Dr. Majora Carter who came to Rice University Tuesday evening to speak about the potential benefit that the green industries could have immediately on the economy at the local level. Carter is the founder of B.E.S.T. which stands for Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training. This is a work study program where people, many of which have recently been released from jail, and teaches them the skills they need to be effective in the green revolution.
Green jobs are especially good “because they cannot be easily outsourced, say, to Asia,” said Van Jones, president of Green for All, an organization based in Oakland, Calif., whose goal is promoting renewable energy and lifting workers out of poverty. “If we are going to weatherize buildings, they have to be weatherized here,” he said. “If you put up solar panels, you can’t ship a building to Asia and have them put the solar panels on and ship it back. These jobs have to be done in the United States.”
One of the most prominent projects that Carter has established is the Greenway project. In this project Carter raised $1.25 million grant from the federal government in order to establish bike and pedestrian paths that wind their way through the burrow, including up to the newly established waterfront park. The park was also created by Carter who turned an illegal landfill into a beautiful recreation area.
In the most-often-cited estimate, a report commissioned by the American Solar Energy Society said that the nation had 8.5 million jobs in renewable energy or energy efficient industries. And Jerome Ringo, president of the Apollo Alliance, predicted that the nation could generate three million to five million more green jobs over the next 10 years.
It is hard to gauge the number of green-collar jobs nationwide. Welders at a wind-turbine factory are viewed as having green jobs, but what about the factory’s accountant or its janitors? Workers with Sustainable South Bronx, a nonprofit group that plants vegetation to keep the area cooler and reduce air-conditioning demands, would seem to fit the bill. But so would the employees of Tesla Motors, south of San Francisco, who are producing an all-electric Roadster that sells for $98,000.
Carter is on her way to establishing her own legacy of employment by producing graduates of her program that are working at an 80 percent rate, there are also 15 percent of the graduates that are going on to a higher education. In addition to creating an active workforce for the community Carter is working on “crime prevention through environmental design”. One example that she gave was that there was a particular tree that was blocking out the light from the only street light in that area. Because of this there was an increased amount of illegal activities in this particular area. With the simple act of pruning the tree the residents found that there was significantly less illegal activity in the area.
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