Blue Green Alliance welcomes Gore's energy challenge

MINNEAPOLIS, USA: The Blue Green Alliance has welcomed former Vice President Al Gore's challenge to build a new energy economy, saying that investments in renewable-energy alternatives will help to create middle-class green jobs in the United States.

"The time has come for our nation to embrace the possibilities, economic and environmental, of investing in global-warming solutions, solutions that will create jobs and combat the climate crisis head on," said United Steelworkers president Leo W. Gerard. "Achieving the goal of energy independence is the key to building a green economy, one that creates good, middle-class jobs and contributes to improving our environment."

"Vice President Gore's challenge is one that asks us all to take action to protect both our environment and our economy for future generations," said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. "Our country needs a new energy policy that reinvests in America, and it is up to the people of this country, young and old, rich and poor, to come together to realize the economic and environmental potential of investing in a green economy."

The Blue Green Alliance is an innovative partnership between the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club to educate the public about economic opportunities arising from solutions to global warming and pervasive toxics, as well as the need for fair trade policies, to create and keep good, high-paying jobs in the US and build a cleaner, safer, more prosperous world.

The Alliance, as part of the Green Jobs for America campaign, released a report in June showing that hundreds of thousands of workers in the US already possess the vast majority of skills and occupations necessary to reduce global warming and make the shift to a green economy.

"Looking to the future for a new energy policy that pursues renewable-energy alternatives will aid in the development of a huge, job-creating economic infrastructure in our country," said David Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance. "We know that hundreds of thousands of Americans already work in jobs that could contribute to a green economy. Meeting the challenge of energy independence means that everyone stands to benefit from pursuing alternative-energy solutions."