Union Members, Environmentalists Continue Cross-Country Bus Tour to Demand Senate Action on Clean Energy Jobs

Carson, CA – A bus tour that highlighted the potential to create good American jobs by passing comprehensive clean energy and climate change legislation in the U.S. Senate stopped in Carson today urging Senators Feinstein and Boxer to support action on comprehensive legislation that will create and save millions of American, clean energy jobs, including up to 226,000 jobs in California.

“With nearly 1 out of 10 Americans still out of work, we need action now to create and preserve millions of jobs across the country, and we can do that with clean energy,” said Steve Neal, a Long Beach City Councilman. “While Senators are at home for their August recess, millions of American families are struggling to make ends meet when we have a solution right at our fingertips. We can drive to a clean energy future now.”

The Job’s Not Done tour will travel to 17 states — with more than 30 stops along the way — and feature clean energy workers, union members and environmentalists urging Senate action on important job-creating clean energy legislation. Workers on The Job’s Not Done Tour worry that China will take the millions of potential jobs that will result from the transition to a clean energy economy.

“Instead of importing clean energy technologies from overseas, we should be developing and manufacturing the technology to harness American energy here at home,” said Dave Campbell, the Secretary-Treasurer for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675. “We cannot afford to let China take the millions of jobs that could be created in America by transitioning to clean energy.”

“Comprehensive clean energy and climate change legislation will put America back on the path to economic success — revitalizing current industries and creating new ones, establishing the United States as the undisputed leader in clean energy technologies, and creating good American clean energy jobs now,” Mark Mullholand, a worker in the clean energy economy and a member of USW Local 1915 in Fremont, Ohio.

The tour will continue to Las Vegas, Nevada today and wrap up on September 3 in Richmond, Virginia. For more information, visit www.bluegreenalliance.org.

“’The Job’s Not Done’ Tour is our reminder that millions of people are out of work, and that clean energy is the best way to jumpstart the American economy,” Tom Politeo from the Sierra Club California. “We need the Senate to get back to work and get the job done — for our families, the economy, our environment, and the future.”