Emerald Cities 'Goals' (CCX connections -- Beck is discussing)

Emerald Cities Web site ^ | Various | Various

[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.

[SteamShovel]

Buildings are the largest national source of energy consumption.....

.....SUV's drive themselves and cause accidents

.....Guns load themselves and kill people

I'm sorry, but buildings don't use any energy. The EQUIPMENT inside them use energy when PEOPLE want them to use it. The building qualities can affect the rate of energy use, but it does not "use energy"!

I know it's nitpicking, but I can't stand that phrase. I hear it too much these days. Like "environmental stewardship" and "green", it drives me nuts.

[Wisconsinlady]

I hope you have watched or Tivo’d Glenn Beck’s 4 p.m. TV show today on FOX because he is talking about this Emerald Cities and the “wizard” is a professor-guess where- at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Joel Rogers. Yikes, this is bigger than I thought. See www.cows.org.

[combat_boots]

“Welcome to COWS
COWS is a national policy center and field laboratory for high-road economic development — a competitive market economy of shared prosperity, environmental sustainability, and capable democratic government.

COWS’ work is collaborative, experimental, and evidence-driven. Working with business, government, labor, and communities, we try out new ideas, test their effectiveness, and disseminate those with promise. We believe that the best way to predict the future is to start making it, particularly in our states and metro regions.

Some areas of COWS’ program focus are:

•Economic and workforce development
•Sectoral strategies and career pathways
•Clean energy and energy efficiency
•Labor markets and job improvement
•Strategies for improving low-wage work
COWS is based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, famous for the “Wisconsin Idea” that the University should help informed democratic experiment. Since its founding 18 years ago, COWS has often been called “the Wisconsin Idea in action.”

COWS is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, educational and charitable organization. Its budget comes from foundation and individual gifts and grants and technical assistance contracts.”

http://www.cows.org/

[Wisconsinlady]

READ ABOUT JOEL ROGERS OF UW-MADISON-LEADER OF APOLLO ALLIANCE IN WISCONSIN-HE IS THE ONE THAT GLENN BECK WAS TALKING ABOUT TODAY

WE2 gets federal support
Three Wisconsin cities received a $20 million federal award that ultimately will provide $120 million to create the Wisconsin Energy Efficiency (WE2) program. COWS was as partner in this pioneering effort.

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Welcome to COWS > About COWS > Staff > Staff Details
Staff Details- Joel Rogers

Joel Rogers is a professor of law, political science, and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He directs COWS, the national think-and-do tank on high road development, and the new Center for State Innovation (CSI). Rogers has written widely on democratic theory and American politics and public policy. His most recent book (with Richard Freeman) is What Workers Want (2006). A longtime activist as well as academic, Newsweek identified him as one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape US politics and culture in the 21st century.

Click here to view Joel Rogers’ online Curriculum Vitae.

Please email Joel Rogers via his assistant, Michelle Bright, at:

Email: mbright at cows.org
Telephone: 608.262.4266

Selected Articles
Joel Rogers has published numerous articles in academic journals, books, and popular magazines. To read a sampling of his work, click on the links below.

•Build the High Road Here
•Joel Rogers on Hurricane Katrina
•Both an Imperative and an Opportunity
•Cities: The Vital Core
•Devolve This! (The Nation)
More articles by Joel Rogers.

Newspaper Columns & Commentaries
Professor Rogers occasionally publishes guest editorials in newspapers throughout Wisconsin, as well as national publications. In addition, between February 2001 and August 2002, Joel Rogers wrote a regular column for The Capital Times, a Madison-based daily newspaper, as part of COWS’ Sustaining Wisconsin grassroots education campaign. To read the columns or commentaries, click on the links below.

