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The green economy can create job opportunities for low-income people.

A shift to clean energy can improve the health and well-being of low-income people, who suffer disproportionately from cancer, asthma and other respiratory ailments in our dirty-energy economy.  More and more young people in Albuquerque are getting involved in raising awareness about green jobs created through renewable energy industries:

Such a shift can create entrepreneurial, wealth-building opportunities for those who need new avenues of economic advance, too.

In other words: a national effort to curb global warming and oil dependence can simultaneously create good jobs, safer streets and healthier communities.

For us, our highest calling is to ensure that the clean-energy economy in the 21st century in fact does all of these things. Indeed, we believe that America’s chief moral obligation is to build a green economy that is strong enough to lift many people out of poverty.

But that will happen only if we make sure that the very people who have been locked out of the old, grey economy are locked into the new, green one. We must provide equal access to the opportunities and benefits of the new economy.

Some will call this unrealistic. They will advise America to keep her dreams small. But that cynicism is the problem, not the solution.

A national commitment to “green-collar jobs” will help this nation to address simultaneously our economic, ecological and moral crises.