Green jobs could upturn economy
I’ve got some good news and some bad news. This week, you get the good news first.
A report released last week shows that the United States can create 2 million new jobs over the next two years by investing in a rapid “green” recovery plan. The report also purports to show that the $100 billion green investment package would create nearly four times more jobs than spending the same amount of cash with the oil industry, and could reduce the unemployment rate to 4.4 percent over two years.
The report, prepared by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, was released in conjunction with a Green Jobs for America campaign.
The package advanced in the report shows that such an investment would create 300,000 more jobs than a similar amount of spending directed toward household consumption.
It would roughly triple the number of jobs paying $16 or more an hour compared with spending in the oil industry, with the largest gains being felt in the construction industry.
The report can be found at http://www.peri.umass.edu/green_recovery.
Now on to some less optimistic news.
One of Northern California’s few California condors was captured earlier this month and rushed into the hospital.
The subadult bird was found along the Big Sur coastline and found to be very weak. Ventana Wildlife Society biologists were first alerted by a local resident on Sept. 2 that a condor was on the ground and behaving oddly. After monitoring the bird closely for two days, the scientists attempted to trap the bird using nets. But she mustered enough strength to fly into nearby trees when approached.
On Sept. 5, the crew finally captured her, too weak to fly. The bird weighed only 11 pounds, far below a normal weight of 16 to 17 pounds.
The bird was examined in Monterey, but X-rays revealed no lead fragments. Ingestion of lead is a leading cause of condor illness and death. Blood tests revealed elevated lead levels, however, and the bird was rushed to the Los Angeles Zoo for emergency treatment.
“Condor 336 was perhaps our most well-known condor having been featured for the last year in a YouTube film clip show of her devouring a deer heart,” said Eric Brunnemann, superintendent of Pinnacles National Monument. The 4-year-old bird was released at Pinnacles in fall of 2005 and had established herself with the Central California flock.
From a low of just 22 birds in the mid 1980s, California condors are making a slow, steady recovery through captive breeding and public education programs. By August of this year, 176 condors were living in captivity and 156 are flying wild, 82 of them in California.
The condor recovery program is a shared effort by the National Park Service, Ventana Wildlife Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, state Fish and Game, the Peregrine Fund, Santa Barbara Zoo, U.S. Forest Service and several captive breeding institutions.
The California condor is the reason the Legislature passed a law banning lead ammunition in much of California, due to the birds’ vulnerability to lead in the environment.
Why go to so much trouble to save a bird many regard as ugly, one that subsists on decaying flesh?
The question never seems to be asked by anyone who has ever seen one in flight. The largest birds in North America, California condors dwarf anything else in the skies. They glide for hours without flicking their wings, at the same time radiating unmistakable power and grace.
They are indisputably wild, and they link us to a past that would be otherwise lost.
They are profoundly worth the trouble.
