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Executive Summary

For the past year, the U.S. economy has suffered through a serious economic slowdown caused by the collapse of the housing market bubble, the destabilizing effects of the housing implosion on financial markets, and the sharp rise in oil prices. The resulting increase in unemployment—reaching 5.7 percent in July 2008—is in fact even worse when taking into account a labor market where people are working fewer hours than they wish, taking pay cuts, or becoming discouraged from looking for work. What’s more, most evidence suggests the slowdown will continue for at least another year, extending in exaggerated form an eight-year pattern of economic performance
that has done little for most Americans.

This report outlines a green economic recovery program to strengthen the U.S. economy over the next two years and leave it in a better position for sustainable prosperity. In the pages that follow, we detail how to expand job opportunities by stimulating economic growth, stabilizing the price of oil, and making significant strides toward fighting global warming and building a green, low-carbon economy. This green economic recovery program would be a down payment on a 10-year policy program recommended by the Center for American Progress in its 2007 “Progressive Growth” series, which lays out an economic strategy for the next administration and includes the report, “Capturing the Energy Opportunity: Creating a Low-Carbon Economy,” by John D. Podesta, Todd Stern, and Kit Batten. That report details how the transformation to a low-carbon economy would result in sustainable economic growth.

By accelerating the implementation of these polices, we address our immediate need to boost a struggling economy and jumpstart our long-term transformation to a low-carbon economy. This green economic recovery program would spend $100 billion dollars over two years in six green infrastructure investment areas. These are all areas that the CAP report outlined as key to transitioning to a low-carbon economy to create new green jobs—particularly in the struggling construction and manufacturing sectors. They are also all central to securing America’s energy security and combat global warming. This $100 billion initiative is part of a comprehensive low-carbon energy strategy and could be paid for with proceeds from auctions of carbon permits under a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program.