April 16th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Get ready for a new ad campaign pushing for a carbon cap. This one, though, comes not from policy wonks in D.C., but is a direct appeal from the steel belt. And it will yank at your heart strings.

The United Steelworkers and the Blue Green Alliance, in partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund, have assembled four video spots featuring steel workers appealing for a carbon cap. Yes you heard that right.

The cap, these workers say, will free their industries to pursue clean energy and thereby put people back to work, this time making wind turbines, which require a lot of steel, as well as solar panels.

It’s certainly true that wind is fueling huge job growth. The latest figures from the American Wind Energy Association report that the field now employs some 85,000 Americans.

As for the carbon cap and the sticky question of how to place a price on carbon emissions — through cap and trade, which critics argue is complex and unwieldy, or through a carbon tax, which could be so unpopular as to be untenable — look for much continued debate as lawmakers inch closer to taking action.  Global warming legislation has a history of freezing up Congress.

These new ads, however, argue that we can’t afford a stalmate — individually or collectively.

Here’s one of the spots. There are three others on You Tube.

Braddock Mayor John Fetterman, by the way, is a Harvard-educated native of the area.

The TV spots and print ads will run in “swing” states, including Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, New Hampshire, Virginia and in Washington D.C.

For a discussion on the debate over cap-and-trade vs. a carbon tax, see the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

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