{"id":28943,"date":"2011-11-20T22:25:14","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T22:25:14","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-11-20T22:51:45","modified_gmt":"2011-11-20T22:51:45","slug":"public-spending-energy-polluters-stands-way-millions-green-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/350.org\/id\/public-spending-energy-polluters-stands-way-millions-green-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Spending on Energy Polluters Stands in The Way of Millions of Green Jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below is a guest post by Ananda Lee Tan, with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives<\/a>, about how moving public funds away from big energy polluters and towards a recyling economy could go a long way to unleashing the world we want. Read on…they’re really onto something!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"A new report called More Jobs, Less Pollution<\/a> was released last week, showing that a national 75% recycling rate would create nearly 1.5 million new jobs while reducing an amount of climate pollution equal to shutting down 72 coal-fired power plants, or taking 50 million cars off the road.<\/strong> This report, produced for GAIA, the Teamsters, Blue Green Alliance, NRDC, and SEIU, describes the benefits of building a resource recovery economy that creates community jobs with family-supporting wages.<\/p>\n

These are jobs we desperately need, and the money to invest in them could easily be redirected from subsidies<\/a> that are currently being wasted on polluting incinerators and landfills. Simply put, we need to reinvest in recycling, composting, reuse, and strategies that move us on the path toward zero waste and climate justice and green jobs.<\/p>\n

For a short, informative \u201ctake\u201d on this topic, watch The Story of Broke, which describes how hard-earned taxpayer money props up the \u201cdinosaur economy\u201d where we spend huge amounts of public money to subsidize the biggest polluting corporations in the U.S.