LiveGreenNOW

By Emma Chapman

The Global Green 1st Annual Green Jobs Fair was held Saturday, October 24th at Walter Cohen High School. It was a great beginning to what will hopefully become a regular event here in New Orleans.

Keynote speaker Jerome Ringo (photo courtesy of the Apollo Alliance), president of the Apollo Alliance, started off the event with a relevant and informed speech about the future of environmentalism and how environmental problems affect New Orleans in particular. Ringo noted that there has been an incredible rise of what he called “climate refugees,” that is, the displacement of the peoples because of climate related issues. After Hurricane Katrina, of course, over 1 million Gulf Coast residents were displaced – a prime example of climate refugees.

Ringo went on to discuss the uneven distribution costs of environmental issues; low-income families spend the largest percentage of their income on energy bills, and yet are the least likely to have the means to make their homes more energy efficient. Of course, rebate programs such as New Orleans’ Energy Smart Program make it much easier for such families to shoulder the high upfront cost of installing energy efficient technology.

The emphasis of this event was on green jobs, and the Apollo Alliance has the ambitious goal of creating 5 million green jobs over the next ten years. The Obama stimulus package has certainly helped this goal; over the next two years, over $110 billion will be put towards green development projects, such as “developing clean fuels, modernizing rail transit, pursuing energy efficiency, [and] developing high-mileage electric vehicles.” With unemployment nearing 10% nationwide, job creation and retention is of the utmost importance. What better way to recover our economy than with jobs that, under Ringo’s definition, “contribute to a sustainable future and are environmentally friendly”?

As I looked around the audience during Ringo’s speech, I was heartened to notice the diversity of participants in terms of both race and age. The Global Green event was catered to high school students to encourage them to consider green careers after graduation, and many chose to attend. Furthermore, as the first African-American to head a major conservation organization in the United States, Ringo has seen firsthand that there is a lack of diversity in such organizations. Hopefully, job fairs like this one will encourage more young, diverse individuals to get involved in the green movement or at least to reap the benefits of going green.

After the keynote speech, attendees could listen to seminars from professionals in specific green careers. There were four sessions in total, and over 20 careers were represented. In retrospect, this abundance of choice was probably overwhelming; some sessions only had two or three attendees. However, as the first Green Jobs Fair, the event was definitely a success and will hopefully continue to grow in the coming years. Green jobs are becoming more and more important, and encouraging their development will help make New Orleans into a more prosperous, sustainable, and modern city.

Note: “Green Jobs” photograph courtesy of http://greenernews.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Green Growth, Green Street. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.