Click
Posted on 04/29/2010 7:33:32 AM PDT by combat_boots
Emerald Goals
Green Our Cities
Our goal is to achieve significant reductions in the carbon footprint and energy consumption and increased energy savings and efficiencies. To this end, we encourage cities to:
Substantially increase the energy efficiency of citywide building stock over ten years while prioritizing poor communities.
Buildings are the largest national source of energy consumption, costing $400 billion annually in energy bills and comprising 80 percent of local carbon emissions in some cities. Yet, efficiency gains between 30 and 50 percent are possible using existing, cost-effective technology. Reducing energy consumption requires a comprehensive retrofit of building stock. The most significant residential gains in efficiency will be made by retrofitting the poorly maintained, oldest, and least efficient building stock concentrated in poor communities. To achieve such large-scale energy reduction, partners can:
•Establish a comprehensive, participatory planning process supported by professional planning and management
•Develop a variety of financing mechanisms that leverages the resources of utility companies, private investors, and federal, state and local government programs
•Retrofit government office buildings, schools, hospitals, affordable housing projects, waste stations, as well as private residential housing stock
•Prioritize retrofits in low-income neighborhoods Implement deep, not simple, retrofits wherever possible.
Simple retrofits insulating inefficient buildings and perhaps providing more efficient appliances, can improve energy efficiency and create short-term jobs. However, they miss critical opportunities. Deep retrofits are designed to coordinate energy upgrades with solutions to other safety hazards or deficiencies in buildings, link the building stock to the broader infrastructure; maximize gains on a neighborhood scale, and target improvements to community needs. Moreover, the complex work and large-scale changes required by deep retrofits provide wide-ranging green job opportunities in design, manufacturing, and construction or installation. To promote comprehensive gains in energy efficiency, cities can endorse efforts to:
•Coordinate energy efficiency retrofits with other building improvements for healthy housing including lead abatement, installation of current communications technology, disabled friendly alternations, water conservation, and indoor air quality
•Define retrofits to include landscape, urban vegetable cultivation, water, and communications (broadband and future technologies) systems so that buildings can properly link to the broader urban infrastructure.
•Pursue neighborhood level projects rather than focusing on buildings in isolation
•Encourage building technology innovation that furthers energy efficiency in building materials, construction techniques, and retrofits
•Develop long-term energy efficiency strategies that link the city to the region and promote regional manufacturing for the building technology required for retrofits
Build Our Communities
Our goal is to generate good jobs and lifetime construction careers, create new high-road, community-based enterprises, reduce urban poverty and chronic underemployment especially in communities of color, and raise living standards. To this end, we encourage cities to:
Support high-quality job creation through the requirement for labor standards.
Construction is a high turnover industry susceptible to the influx of poorly-trained, poorly-paid workers and employers who resist training workers. Labor standards can compel employers to support training programs that both ensure uniform, high-quality construction work and establish the decent wages and benefits critical to stabilizing communities. Thus, energy efficiency efforts have the greatest long-term impact when they link to the growth of a well-paid, well-trained green workforce at scale. To promote this approach, cities can:
•Promote the use of community workforce agreements, either at the neighborhood or city level, and aid in development of such agreements
•Adopt a coordinated curriculum for high-skilled green construction in conjunction with incentives for the use of credentialed green labor
•Support workforce development, including both credentialed vocational training and a supply of remedial general education and work readiness. This includes expanding the union-based apprenticeship system.
•Coordinate efforts to ensure the provision of an adequate local supply of qualified contractors and workers to do the large-scale work demanded by this plan Expand access to high-quality jobs and contracts to minorities, women, and low-income residents.
Communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by the economic crisis and historically excluded from the benefits of economic growth during good times. Energy efficiency efforts can maximize economic impact by introducing career opportunities to minorities and communities with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Workforce development not only helps individuals but also reduces spin-off costs from unemployment and poverty. Moreover, long-term economic advancement requires business development within disadvantaged communities. To expand economic opportunity, local efforts can agree to:
•Where in place, utilize and enforce community benefits agreements in energy efficiency projects; otherwise promote and support concepts of agreements
•Further linkages between community workforce training programs and union pre-apprenticeship curriculum; linkages to other publicly funded workforce training partnerships in ECC cities (e.g. those led by community colleges); and connections for program participants to training and jobs in the broader infrastructure arena.
•Increase opportunities for minority and women-owned contractors to administer and carry out green construction projects
•Support development of the workforce in complementary industries such as manufacturing, engineering, auditing, and recycling
Strengthen Our Democracy
Our goal is to increase labor-community input in urban political decision-making and promote pro-working families economic development strategies. To achieve this goal, cities can:
Build lasting democratic capacity to shape the urban economy.
Low wage earners often lack voice and access to the formal venues and informal networks that generate public policies and economic strategies. Yet, low-income residents stand to benefit greatly from the long-term cost-savings and potential for small-business creation of conservation and efficiency efforts. The most effective energy efficiency strategies require widespread cooperation. This requires people to communicate, identify common interests and goals and obstacles to reaching them, and to work together toward achieving them all activities that can help build democratic capacity. Efforts to deeply organize our communities and align community and labor interests should not be confined to increasing energy efficiency in buildings. These alignments will increase the public capacity to meaningfully influence our cities economic, social and political futures. We support efforts to:
•Provide financial incentives and extensive training to enable community groups to support resident organizing around efficient and sustainable communities
•Build resident capacity to aggregate the demand needed to build collective enterprises and attract specialized and high quality contractors
•Organize residents to advocate for policies and programs that support local sustainability
•Build partnerships with labor to increase community leverage around energy efficiency in urban political decision-making.
Endorse and advocate for regulations and legislation furthering these goals
Government policy is powerful tool in ensuring coordination among different constituencies and groups to achieve their joint priorities. The regulation of new energy projects can guarantee job standards and community access to those jobs; ensure transparency and equal opportunity in labor markets; and repair damage done to individuals within underserved communities by helping them grasp the opportunities of retrofits. In addition, government regulation can organize the money needed for energy efficiency work by removing unnecessary constraints on community ability to capture and aggregate the value flowing from their work. Methods to achieving this include to:
•Support local policy such as a community workforce agreements to enforce local source hiring, specify required skills, set apprenticeship utilization rates for contractors, and make explicit the assumption that union-employer partnerships provide vocational training
•Establish special tax districts for energy efficiency and clean generation
•Engage state utility boards in the cost recovery of capital for such programs through the requirement that all utilities offer on-bill financing.
•Develop forward-capacity markets at the federal level
•Encourage policy that shifts public spending away from direct purchases of labor or materials toward credit enhancement that make available capital for energy efficiency. One possible method is a public fund for default insurance and securitization services.
Great thread!
“Or something else?”
Good question.
From the page on curriculum:
“Multi-craft core curriculumThe Multi-Craft Core Curriculum is an innovative training curriculum that provides a gateway from high school or community college to joint industry registered apprenticeships in the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), AFL-CIO. This establishes, for the first time, standardized pre-apprenticeship for entry into any one of the building trades. The Emerald Cities Collaborative (ECC) is excited about the possibilities that this Core Curriculum provides marginalized communities, community-based workforce training programs, and other Emerald Cities partners. Already, ECC members have begun to work with the BCTD to explore delivery options to provide disadvantaged youth and entry-level workers access to this training. The BCTD has pledged to building these partnerships in cities and with organizations that commit to Emerald Cities.
The Core Curriculum combines the courses common to all building trades apprenticeship programs without regard to a particular craft. These courses are: general orientation to apprenticeship; cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and first aid; the OSHA 10 hour certification course; blueprint reading; applied mathematics for construction applications; history of the construction industry and the heritage of the American worker. The general orientation course includes construction industry structure and the construction process; orientation to apprenticeship itself; tools of the various trades and the safe handling of both hand and power tools; industry standards of work responsibility and craft excellence.
