Blue Green Alliance
Good Jobs, a Clean Environment, a Safer World
Ohioans face many challenges today and it is hard not to feel a little overwhelmed at all the problems throughout our state. Fossil fuel costs are at an all-time high, the economy has gone from hot to cold and climate change is having a huge impact on our planet.
At times of need, it is important to find new and sometimes unusual ways to come together to help solve these pressing issues, and the United Steelworkers and Sierra Club have done just that. They have formed a partnership known as The Blue Green Alliance. After realizing that many of the problems facing the steelworkers were problems also facing the Sierra Club; United Steel Workers International President Leo Gerard and Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope saw a unique opportunity to help each other for the greater good.
In 2006, these two leaders signed an official partnership, and the alliance was officially born. “Good jobs and a clean environment are important to American workers—we cannot have one without the other,” says Gerard. Gerard and Pope are part of two organizations that have been more closely connected than most people think. The steelworkers and the Sierra Club worked together on the clean air and water act of the 1970’s. And, they have been involved in many fights to stop unfair global trade. “The Blue Green Alliance is one of the most important initiatives undertaken by the environmental movement in decades,” says Pope.
The goals of the alliance are to: heighten public awareness about the job-creating potential of solutions to global warming; use existing economic development tools to expand investment in clean energy; accelerate green building, energy efficient retrofits and related spin-off industries; create more investments in green jobs, including those related to fuel-efficient vehicles, and reform trade agreements so they include binding labor rights and environmental standards.
Recently, these two organizations, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council, launched the national Green Jobs for America campaign. Running through this fall, the campaign will focus on a commitment to clean, renewable energy to make the U.S. more energy-independent, help end our dependence on fossil fuels and create hundreds of thousands of green jobs.
The Green Jobs for America campaign demonstrates that investing in clean, renewable energy is the best way to fight global warming, bring skyrocketing energy costs back under control, create new, good paying jobs and put us back on the path toward economic growth and prosperity. In addition to encouraging the right investments from the private sector, the campaign will also focus on the kinds of policies that are needed to fight global warming, expand clean energy production and reform unfair trade agreements.
For more information, contact George Calko at (330) 240-3245; uswgeorge@gmail.com or visit www.bluegreenalliance.org.
August/September 2008 Contents