business savings achievable in greener buildings

StarTribune
February 17, 2005
Editorial: Creating jobs in a cleaner world
Not so long ago, there weren't many issues on which the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers -- or environmentalists and labor generally -- were inclined to agree, let alone unite politically. Like their counterparts across the bargaining tables, unions tended to buy the assumption that whatever was good for the environment must be bad for business, and therefore for jobs.
An illustration of changing times will take place at the Minnesota Capitol today when a wide-ranging coalition of activists will make the opposite point to lawmakers: Investments in mass transit, renewable energy, conservation-oriented construction and sustainable technologies are becoming an important engine of economic growth, as well as delivering environmental benefits.
The Blue Green Alliance, sponsor of the event, includes not only Sierrans and steelworkers but the Minnesota Building Trades, Clean Water Action Alliance, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy, United Food and Commercial Workers, the League of Rural Voters and unions representing electricians, communications workers and public employees.
The primary message is that environmental stewardship and restoration create new jobs, and new wealth, in the construction, manufacturing, service and agricultural sectors. Another is that the public-health benefits of cleaning up energy production and other industrial processes, while shared by everyone, are of special importance to the people who earn their livelihoods from them. A third is that the business savings achievable in greener buildings and leaner resource appetites will be shared by customers and taxpayers, too.
These are important points to be made against the backdrop of globalization, as today's employers seek to move all kinds of jobs -- manufacturing and service, blue-collar and white-collar -- overseas. Lower labor costs are the reason, of course, although disparagement of environmental regulation has made a comeback as a supplemental excuse.
But the truth is that tomorrow's industries will be looking for greener techniques as a matter of economic preference. This is the dollars-and-cents message within the abstract notions of "natural capitalism" or the "restoration economy." New models, new methods and new businesses are on the way; the states and localities that nurture them will reap the rewards of foresight in a world where, more than ever, what's better for the environment is also what's best for the economy.
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I paid for the newspaper this article came from.
Maybe business and government will see the light
and work together before it's really too late.

Mark j