Wednesday, February 4, 2009

IMPORTANT ARTICLE ON DOING THE RECOVERY RIGHT

Thanks to The Witherspoon Society, I found this important article: "Doing the Recovery Right" by Robert Pollin. It was published by The Nation. Excerpts:

+ For most of the past generation, the aims of environmental sustainability and social justice were seen as equally worthy, yet painfully and unavoidably in conflict. Tree huggers and spotted owls were pitted against loggers and hard hats. Fighting global warming was held to inevitably worsen global poverty and vice versa.

+ Over the past couple of years, there has been a dramatic reversal of thinking: the idea has emerged that protecting the environment - in particular, defeating global warming - can also be an effective engine of economic growth, job creation and even poverty reduction.

+ The transformation of our fossil fuel driven economy into a clean energy economy will be the work of a generation, engaging a huge range of people and activities.

+ As a tool for fighting the recession, the green recovery project has as its first purpose injecting more money into the economy as quickly as possible. In this way, a $100 billion green investment program would create on the order of 1.7 million new jobs.

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