Want to Fight Cliamte Change? Hire Somebody

With official U. S. unemployment at 10.2% and with Congressional debate on a climate bill sputtering, last week the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on how climate legislation might help fix the economy and create jobs. At the same time, President Obama announced he would hold a White House forum next month to gather new ideas for achieving the robust job creation that has so far eluded stimulus efforts, and opponents and supporters of cap-and-trade legislation both echoed the jobs theme, saying that in the end, any US climate bill must be a jobs bill.
These are promising developments that may point the way to an effective climate policy. Because with them, the crucial enabling connection between creating jobs and fighting climate change has finally entered explicitly into our politics.
I say "finally" because throughout most of 2009, even as the economy hemorrhaged some 3.8 million jobs, while they were framing proposals for climate change legislation, most members of Congress and their staffs were curiously reluctant to broach the obvious jobs connection. They expressed lots of concern over the impact of regulating carbon on energy producers, coal states and carbon emitters, but very little about its impact on jobs and workers in general. (President Obama's 2010 budget proposal was a notable exception; it plowed carbon permit revenues back into a payroll tax credit to help working families, but unfortunately that provision didn't pass Congress).  Read MORE>>