The Core Curriculum can be taught as a free-standing course or as part of a larger training program.”
http://www.emeraldcities.org/?q=multi-craft
Yes it is ... to read that tyrranical, overwhelmingly
intrusive govt control check list is beyond surreal.
It’s a nightmare.
“Low wage earners often lack voice and access to the formal venues and informal networks that generate public policies and economic strategies. Yet, low-income residents stand to benefit greatly from the long-term cost-savings and potential for small-business creation of conservation and efficiency efforts.
The most effective energy efficiency strategies require widespread cooperation. This requires people to communicate, identify common interests and goals and obstacles to reaching them, and to work together toward achieving them all activities that can help build democratic capacity.
Efforts to deeply organize our communities and align community and labor interests should not be confined to increasing energy efficiency in buildings.
These alignments will increase the public capacity to meaningfully influence our cities economic, social and political futures.”
~ ~ ~
Out and out collectivist socialism .. the goal IS redistribution of wealth and resources via multiple sequential tornadoes, overwhelming the citizenry ..keeping people off balance, disoriented and unable to organize viable protest.
And government jobs for the ‘controllers’ will be the high paying plums for their ACORN/union/agreeable cohorts.
Dear Lord, end this madness!
Thanks!
This should have been posted in breaking news!
E-mail idea:
Title: Emerald Cities and the Global Warming $10 Trillion Enron style ‘Carbon Credit’ scam.
AKA Crime, Inc., the Usual Suspect Organizations are involved in and underlie the Cap and Trade bill ‘debate’ and bill upcoming in the US Congress, along with the provision in the financial ‘reform’ measure to move the financial center of the US from New York City to Chicago. Please investigate the Emerald Cities organization, its board and staff members, the relationships to the Joyce Foundation, the organizations that have stood and stand to benefit from the $10,000,000,000,000 market, and get involved.
The fleecing of the United States is in play, including our children and grandchildren’s futures, our rights and freedoms and our individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
Contact your representatives, senators and friends. Please help us get the word out to stop the governmentally administered and operated crime wave. Because your money is a terrible thing to lose, let alone be looted.
Click
I did! He’s dying to incite a riot.
Shove it, Liberals.
Just aching and itching ... then he can
declare martial law and a state of emergency.
Hmm....
And this is why the Abiotic theory of Fossil Fuel Creation is so dangerous and they can't have it gain steam.
Fossil Fuels then woud not rare hence less cost. They get a back door on controlling air via Fossil Fuels, Soon they will go after water. They have Health Care, Schooling and soon the Internet.
G_d help us...
That Joyce Foundation is a nasty piece of work. Another one based in Chicago. Obama was on it’s BoD and it’s anti-almost everything Constitutional. The damn news media never did any research into Obama. Just look at the simple stuff wiki has to say about the Joyce Foundation.
Everywhere you look, there’s a fire burning ..
and purposely set, and they want to shut off
more of our water every day.
Total control.
Muckety Maps
Joyce Fndtn:
http://www.muckety.com/Joyce-Foundation/5021503.muckety
R. Sandor:
http://www.muckety.com/Chicago-Climate-Exchange/5020561.muckety
Also Search & click on Soros Climate Hedge Fund group, Climate War Room, and Climate Works.
This is Agenda 21 writ large, and there are administration & congress’people’ all over it. $10,000,000,000,000 PER YEAR in ‘credits’ on the trading exchange in an economy of the US’ size—of $14 Tn.
Bookmark for later ...
Nevada County in N Calif is already going after ANY & ALL structures built BEFORE permits were required and red tagging them until they are brought up to current standards of lighting & plumging.
We are talking about barns, shops, horse shelters, electric gates......even well houses.
Os Angela Glover related to Danny Glover-—he is really LIBERAL.
I’ll be there....saw the show yesterday.,...great.
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