Investing in clean energy would provide jobs, improve economy
Posted August 31, 2008 at 8:11 pm, in From the USW International President
By
Leo W. Gerard
United Steelworkers International President
and
Cathy Zoi
Alliance for Climate Protection Chief Executive Officer
Labor Day
The thousands of hardworking United Steelworkers in the Northwest who lost their jobs didn’t know climate change was their adversary.
Before 2000, 40 percent of the aluminum made in the United States was smelted in Washington, Oregon and Montana. At the time, more than 5,000 USW members worked in eight regional smelters. Low-cost power from the Columbia River hydroelectric system made these smelters cost competitive in the global economy.
But several years of increasingly diminished snow falls in the Cascade Mountains meant less water in rivers and smaller reservoirs, reducing the supply of inexpensive hydroelectricity. Combined with Enron’s infamous energy market manipulations, higher electricity rates caused the permanent closure of a number of these smelters. Today, only three smelters remain in the Northwest, and over 4,500 USW members lost their jobs because of this change in the regional climate, a consequence of the global warming already taking place.
Economic outlook
On Labor Day, the outlook for American workers remains cloudy. Aweakened economy and high energy prices are making it harder for middle class men, women and families to make ends meet.Americans deserve an affordable and stable economic future, and we can get there by pursuing a comprehensive and long-term approach that creates good jobs here in the United States, increases our energy security, and reduces our reliance on harmful fossil fuels. Repowering America with 100 percent clean electricity over the next decade is the way for us to do that.
Pennsylvania has been leading the way, proving that we can create good, permanent jobs that improve the environment. The state recently passed a law requiring energy from renewable sources, a law the United Steelworkers supported. Gamesa Wind, knowing there was a certain demand for the turbines and blades for wind-generating equipment, opened a plant on the site of a closed steel mill in Fairless, Pennsylvania.
Gamesa
Gamesa now employs 1,100 United Steelworkers – sheet metal workers, machinists, electrical equipment assemblers, construction equipment operators, industrial truck drivers – helping to produce renewable energy. What Pennsylvania has started can be expanded with a new, nationwide target and a timetable commensurate with economic and energy challenges the country now faces.
Such a bold target will support a comprehensive national upgrade in energy efficiency that will reduce the energy bills of homeowners and businesses even as fuel costs are on the rise. We will expand the use of existing clean technologies – wind, solar, and geothermal – stimulating construction of dozens of new clean power plants. And we must create a system that delivers power economically from where it is generated to where people live with a unified national grid. Achieving these goals will deliver the jobs that our economy needs – jobs that can’t outsourced, jobs that reassert America’s commitment to opportunity, innovation and environmental protection for all. This is what it means to Repower America.
