By Harriet Blake

Rick Hunter, a St. Louis homebuilder, says he’s always been interested in green construction, but in the past decade has become a true believer that green is the future of building. For him and his three-year-old company, Sage Homebuilders, a green collar job is the whole package.

“We’re small and growing quickly,” says Hunter, a co-founder of the 12-employee company. “It’s fun to see how many people want to be part of this movement. People are getting excited about green collar jobs. They’re meaningful. They make people happier in their jobs and make people feel better about what they’re doing. And you can earn a living.”

In St. Louis, Hunter says, green collar jobs are “absolutely the trend, particularly in green construction.” Sage Homebuilders uses green products in new construction and renovation projects, focusing on upgraded energy systems (like the solar panels pictured on this “Near Zero” energy-saving home).

As the country struggles with an economic downturn and job uncertainty, talk of green collar jobs is becoming a larger part of the national dialogue. Late last month, a national rally Green Jobs Now: A Day to Build the New Economy prompted events in 48 states. The rally, sponsored by Green for All, 1Sky and Al Gore’s WE campaign, focused on the dual cause of social justice and a green economy with events ranging from block parties to solution fairs.

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By John DeFore
Efforts by the World Bank to ease global poverty draw critiques from many quarters, sometimes including the people of those nations the group seeks to help. The latest round of criticism, though, comes from within the bank itself.
A lengthy new report written by the Independent Evaluation Group (”an independent, three-part unit within the [...]

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By Nima Kapadia
Jobs in renewable energy are increasing worldwide and causing the coal industry to distribute pink slips, according to a Worldwatch Institute study.
The report, written by Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, estimates that 2.3 million people are working in renewable energy jobs - either directly or indirectly. From that number:

1 million work in biofuels
794,000 work [...]

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By Barbara Kessler

Despite dire warnings about calamitous climate change and precipitous declines in earth’s natural resources, human beings are not frozen on the train tracks waiting for impact. In turns out we are pushing back energetically at the forces that would consume the planet, according to a Worldwatch Institute report released this week.

Entrepreneurs, governments and nonprofits are “inventing the Earth’s first sustainable global economy” and “field testing a remarkable array of economic innovations that offer surprising and hopeful new opportunities for long term prosperity,” according to the report, “State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy.”

This is not the “doom and gloom” we often hear in mainstream media reports, explains Tom Prugh, a co-director with Gary Gardner, of the report. The project brought together work by more than a dozen researchers and experts in energy, industrial production, species conservation, investment and sustainability.

The cumulative report is “completely, totally hopeful,’’ Prugh said. “That’s what’s so striking about it…This crisis had tapped reservoirs of imagination and unleashed waves of innovation.

“People are starting to get the message. NGO (non-government organizations) like us and some governments have been banging the sustainability drum for some years, decades now. But business is catching up to that now.”

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