Too many loopholes for those that have always done for themselves. Becoming more scarce as the government moves in more and more everyday.

Well, the projection of five million green-collar jobs is accurate and inspiring. It is inspiring to think of a federal investment strategy that can catalyze the American economy by creating new demand for clean energy and energy efficiency systems. It is inspiring to think about the investments in job training to help scale up America’s workforce to prepare to make, install, and maintain these products. It is truly awe-inspiring to think of the millions of Americans that can be put to work all over this country, in a huge range of occupations, moving America toward a clean energy future.

But it is not just inspiring – it is accurate. In the New Apollo Program, we argue for a $50 billion investment program over ten years. It is an investment in all sectors of the American economy: from green construction to energy efficiency retrofits; from our transportation system to our power grid; from our existing factories to cutting-edge research, development and deployment opportunities. Based on a comprehensive study on a very similar set of proposals that was done for Apollo in 2004 by economist and Nobel laureate M. Ray Perryman, this level of federal investment will create or retain at least five million jobs in America. Most of these are on-site construction, manufacturing, and transportation jobs – jobs in industries that tend to pay a family-supporting wage and benefits, and that have anchored America’s middle class for generations.

Dr. Perryman’s data show also that the economic benefits of the Apollo investment strategy don’t stop at on-site jobs. These investments will create millions more jobs in associated industries, like the trucking companies moving the wind turbines, the lawyers and accountants helping broker deals between new clean energy businesses, or even the small restaurants and stores catering to the linemen and women upgrading the transmission grid in countless towns across the country.

Other studies, such as the “Green Recovery” paper recently released by the Center for American Progress, also include the positive economic impact created by, for instance, lower energy bills as a result of more clean energy options. Lower bills equal more money in consumers’ pockets, equal more spending in the local economy, equal more jobs. (See CAP’s response to the Wall Street Journal article here: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/11/su…

These “indirect” jobs are included in President-elect Obama’s green jobs calculations, explaining why he comes to the five million job number with a lower initial investment. The different numbers are by no means “squishy.” They are the result of different initial assumptions, leading to different results.

What is not in doubt is that clean energy policies and investments create jobs. Just look at Newton, Iowa, where laid-off Whirlpool employees are now making wind turbine blades for General Electric. Or Sacramento, California, where a disused nuclear plant is now home to a solar array capable of generating as much power as the plant ever did.

At Apollo, we are awestruck every day by stories like these, and by the sheer potential scale of the new green economy – an economy that can and should create millions of high-quality, decent jobs for hardworking Americans who want to make a decent wage while also fighting back global warming.

Darn right we’re inspired. Aren’t you?

Kate Gordon

co-director

Apollo Alliance

Productive use of natural resources for the productive survival of mankind is not KILLING ANY ANIMAL OR HUMAN and shows NO EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING. For whatever destructive use of natural resources (those who choose war and the weapons to conduct on the innocent, etc) or defying nature (cloning, etc), has, is and will continue to destroy the earth and all that lives as there is factual evidence of this. It is the government against the people as the government thinks they speak for the people yet the people only hear from the mouths of government. Quit wasting the needless time and money.

Necessary mandates already in place before the government's global warming uprise, are emitting less the pollution (factual evidence) and is all that is needed. People create much better jobs then the government of waste and no integrity. Government, your job is defined in the constitution stay out of private, honest businesses. You are overstaffed and factual evidence proves your worthlessness.