A new non-profit aims to be at the forefront of an environmental and economic revolution

By Leona Baker

Once upon a time, you were either pro environment or pro business. You couldn’t be both.

But the conventional wisdom that pitted tree huggers against the faceless specters of corporate greed may be gone for good thanks to people like Van Jones, the author and activist who was recently named President Obama’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs.

Jones and others envision a “green new deal” in which the innovative potential of the free market and the mechanisms of government join forces to benefit the economy, lift people out of poverty and show some love for Mother Earth at the same time.

One newly formed local non-profit aims to be at the forefront of putting this change of attitude into action. The Green Jobs Alliance, based in Hampton, Virginia, was created in December of 2008 with a mission to develop “an evolving energy efficiency and renewable energy industries workforce with a goal of economic independence for individual workers, including those who seek a pathway out of poverty.”

Obama’s ostensibly pro-environmental stance and funding unleashed by the Economic Reinvestment and Recovery Act may be the grease that gets the fledgling organization’s wheels turning, but their primary order of business is based on a law that was passed back in 2007.

The Green Jobs Act, part of larger bill called the Energy Independence and Security Act, was signed into law two years ago and allocated $125 million for the creation of “green” or environmentally friendly jobs, training and retraining displaced workers for good-paying positions in industries like solar, heating and cooling and alternative fuels.

The problem, says Green Jobs Alliance Executive Director Randy Flood, is that the act was never funded under the “anti-, anti-, anti-labor” Bush Administration.

“[The Green Jobs Act] laid out a criteria for creating green jobs,” explains Flood, “it basically said that in order to get funding to do education and training and data collection for this, you have to form a non-profit partnership and the non-profit partnership has to be spearheaded by labor management committees and organized labor and may include community colleges, community service boards, veterans groups, educational institutions, workforce investment boards, etc….maybe local officials as well.”

Then Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao “did nothing,” says Flood, “so the act lay dormant the whole year, nobody doing anything with it.”

The American economy worsened, concern over the environment and energy independence was at a fever pitch and hope for an Obama win went from audacious to likely.

That’s when Flood connected with John Esson, Director of the Green Careers Center, a Hampton-based for-profit business that serves as a gateway for green job seekers and employers. Kind of the green version of Monster, the Green Careers Center’s website was the first of its kind in the United States. After being in business for more than 20 years and with an online database of more than 25,000 resumes, Esson and his team decided they wanted to do more.

A non-profit made sense and Flood, who began his career in Washington in the 1970s as a staff member for the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, would be the man to head it up.
Esson serves as board secretary for the Green Jobs Alliance. Hampton City Councilman Randy Gilliland is chairman.

“The Green Jobs Act really laid out a set of criteria of what you need to do to implement that act and create green jobs with the funding and specifically the education and training that are necessary to cause that to happen,” Flood told a small group gathered for a panel on green jobs at Croc’s restaurant in Virginia Beach a few weeks ago.

“Suffice it to say that we are moving at a breakneck pace to put together an unsolicited proposal and get it into the secretaries of energy, labor, perhaps commerce, and interior as well as the EPA and to get it to Van Jones.”

A large part of their focus will be the burgeoning offshore wind industry. They hope to involve the military heavily, to target veterans, the unemployed, at-risk youth and others in cultivating a green workforce based on the production, installation and operation of wind turbines off the coast of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Delaware.

“Hopefully we will be fortunate enough to be the recipient of federal dollars to focus on that and to launch in effect the Green Jobs Act for the first time in America,” Flood told the panel. “I believe we can do it.”
Obama’s stimulus package—or the Economic Reinvestment and Recovery Act—earmarked $500 million for energy efficiency and renewable energy resource careers.

“It didn’t say specifically that it was going to fund the Green Jobs Act because the infrastructure wasn’t in place,” explains Flood.

But if all goes well, the Green Jobs Alliance will create that infrastructure and Virginia and our neighboring coastal states will be at the forefront of an economic and environmental revolution.

It doesn’t hurt that the new secretary of labor, Hilda Solis, happens to be the person who introduced the Green Jobs Act in the first place when she was a Democratic Congresswoman from California.

“It’s her baby,” says Flood. We’re just hoping that there’s not a disconnect between the secretary and the people that are going to be charged with the daily implementation of this.”