Congress: Please save my Main St. job, not that fat cat's Wall St. job

The Greenwash Brigade

I got that call today.

The one no one wants to hear from their CEO — that it’s possible the company I work for will run out of money for my part-time position and have to let me go. But, unlike some investment bank officials who got a similar call, our solar energy company didn’t do anything wrong.

We are just prisoner to the waiting game that Congress keeps us in by not renewing the green energy tax credits that help our country deal with the energy crisis.

A recent study showed that 440,000 new people could join me as workers in the solar industry if the tax credits are renewed. And wind power is set to be the key emerging source of electricity for our country if renewal occurs. Yet for these past several months, Congress has failed to act.

The oil crisis that brought record gasoline and diesel prices to our pumps again this summer did not ignite Congress. The gasoline shortages that now cripple communities across the Southeast has not yet closed the deal.

And now many members of Congress are instead considering bailing out a financial industry that has acted recklessly and twisted rules to gain tremendous, unsustainable profits. After bankrupting our federal government by cutting taxes and fighting overstretched wars, the Bush Administration asks to borrow money from our children’s hard-earned living to help banks that were doing the equivalent of playing in the casinos with our life savings. No thanks.

I’m glad the Senate finally passed a renewal of the green energy tax credits this week. Will the House step up and do the same before they focus (even more) on getting elected? Or will they decide, rather, to concentrate their energy on giving big banks cash for trash?

Here’s hoping Congress prioritizes saving millions of green Main Street jobs so we can get our economy back on sound footing and our climate won’t self-destruct on us.

September 24, 2008 by Dennis Markatos
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tags: bailout Congress energy crisis green jobs solar Wall St. wind

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Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

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