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Courtesy of South Bay Labor Council
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The economic crisis is at the front of everyone's mind. With unemployment and uncertainty skyrocketing, banks and financial institutions failing, and the government scrambling to pick up the pieces, it can be easy to overlook the escalating environmental crisis. Thank goodness we're almost to Earth Day 2009, a day to reflect on our relationship with the planet. But we need more than an Earth Day. We need more than a week, a month, or even a year. We need an Earth Generation. We need to be the Earth Generation.
That is the historic challenge of this generation: to (re)learn how to live in harmony with the planet and the other species living here. Previous generations have had their own challenges—outlawing chattel slavery, or defeating European fascism. Those threats came from one part of the human family against another. Now, even with ongoing, often violent divisions among people, this generation faces an immediate threat that imperils all of us, and that we must overcome together.
That means reorganizing our economy—how we make things, power things, move things, buy things, and sell things. Our economy is not just tearing itself apart, it is also tearing the planet apart—and burning down whatever's left. Built on the idea that we can (and should) conquer nature, our economy is at war with the Earth. And this war has no winners, only losers. We need a new way to do things. Saving the environment does not mean pitting trees against people. It is, in fact, an opportunity for innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic opportunity.
We need a green economy.
But if this green economy takes care of the planet, yet abandons people to the worst excesses of the market, then we will have only replaced one monster with another. As we invent a new way to take care of the Earth, we also need to invent a new way to take care of each other. Our green economy must help the planet and the people.
How can we begin? By investing in good, green jobs. We have a ton of work to do to repair the damage we've done to the environment, and to make sure the planet is ready and able to take care of our children and their children after them. That work—retrofitting buildings; constructing wind, solar and wave farms; manufacturing the parts for those energy farms; urban agriculture and healthy farming; modern, efficient urban planning and public transit—will be the foundation of the new, green economy. The jobs should be well-paid jobs with good benefits—jobs with career tracks that can support a family. And they should go to the people who most need the work, the people struggling in the current pollution-based economy. Because if our new economy can lift up those of us who have fallen the furthest, each of us will rise.
I believe we can do it. I believe in the power of people to create the society we need and deserve, if we give ourselves the chance to do it. We've seen previous generations remake their societies in seemingly impossible ways in order to fulfill their historic obligations. Now it is time for us to do the same, to be the Earth Generation that we need. It is time for us to build a green economy, one strong enough to resolve the ecological crisis and create new avenues of economic advance for those most in need.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is CEO of Green For All, the national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty that was founded by Van Jones in 2007.
