"One normal mans quest to make a difference."
Well, it may have been virtually an unpredicted consequence to our current energy crunch, but America has always been a nation that surprised our adversaries with our nimble reactions to market pressures. As many of you know I have called this current economic situation "The Perfect Storm." The basis for this is that we have unprecedented pressures on our U.S. economy from several fronts. The vast hordes of baby boomers are now retiring and depleting the ability for social security, Medicaid and Medicare to go on without major overhauls (long overdue), plus you have the fiscal follies of overspending as a nation and as consumers linked to inadequate tax policies and homes being used as credit cards (thus the sub-prime meltdown) and the icing on the cake is the self-inflicted energy greed of Petrolism.
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Why Green Collar matters as part of our bailout structure is an important concept that we need to understand in order to prepare for the next phase of global competition. As Thomas Friedman says, the Energy Technology revolution is our generations space race and we have to win it. There are some core fundamentals that going green as a nation create for us that at their essential level make this not only plausible but our best strategery, as President George Bush, might say, that is if he understood the economy...
1.) Investing in our basic infrastructure (roads, bridges, utilities, water, sewer, telecom) and now a new hybrid alternative energy distribution system would put working class blue collar people back to work.
2.) Green innovation technologies will make us less dependent on foreign energy resources, funding, and less prone to violent regime petrolism antics and thus more stable as a nation in our global affairs. It also will reduce our trade deficit imbalance thus reducing our national debt. Another windfall benefit.
3.) Green collar jobs will create a new paradigm shift in the manufacturing industry that can rejuvenate our national manufacturing economy if given the funding to retool and the business climate to operate cost-effectively. Again, putting Americans back to work making things and selling things at home and abroad.
4.) REDUCING our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels reduces the funding that terrorism receives and thus fights the war on terror at the root, it's financial system.
It is for these four simple reasons that economic developers and every American should hold this next regime responsible for making these changes in our national best interest. This would be the greatest nation rebuilding effort on the planet and would change humanity and the planet for the better as a windfall to these economic development benefits.
Posted by: Don Holbrook | December 01, 2008 at 10:19 PM