Welcome to the best of the left podcast with clips today from Meet the Bloggers, the

Union Radio News, NPR, Ring of Fire, and Slate.com.

Ben, I want to talk to you about this idea of green jobs and the green

collar economy. First of all, I assume you're not talking about the vegetables. No, no.

All right. So tell the good folks at home what is the green collar economy? Sure.

Well, a green collar job is essentially a blue collar job that has been upgraded to better

respect the environment. So you think about somebody who's installing solar panels or

manufacturing wind turbines. Everything that is good for the environment, everything

is good in the fight against global warming is a job. Solar panels don't put themselves

up, buildings don't weatherize themselves, trees don't even plant themselves anymore.

That's a job. So we think about, it used to be jobs versus the environment.

Now what we're saying is that we can power our way through the recession by repowering

America with clean energy and putting millions of people to work doing that.

I remember the good old days when trees used to plant themselves.

They're so lazy these days, you know, as well for taking trees.

They're looking to get planted. Put down that weed and get out there and sprout.

Here's a couple of boots trash for you, trees. All right. No, seriously, this seems

almost so obvious that at this point, you know, it wasn't obvious when you were arguing

for it back in 2002. But so the next question is, who would be looking to prevent this?

I mean, do we think this is definitely going to happen under Obama or are there still forces

working against this? Well, the good news is President-elect wants to put $150

billion, $150 billion total, $15 billion a year into clean energy, energy conservation.

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