DEAR EARTHTALK: What kind of job opportunities might be opened up by the new federal emphasis on green projects?
- Dick Wetzler, St. Paul, MN

IF IT'S A U. S. INDUSTRY that has the potential to be cleaner and greener, chances are the Obama administration has already set aside some stimulus money for it. In February 2009, the new president signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. Besides creating jobs, the bill promises to spur American companies to greener heights through investments totaling over $75 billion.

According to Environment America, a federation of state-based environmental advocacy groups, the stimulus package includes $32.8 billion for clean energy projects, $26.86 billion for energy efficiency initiatives and $18.95 billion for green transportation. Some of the key green features of the bill include accelerating the deployment of "smart grid" technology (systems of routing power in ways that optimize energy-efficiency), providing energy efficiency funds for schools, offering support for governors and mayors to beef up energy efficiency in private homes and public buildings, and establishing a new loan guarantee program to help renewable energy producers survive in down economic times.

With the private capital and credit so tight due to the recession, this influx of federal support is vital to help the still fledgling green energy and transportation sectors stay afloat. And most economists agree that it makes good sense to steer away from finite foreign oil toward homegrown renewable energy. Obama has promised the creation of some 500,000 jobs in the nation's burgeoning clean energy sector alone.

"The central facts here are irrefutable: Spending the same amount of money on building a clean energy economy will create three times more jobs within the U.S. than would spending on our existing fossil fuel infrastructure," writes University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin in The Nation. "The transformation to a clean energy economy can therefore serve as a major long-term engine of job creation." Wind turbine engineers, insulation installers, recycling sorters and photovoltaic cell salespeople - along with the businesspersons behind them - can all look forward to bright and potentially lucrative futures.

This view is shared by the Solar Energy Industries Association, which predicts that the stimulus will help create some 119,000 jobs in the American solar sector alone before the end of 2010. Employers from solar cell manufacturers to green building materials retailers to wind farm maintenance firms to recycling haulers to energy auditors will likewise be looking to swell their ranks of employees with relevant skills.

The federal government itself is also in on the recovery effort beyond doling out the money. According to the official Recovery Act website, the General Services Administration's Public Building Service will invest $5.55 billion in federal building projects, "including $4.5 billion to transform federal facilities into exemplary high-performance green buildings, $750 million to renovate and construct new federal offices and courthouses, and $300 million to construct and renovate border stations." About $1 billion worth of projects will be undertaken - a boon for everyone in the building industry, including construction workers, electricians, plumbers, air conditioning mechanics, carpenters, architects and engineers.

CONTACTS: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; Environment America; Solar Energy Industries Association.

DEAR EARTHTALK: If train travel is so much less polluting than driving or flying, why are passenger rail options in the U.S. so limited compared to Europe? And is anything being done to shift more travelers over to American rail lines from cars and planes?
- Orenstein, Bradenton, FL

IT'S TRUE THAT TRAIN TRAVEL is one of the lowest impact ways to get from point to point short of walking, jogging or bicycling. In the early part of the 20th century, with car and air travel both in their infancies, taking the train was really the only practical way for Americans to get from city to city. And take the train they did: By 1929 the U.S. boasted one of the largest and most used rail networks in the world, with some 65,000 railroad passenger cars in operation across some 265,000 miles of track.

But a concerted campaign by U.S. carmakers to acquire rail lines and close them, along with a major push in Congress to build the world's most extensive interstate highway system, combined to shift Americans' tastes away from rail travel and toward cars. As a result, while Europe focused on building its own rail networks, the U.S. became the ultimate auto nation, with more cars per capita than anywhere else in the world. By 1965 only 10,000 rail passenger cars were in operation across just 75,000 miles of track.

In response to the declining use of America's rail network, the U.S. government created Amtrak in 1971 to provide intercity passenger train service across the country, running mostly on pre-existing track already in use for freight transport. Today Amtrak runs some 1,500 rail passenger cars on 21,000 miles of track connecting 500 destinations in 46 states. In 2008, upwards of 28 million passengers rode Amtrak trains, representing the sixth straight year of record ridership for the publicly-owned rail line. Despite this growth, the U.S. still has one of the lowest inter-city rail usage rates in the developed world.

But that may all change soon. In the spring of 2009, President Obama allocated $8 billion of his stimulus package toward development of more high-speed rail lines across the country, citing the need to reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on foreign oil. Currently only one high-speed rail line exists in the U.S., Amtrak's Acela Express, which can reach speeds of 150 mile per hour on its Washington, D.C. to Boston route. The success of high-speed, high-efficiency "bullet" trains in Asia and Europe - where train rides can be as fast as flying but without the long waits and security hassles - has helped convince American transportation analysts that the U.S. should also take the high speed rail plunge.