•”Unfulfilled Promise,” The Nation Online 6/21/2004
•”Take a Higher Road to State Job Creation,” Wisconsin State Journal 2/29/2004
•”Progressives Should Vote for Edwards as Best on Issues,” Madison Capital Times 2/12/2004
•”Progressives Should Vote Edwards,” The Nation Online 2/8/2004
•”Little to Celebrate on Labor Day,” Wisconsin State Journal 9/1/2003
More columns & commentary by Joel Rogers.

News Coverage
As an expert on a variety of subjects, including presidential elections, political democracy, and the future of the labor movement, Joel Rogers is often interviewed– and his work is often cited– by local, national, and even international media outlets. To read some of the coverage, click on the links below.

•”Metropolis now,” New Statesman 9/17/2009
•”Obama’s Labour Play,” The Financial Post (London) 4/6/2009
•”Union Bill’s Declining Chances Give Rise to Alternatives,” The Washington Post 3/29/2009
•”In Arkansas and elsewhere, economy stable,” USA Today 2/26/2009
•”Making Money a Renewable Resource,” Ode Magazine 12/3/2008
More news coverage featuring Joel Rogers.
COWS notes...Enter your e-mail address below to receive COWS Notes, a monthly e-newsletter that keeps you current on COWS activities, and other timely announcements.

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[Wisconsinlady]

BUMP

[mentor2k]

Patriot Ping

[RobRoy]

>>Buildings are the largest national source of energy consumption,<<

I’m trying to get my company to let me telecommute. Maybe I should use the financial argument. ;)

[hosepipe]

The FBI is where?... doing what?.. complicit?..

[chichipow]

Are any of the harpies in the sock puppet news media that went head hunting with the ‘Halliburtion/Cheney connection’ doing anything on this?

This conspiracy compared to the Halliburtion no bid story is like comparing a golf ball to the moon. It’s that much bigger. It encompasses all the big unions that were paid off with health care, the stimulus and the bail outs. All the big companies that were paid off with the stimulus like Freddy/Fanny, Goldman, etc... It is astronomical the amount of people and money woven into this conspiracy to create a ruling class and a slave class.

I only hear crickets.

[chichipow]

Those who missed it watch this weeks shows on Monday and Thursday the 26th and 28th for it to be laid out by Glenn Beck. It is a conspiracy laid bare and the center of it is Obama. Not a nut case conspiracy theory like 9/11 - this one has teeth and is the death rattle of this country.

[onyx]

Like Glenn says, he’s one man with a small staff and the blessings of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. The rest of the so called news media are literally silent and not interested, and we have to question “why?” Are they so in-the-tank to the point of wanting to see our country fail and fall into the hands of Marxists and Communists?

Glenn is right: Government is now a criminal enterprise. Nobody repsonsible for the finanacial collapse in in jail or even being investigated. Franklin Raines is a fillthy rich man and deeply involved with a new arm of this mega scheme, heading “Enterprise,” after securing the patent and raiding Fannie.

Yet, no charges, no congressional oversight, nothing. Government is a criminal enterprise.

[okie01]

Emerald Cities 'Goals'

Ah, Utopia.

And damn the cost.

[VOA]

bump

[combat_boots]

Bravo. Well said.

[caww]

....” Government is a criminal enterprise”......

Makes you wonder how far those threads go doesn’t it....and thus when we vote does it become entirely the lesser of the the evils. Because once they are in the thros of the Washington thugocracy how can the good guys not become tainted in order to just survive being there?

[VOA]

bump

[chichipow]

“Yet, no charges, no congressional oversight, nothing. Government is a criminal enterprise.”

I fear that even if the RATS are voted out in November there won’t be. It’s a very slim chance. It may be stopped and swept under the rug, but I would bet my left knut that no one of any stature is charged.

Most governments of the world are criminal enterprises. Too bad ours isn’t any different any more.

[onyx]

The democrats have to be voted out regardless. We knopw they’re criminals and we also have to vote out the Republican incumbents in the primaries! I’ve had it. New blood. CITIZEN legislators, preferably veterans who have served our country. To hell with “experience in government,” and “millionaires.”

[Excellence]

bfl