Summary
"CEOs and senior-level people across a broad spectrum are entering the environmental field in droves," says Rona Fried, founder and president of SustainableBusiness.com, which includes a "Green Dream Jobs" online directory. "They're saying 'I'm the CEO of an IT company and I want to put my skills to work for the environment. How do I make that transition?' "
Those in-country manufacturing jobs are not to be taken lightly. They represent a huge possibility for a new "green-collar" economy to restore a rapidly disintegrating American middle class. The 10 Midwestern states, ideally suited for wind energy development, could see nearly 37,000 new jobs by 2020, according to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, if the nation's renewable energy portfolio were set to 22 percent. According to a UC Berkeley study in 2004 (and updated in 2006), "Putting Renewables to Work: How Many Jobs Can the Clean Energy Industry Generate?," the renewable industry consistently produced more jobs per megawatt of electricity generated in construction, manufacturing, installation, operations and management and fuel processing than the fossil fuel industries. With a 20 percent national renewable energy standard that included 55 percent wind energy, that would equal 188,018 new jobs by 2020.People on the forefront of this rising green economy see growth potential within once-suspect corporate entities, from Wal-Mart to Starbucks. "At one point, five to 10 years ago, it was unusual to have an employee involved in corporate social responsibility," says Ted Ning, conference director of Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability and executive editor of the organization's journal. "Now corporate social responsibility is a whole department for large corporations like Office Depot or Trader Joe's."See the full content of this document
Extract
Our Green Machine
The American middle class-of which some 80 percent of Americans claim to be a part-is getting anxious. While there is no carved-in-stone edict about what it means to be middle class, it's the term Americans hang their dreams on. It suggests earning enough to get by without struggling; being able to afford health care, college costs and the occasional trip to Disney World. The middle-class ideal is tied to earning powe...
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