"
OMB: "Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2009"
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "New president will be faced with long-term economic woes"
The Cheers: "Bush's budget for 2009 could spell disaster for AIDS research in the US"
Reuters: "Rising budget deficit may add to Republican woes"
CNN: "CBO expects deepening budget woes"