The first round of federal funding will go toward upgrading and increasing speeds on existing lines, but the majority of it will be used to jump-start construction of new high speed lines in 10 corridors across the country, including in northern New England, across New York State, across Pennsylvania, in and around Chicago, throughout the Southeast, and up and down the length of the west coast.

A 2006 study by the Center for Clean Air Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology concluded that building a high speed rail system across the U.S. (similar in scope to that proposed by Obama) would likely result in 29 million fewer car trips and 500,000 fewer plane flights each year, saving six billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions - the equivalent of removing a million cars from the road annually.

CONTACTS: Amtrak; Center for Clean Air Policy; Center for Neighborhood Technology.

DEAR EARTHTALK: I've heard so much about using Borax for green housecleaning. But if this mineral has to be mined, doesn't that negate some of its "green-ness?"
- Elsa, Lincoln, NE

MINING FOR MINERALS SUCH AS BORON (the key ingredient in the "Borax" we use for cleaning, pest control and other household tasks) is an activity that typically leaves behind a big environmental footprint. Mining degrades the local landscape and destroys wildlife habitat, while polluting both air and water. It also usually consumes large amounts of water, which can be taxing in already arid regions, such as the Mojave Desert, one of two regions of the world (along with parts of Turkey) with large boron deposits.

Typically, boron is extracted in open-pit mines by drilling, blasting, crushing and hauling - all activities fueled by petrochemicals. The refining process then uses a significant amount of water. Finally, the waste product - known in the industry as "tailings" - is deposited in man-made ponds where further refining is done before the water is then discharged into the local watershed.

The mining industry has long been criticized as an environmental baddie, but the leading company that mines Borax, Rio Tinto, has actually been given high marks for environmental stewardship. Jared Diamond's 2005 book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" called the British mining giant the exception in its industry. Due to "a strongly supportive CEO and British stockholders," he wrote, the company moved forward with the 2002 environmental recommendations of the mining industry's Mining Minerals and Sustainable Development project that were for the most part ignored by the rest of the industry. "Rio Tinto foresaw business advantages to being seen as an industry leader in social responsibility," said Diamond. "Its Borax mine in Death Valley, California is now perhaps the most cleanly operated mine in the U.S."

Boron, oxygen and sodium make up sodium tetraborate, which is sold as "20 Mule Team Borax" (the name comes from the teams of 18 mules and two horses that would haul large wagons of processed borax from mines in the late 1800s to the nearest railroad spur). The powdered detergent is considered a least-toxic recipe as a natural disinfectant and household cleaner. Beyond cleaning formulations, boron is also used in a wide variety of other products, including the manufacture of fiberglass and Pyrex.

Pest control is another use. One boron compound is used to treat wood to prevent fungal decay and repel carpenter ants, roaches and termites. Boric acid is included on the national list of allowed substances for structural pest control in organic food production (as long as there is no direct contact with food or crops). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that pesticide products containing boric acid and its salts are of low toxicity. (However, ingesting it or applying large amounts to the skin can cause acute poisoning, so parents should be vigilant about where they store and use products containing Borax.)

Emerging uses of boron, and new ways to recycle its waste, may make this mineral even more valuable. A Turkish researcher notes that borax waste added to red bricks and cement products increases strength and lifespan. And at the National Boron Research Institute in Turkey, it is being studied as an element to produce fuel cells and to aid in cancer treatment.

CONTACTS: Rio Tinto, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Turkey's National Boron Research Institute.

© the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine, 2009

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION?
Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881;
submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/,
or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com.

Read the column archives at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Now in its 19th year, E/The Environmental Magazine is a bimonthly "clearinghouse" of information, news and resources for people concerned about the environment who want to know "What can I do?" to make a difference. A 13-time Independent Press Awards winner and nominee, E is chock full of everything environmental - from recycling to rainforests, and from the global village to our own backyards.

Published bimonthly by a staff of six full-time and two part-time employees (plus a steady stream of college interns), E reaches a national audience in a smartly designed full-color format, printed on recycled paper. Published by the nonprofit (501-c-3) Earth Action Network, Inc., E is independent of any membership organization and has no agenda to promote except that of our very diverse and dynamic movement as a whole.

In direct fulfillment of E's editorial mission, EarthTalk is an effort to reach "beyond the choir" of committed environmentalists and offer highly useful information to sympathetic but uninformed people shown in poll after poll to be ready and even eager for "green" information.