On Wednesday, December 19, President Bush signed the Green Jobs Act of 2007, authorizing $125 million for green job training programs across the country!
The Green Jobs Act is part of the Energy Bill, a bundle of policies that is otherwise a mixed blessing. Conservatives stripped out some of the best parts of the package -- like big boosts for solar and wind energy and an end to tax giveaways for oil companies.
Amidst these shortcomings, however, we have our share of great news. For the first time in history, we have a U.S. law that addresses both the climate crisis and the poverty crisis by investing in green-collar job training. The Green Jobs Act authorizes $125 million annually for greening the nation's workforce, enough for training up to 35,000 people every year. Even more unprecedented, it allocates $25 million for "green pathways out of poverty" programs -- like the Oakland Green Jobs Corps we've been championing here at home in the Bay Area.
This is just the beginning: the Green Jobs Act is a down payment on a larger vision. We must take on -- and win -- much bigger challenges to build a green economy that's powerful enough to lift people out of poverty. This is why we've launched Green For All, a new national initiative led by Van Jones to secure at least one billion dollars to create green pathways out of poverty for 250,000 people in the United States.
And it's why, beginning in 2008, the Ella Baker Center's Green-Collar Jobs Campaign is taking on California. The nation's most populous state is also the state with the biggest potential for creating groundbreaking environmental policy. We are excited to partner with the California Apollo Alliance and the California Labor Federation to set the "green jobs standard" for other states to follow.
The Green Jobs Act is a huge victory for low-income people around the country, and we are proud that the Ella Baker Center played a central role in making it happen.
We'd like to celebrate our incredible partners in this effort: The Apollo Alliance, The Workforce Alliance, and The Center for American Progress.
We send thanks to our allies within Congress: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Representatives George Miller and John Tierney, and Senators Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
And we give special appreciation to Congresswoman Hilda Solis for her amazing, tireless advocacy of the bill's "pathways out of poverty" provision.
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